Harry Potter knew something was up at the Dursley household, but he didn’t really know how big of a something it was until they decided to have a family meeting and actually invited him. The last time they had done that had been when the Masons had arrived on Harry’s twelfth birthday (along with a very unwelcome house elf named Dobby who ruined everything, although Harry got the blame, of course). It was likely that another “important”, to Vernon Dursley that is, person was coming to visit. Harry tried hard to stifle his boredom at what would likely be a set of instructions to his Aunt Petunia and cousin Dudley on how to kiss up to whomever it was that had proven unlucky enough to end up here in the proper Dursley way, followed by consistent reminders of how he was to pretend to blend into the wallpaper. (But certainly not actually do so. That would be far too strange for the taste of his Aunt and Uncle.)

Harry and the Dursleys had been rather successful at avoiding each other over the last few weeks; so much so that he actually didn’t mind being here for once. Left to his own room, he was free from having other, older witches and wizards constantly reminding him of how Sirius’ death wasn’t his fault or how the debacle at the Ministry could have happened to anyone. Harry didn’t need that right now. What he needed was some alone time and lots of space. For nearly three weeks now he had gotten it. It was only in the last few days, however, that his mourning period for Sirius felt like it was beginning to wane and even his spare non-Sirius thoughts no longer flung themselves automatically to the memory of Professor Trelawney’s prophecy about what was supposed to transpire between him and Voldemort. The death of Sirius Black still saddened him and the prophecy worried him somewhat, but they now seemed to fill him with a sense of determination: to avenge Sirius and finally bring Voldemort’s reign of terror to an end.

With the dramatic events of the wizard world from the end of the last school year swimming around in his head, Harry found it particularly difficult to concentrate on Vernon’s impassioned speech about being normal, especially since he didn’t seem to have to do anything or respond in anyway. It was rather like Professor Binns’ History of Magic class, only Harry could just fantasize about his Uncle becoming a ghost. As he was imagining the fifteenth way he would prefer it to happen, Vernon Dursley’s snarling face nearly met the tip of Harry’s nose. “And just what will you be doing while the Farmers are here, Potter?” he snapped.

“Hiding in my room,” Harry answered quickly with a half-yawn. Apparently his boredom annoyed Uncle Vernon, as he made his nephew repeat the answer. He then looked expectantly at Harry, as if willing him to continue. “In my closet.” Vernon then made an angry rolling gesture with his hands. “Under a pile of Dudley’s old winter coats.” Harry paused only for a moment, waiting to see if that was enough to satisfy the Dursleys. It wasn’t. He let out a slow sigh of defeat. “Making no noise and pretending I don’t exist.”

“Yes,” Vernon replied slowly, his face flushed as red as a beetroot. “Be thankful I’ve decided not to gag you. Just in case you are, by some unhappy accident, discovered, I don’t want your oral hygiene to be in doubt. We have clean teeth in this family!” As if on cue, Petunia and Dudley smiled very wide, showing off so many of their teeth at once that even Gilderoy Lockhart would be impressed. They had apparently been practicing this routine. As Harry’s stomach turned, Vernon continued. “Very good, very good. This could be a very big deal, the biggest since…since…since you,” he pointed a shaking finger at Harry, “starting going to that blasted school of yours!” His eyes then turned to the ceiling and his hands folded behind his back. Uncle Vernon’s anger began to turn to greed more quickly than usual. “Yes, I can see it now. Dentist’s drills: the future of Grunnings!”

Apparently, the British Dental Association would be working out some kind of deal with Grunnings where they became one of maybe four or five companies who supplied drills officially sanctioned by the BDA to British dentists. The details of it made Harry long for Potions homework as an escape, but as it seemed a big deal to the Dursleys, Harry took the opportunity of his Uncle’s long rambling diatribe to make his way up the stairs, into his room and into his closet. As he plopped down on the floor, he wrapped himself in about six of Dudley’s winter coats, which formed a sort of pup tent around Harry’s body. Smiling as he leaned his head back on one of his cousin’s old ratted fur hoods, he decided that the situation was not as bad as it might have seemed to someone unfamiliar with how Harry’s “adopted” family had treated him since he was an infant. The closet in this room wasn’t much smaller than the cupboard underneath the stairs, Dudley’s winter coats were comfortable and they sometimes even contained snacks that were still edible. Besides that fact, two summers ago Harry had managed to use a faulty drill Uncle Vernon brought home from work as a “present” for his nephew’s birthday to drill some peepholes in the closet so that he could now see downstairs into the hallway, the dining room and the kitchen. That meant that if anything interesting did happen with the Farmers, he would likely know about it and of course be able to tease Dudley mercilessly about it afterwards.

Looking down into the dining room, Harry saw Uncle Vernon grab Aunt Petunia by the shoulders. He considered turning away in revulsion, thinking they were about to kiss. However, with the typical Gryffindor spirit of bravery, Harry looked closer and discovered that he was merely trying to boost her confidence about something. “Don’t worry, Petunia. I know how you feel about dentists, but it will all be over soon. With you and our Ickle Duddykins turning on the charm, we’ll win them over in no time. And besides, it was only a movie.”

The curiosity of “Ickle Duddykins” was for once a great help to Harry. “What was only a movie?” he asked in an extremely rude tone of voice. It was the exact same question that sprang to Harry’s mind, but he quickly dismissed the notion that this somehow meant that he and Dudley thought alike.

“M…Marathon Man,” Aunt Petunia stammered as she muted a sob. Harry wasn’t sure he had seen that one, but whatever it was it didn’t sound scary. With Vernon squeezing her arm for support, she seemed to pull herself together, although with great effort. “Horrible creatures, dentists. Horrible.”

Harry chuckled softly to himself. “Oh yeah, dentists are monstrous. Worse than dementors, they are.” Thinking back to his childhood, this attitude of Aunt Petunia’s suddenly made Dudley’s (and, by default, his) trips to the dentist a lot more understandable. The Big ‘D’ always received a large package of suckers for braving the dentists’ chair and even Harry got a few (the grape ones that Dudley didn’t like). He then wondered idly what Hermione’s parents would think of Mrs. Dursley’s dentist fears. With both of them being in the profession, they probably ran across it from time to time. ‘Hey, I wonder if the Farmers might know them,’ Harry asked himself, but decided not to risk the wrath of his Uncle Vernon by sneaking downstairs sometime during the course of the evening to try and find out.

Harry heard the loud buzz of the doorbell and, grabbing a small box of raisins that he was surprised Dudley hadn’t simply thrown in the trash out of one of the larger pockets, turned his attention solely onto the peephole that allowed him to see the hallway. As Vernon made last minute adjustments to their clothes (they wouldn’t dare make a first impression with a wrinkle showing, other than in Aunt Petunia’s scrawny neck) and made sure that all of them had big smiles affixed to their faces, he opened the door. “Good evening, Mr. Farmer, Mrs. Farmer,” he said as he shook each of their hands with ferocity. Uncle Vernon then barely seemed to stop himself from gasping as he continued looking out the doorway at what was presumably a third figure in the doorway. “And I see you’ve brought your little girl along with you. How… unexpected.”

The familiar-looking man in a dapper-looking gray business suit replied with a large smile. “Yes, well, we heard you had a boy about her age and thought maybe they might get along smashingly.” Both of the middle-aged couple’s faces had turned red upon their introduction to the house. Harry got the distinct impression that this wasn’t going well so far for the Dursleys.

How right he was. Aunt Petunia barely had time to ask the young girl her name when she bellowed out in the haughtiest voice she could manage. “It’s Hermione. Hermione Granger. That’s our last name, you see. Not ‘Farmer’.” Harry’s mouth fell wide open. All of the Dursleys looked sheepish except for Dudley, who always looked too massive to be a sheep. He did, however, look a bit like a stunned hippopotamus.

***
“It’s an honest mistake,” Vernon Dursley insisted as he invited the Grangers to sit down in the dining room. “Farmer, Granger… they’re synonyms, really. And I’ve always said, haven’t I, Petunia?, that farmers are the backbone of this country. Couldn’t get any food grown without them.”

Harry wasn’t really paying attention to the awkwardness going on between the Grangers and the Dursleys; he was too busy focusing on Hermione. What was she doing here? She was surely here to see him, wasn’t she? And if so, was this deal between the British Dental Association and Grunnings merely a sham, orchestrated by Dumbledore or someone else in the Order of the Phoenix? Harry shuddered to think of how many shades of purple his uncle’s face would turn if that turned out to be the case.

Losing himself in his thoughts, Harry nearly lost sight of Hermione, as she forcefully grabbed Dudley’s hand and escorted him from the room. He still seemed to be in shock; otherwise, Hermione’s petite frame never could have moved his great bulk out of the dining room short of a very powerful levitation spell. They walked into the hallway, only a few feet away from his former home underneath the stairs. Harry shifted his position within the closet so that he could see what they were doing.

Unfortunately it was difficult to hear, because Uncle Vernon was telling a rather loud and obnoxious version of his new Polish barber joke. He only caught brief snatches of their conversation, but it seemed to boil down to Hermione feeling Dudley’s “muscles”, if that was indeed what they were, saying that he certainly did look like the type to be good at boxing, and oh, if only there were someone here that he could pummel, she would really be impressed. A light bulb seemed to go off over Dudley’s head, but Hermione was definitely the one who put it there. Harry grinned broadly at her cleverness.

As the unlikely duo bounded up the staircase, Harry quickly turned around to face the closet door, which would no doubt be opening any moment now. Wiping a very amused grin off of his face, he did his best to look disinterested and started practicing feigned surprise at Dudley opening the door. However, Harry soon realized that Dudley would technically be coming to beat him up, and genuine worry overcame him. Before he had too much time to think on it, the door opened wide and his gargantuan cousin lifted him out of the closet.

“So this is your insane cousin who lives with you,” Hermione said in a voice that was both pompous and apathetic as she pretended to look Harry over disparagingly. His breath caught in his throat as his legs dangled mere inches from the floor. “He doesn’t look very tough.”

“Oh, he is,” Dudley Dursley sneered as his meaty right hand finally released Harry’s now very stretched gray t-shirt. “He goes to St. Brutus’ you know, and that’s a school for the hopelessly criminal. He has to be able to take a few punches every now and then.” Dudley then gave Harry what seemed like it might have been a pleading look similar to the one he gave Dobby four years ago. ‘Don’t get me in trouble,’ it seemed to say. Harry gave a slight nod. He wasn’t about to make any sort of disturbance that Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia would pay attention to, as it would most likely be him getting in trouble and not Dudley.

Stealing a quick, slightly amused glance at Hermione, Harry put up his hands to fight just as Dudley did. However, neither of them wanted to be the one to throw the first punch. Dudley knew he could take Harry in a “fair” Muggle fight, but was afraid of what his cousin might do to him later if he did. Meanwhile, Harry wasn’t exactly sure what Hermione’s game was and decided to see if she was planning on doing something here. After a few minutes, the aforementioned Ms. Granger let out a dramatic yawn and pretended as though she were about to leave the room when Dudley promptly sucker punched Harry (whose eyes had inexplicably been following Hermione despite the fact that his brain knew she wasn’t really going to leave him alone with Dudley). The pain in his stomach was nothing he hadn’t felt before, but it did succeed in knocking him off of his feet. Unfortunately, as he fell to the floor, his head crashed into the table which held Hedwig’s cage. Harry’s pet owl crashed with a loud metallic clang to the floor and let off an awful stream of squawks.

All three teenagers froze. The noise was sure to have been heard downstairs. The expressions on the faces of Dudley and Harry were particularly fearful, as they could only imagine too well Uncle Vernon bounding up the stairs in a furious rage. “Goodness me. Knocking over an owl cage. That will take some explaining, won’t it? Particularly since most people don’t have owls in cages.” Hermione smirked at Harry as she stooped to look at his head. “I guess you’ll be the one to have to go and do it,” she declared with a quick glance towards Dudley.

“Me?” Dudley asked in panic. “Why me? Why not you… or him?”

Hermione gave out an exaggerated sigh. “Honestly, do you expect me to explain to my parents why you two created a disturbance? And as for this one,” she turned back to look at Harry’s forehead, “I don’t think he should be getting up soon. He’s got a nasty bump here. And look at this cut. It’s shaped like a lightning bolt!”

“He didn’t get that scar just now,” Dudley tried to explain. “He’s always…” He stopped as he heard his father starting up the stairs. “Oh, never bloody mind. Never send a freak or a girl to do a man’s job.” As Dudley stepped out the door, he apparently caught sight of Uncle Vernon. “Daddykins!” he cried. “I…I can explain.” Cries of pain escaped his lips as the two of them appeared to be making their way downstairs.

“Might get some ice for this bump while you’re down there,” Hermione called after him. Once she was sure Dudley could no longer hear them, she burst into fits of raucous laughter. After a moment, Harry followed suit, then remembered his bump and put his hand to his forehead in pain. Hermione took off the light pink jacket she’d been wearing and put it between Harry’s head and the wall. “Comfy?” she asked, as she picked up Hedwig’s cage and, taking the time to smooth her feathers, placed her back upon the table.

“Oh yes,” Harry answered sarcastically. “I feel practically pampered now.” However, he couldn’t stay even a little mad for very long. He had been starved for company since having left Hogwarts and seeing Hermione at the Dursleys was such a wonderful surprise he could barely keep the smile from his face for more than a few seconds. Harry stood slowly and attempted to make it to his bed. “How are you, Hermione?” he asked with genuine concern in his voice.

“Well, none of us that were at the Ministry of Magic are exactly doing cartwheels,” Hermione started to answer, but then stopped herself abruptly and slapped her hand across her mouth. “Oh, Harry! I’m so sorry! That’s just been the answer I’ve been giving everyone…my parents, teachers checking up on me and everything, I didn’t even think…”

“It’s OK,” Harry interrupted as he gently lowered his head onto the lumpy pillow provided him by the Dursleys. “I was an idiot. Sirius is dead. His killer will get what’s coming to her, as will Voldemort.” Whether what was coming to Voldemort was the evil wizard’s death or his own was still a matter of debate in Harry’s mind, but he wasn’t ready to let Hermione know about that yet.

“Well, whatever happens, they won’t be sent to Azkaban,” Hermione replied, trying to change the subject somewhat. She reached inside one of the pockets of her jeans and removed a newspaper article. Harry scanned over it quickly; apparently the dementors had proven too untrustworthy and the wizard prison had been temporarily decommissioned. Felonious wizards and witches were being held in special cells outside the grounds for the time being.

Once he had read everything of interest, Harry looked at the top of the newspaper. This wasn’t The Daily Prophet or The Quibbler, it was a new one he had never heard of before. “What kind of newspaper is The Phoenix Fire?” Harry questioned.

“It was started by the Order to keep its members informed,” she answered with a knowing look toward Harry. Hermione remembered well how frustrated he had been at being kept out of the loop throughout last summer. “Even now that the truth is out about Voldemort, Dumbledore decided the Daily Prophet just isn’t reliable enough to get the full truth out now that there’s a war on. Besides, it gives Professor Lupin something constructive to do.” Harry’s eyes fell upon the name of the editor: R. L. Moony. “As for what else the Order is up to, that’s sort of why I’m here.”

Harry nodded ever so slightly. “I thought so. No sane person would brave a visit to the Dursleys without having a good reason for it.” Hermione looked surprisingly noncommittal. “So come out with it. Why did they decide to send you here?”

“So that I could be your girlfriend,” Hermione answered with a sly smile.

Chapter 2: Making a list, checking it twice

Harry let out a loud nervous cough. Hermione wanted to be his girlfriend? When did this happen? “Um, Hermione…don’t I get a say in this?”

“Oh, of course,” she replied, the smile never leaving her face and wry amusement slowly creeping into her voice. “I suppose if you want to stay locked up with the Dursleys all summer instead of spending almost every day exploring London with me, you can. I certainly won’t stop you.”

Harry put his hand to his forehead in frustration. “Hermione, what are you going on about?”

Hermione let out a gentle laugh as she decided to let Harry in on the joke. “Dumbledore wants us to spend most of the summer in London, and Muggle London at that,” Hermione explained patiently. “He says it’s because he thinks Voldemort might be planning something there, but honestly I think he just wants you to have a pleasant holiday over the summer for once.”

Harry’s eyes immediately brightened. He would have something to do this summer, something fun for once other than just a once-in-a-lifetime thing like watching the Quidditch World Cup (and even that had involved Death Eaters). But there was still a nervous lump in his throat, because…well… “So what was that bit about you being my girlfriend?”

Mischief danced in Hermione’s eyes. “Well, we’ll have to tell the Dursleys something about why we’re spending so much time together, won’t we? Do you think they’ll believe that we struck up such an intimate friendship with each other in one day that we can hardly stand to be apart from each other?”

Harry thought it over quickly in his mind. The Dursleys would never let him out of the house just to spend time with a friend, but with a “girlfriend”, especially one who was the daughter of two very important clients… “I think it might work. That is if this dentist drill deal is for real.”

Hermione nodded. “Mum and Dad had to pull some strings to be the ones to negotiate the deal, and it helped that they knew all about the Dursleys from what I had told them. Of course, these sorts of things take time to work out.” That coy smile still hadn’t left her face.

Harry broke out into a large grin of his own. “You don’t think it would take all summer, do you?” Hermione might have been way ahead of him at first, but he was slowly catching up.

“I think it might,” Hermione replied with a knowing laugh. ‘It is nice to see Hermione,’ Harry thought to himself as an odd sort of feeling came over him. ‘But since when is she so much fun?’ As if she had read his thoughts, Hermione suddenly turned serious. “Now, I suppose it’s time to get started on our project.”

“What project?” Harry asked reflexively. They didn’t have their books for next term yet; how could they already have homework? Harry groaned inwardly. When it came to Hermione and homework, anything was possible.

“Why, we have to figure out what drew us together, of course,” Hermione answered in a matter-of-fact tone that turned Harry’s mood from frustration to amusement. She withdrew a large piece of parchment and a quill from her pocket. “I made up a checklist on the way over here. Just some random thoughts that popped into my head.”

Harry snatched the list away from her when she wasn’t looking and began reading aloud from it in disbelief. “‘Cricket?’ ‘Young men’s fashions?’ ‘British foreign diplomacy?!?’” Harry shot an incredulous look at Hermione. “I know the Dursleys are a bit thick, but I don’t think they’d believe I actually knew anything about any of this.”

“They were just suggestions,” Hermione pointed out defensively, her face suddenly going slightly red.

Even though he knew he had already embarrassed Hermione, Harry couldn’t help but read further. As he neared the end, he burst out into hysterical laughter. “Oh, this one has got to be my favorite. ‘Dissecting owl pellets.’”

“Hey, I actually thought that one was fairly clever,” Hermione replied indignantly. “The dissection of owl pellets is something that’s done in biology in some Muggle schools and you do have an owl, you know. It could have come up in conversation.”

Harry had doubled over in laughter, forgetting temporarily about the pain in his forehead. Hermione folded her arms and contorted her face into a pout. “And I suppose you just have a brilliant plan to convince the Dursleys we’re madly in love.”

“Well, we could just snog like mad and act secretive all the time,” Harry threw out, still laughing as he said it. “That’s what most couples our age do.”

“Very funny,” Hermione chided him, her expression icy. Harry finally composed himself long enough to notice that Hermione really did seem to have hurt feelings over what he had said.

“Hermione,” Harry said with what he hoped was reassurance as he wiped tears of laughter from his eyes. “If you tell the Dursleys you’re interested in going out with me, they’re not going to care why. As long as you’re seen as an important part of Uncle Vernon’s business deal, they’ll let you have whatever you want. Including me.” Hermione seemed to be slightly placated by this, but still turned away from Harry as he attempted to look her in the eyes. “You could probably even tell them that you want me to be your personal butler for the summer and they’d only ask what colour you wanted my tuxedo to be.”

Hermione rubbed her chin thoughtfully. “I could see that happening. ‘Potter, fetch my slippers.’ ‘Potter, brew me a spot of tea.’ ‘Potter, bring me the latest edition of Hogwarts: a History.’” Harry and Hermione both had a good chuckle at that. Hermione couldn’t bring herself to order around a house elf; he couldn’t imagine her trying to order around a human being (unless it was one of her fellow classmates around exam time). “Alright, you know the Dursleys better than I do.” She picked up the checklist with a sigh. “Still, if we needed a back up plan…”

Harry turned his eyes reluctantly back to the list. “Well, I don’t think I can even pretend to be interested in the Russian ballet,” Harry began. ‘That was probably Viktor Krum’s favorite,’ Harry mused to himself. “So we better just stick with the owl pellets.” Hermione looked at him with a ‘get real’ expression on her face. Harry grinned widely. “Or maybe we’ll just say that we’re both interested in owls. The pellets make me kind of nauseous, anyway. No offense, Hedwig.” Harry’s owl shook its head haughtily in reply.

Harry and Hermione both suddenly heard the heavy footsteps of Dudley Dursley coming up the stairs. “So it’s settled then,” Hermione said very loudly. “We’ll call ourselves the Society for the Protection of Owls and Other Nocturnal Species.”

Harry screwed up his face with a scoff. “We’re calling ourselves SPOONS?”

Hermione shot Harry a very serious look. “No, not SPOONS. S.P.O.O.N.S.” As Dudley Dursley opened the door to Harry’s room, she planted a large wet kiss on Harry’s cheek. “Wonderful. I can’t wait for our first meeting.”

Harry was a bit stunned, but managed to turn around in time to see Dudley staring wide-eyed at the two of them. Hermione cheerfully bounded past him as his massive bulk of a cousin stood dumbfounded, stammering like mad. He was so flustered he hadn’t even noticed that he’d dropped a bag of ice on his foot. “You…her…I… DADDYKINS!!!”

***
“Ha,” Uncle Vernon snorted as he paced up and down the hallway of the Dursley house. Harry had gotten as good at reading his uncle’s moods as Professor Trelawney was at reading tea leaves, although his predictions had a much better chance of coming true. Vernon Dursley cast another fleeting glance at the door. The sun was shining brightly through the window, inviting Harry to go outside, to escape the Dursleys for the day, to live a little for once. “Ha,” repeated Uncle Vernon imperiously, as if attempting to dash Harry’s hopes with one syllable. His eyes squinted at Harry suspiciously. “Ha.”

Harry Potter felt somewhat emboldened by the plans that he and Hermione had made the night before and allowed himself a tiny smirk. “What’s so funny, Uncle Vernon?” he asked with mock innocence in his voice.

“Funny?!” Uncle Vernon retorted with a curious sort of mild anger in his voice. “Oh, something’s funny alright, Potter. This… this… thing with you and the Granger girl.” Harry fought hard not to let the smile on his face get any bigger. “No sensible girl could see you and Dudley in the same night and choose to pursue you.” He was losing the fight. ‘I have to keep a straight face,’ Harry thought as he forcibly contorted his face into what looked like a grimace. “You must have put some sort of curse on her. I insist that you undo it this instant, before she shows up here, makes a fool of herself over you and then goes home crying to her parents all the while telling them what awful people we are!”

“But Uncle Vernon,” Harry managed to squeak through suppressed laughter, “I’m not allowed to do magic away from Hogwarts. You know that.” There were times Harry had wished his surrogate family hadn’t known that, but today wasn’t one of them.

“Yes,” Vernon Dursley said slowly as he looked Harry over like something disgusting that had just turned up on his rug. “I suppose you would have gotten one of those birds if you had done something unusual.” He then tugged at his moustache, considering the situation again carefully. “She must be a weird sort then, like you. Into strange things like protecting owls.” He then seemed to forget that Harry was there, muttering something about how there was a reason that owls had talons.

“I wouldn’t want to go out with someone you didn’t approve of, sir,” Harry managed to say, maintaining not only a straight face, but the customary look he gave when he was trying to get out of something he didn’t want to do. He was very impressed with himself. “I’ll just call and cancel our date!”

“You’ll do no such thing!” his uncle yelled loudly. His face had gone purple again, usually not a good sign. “You will make this work, Potter! I have a lot riding on this. Now get upstairs and get changed.” As Harry began to rush up the stairs, Uncle Vernon stopped him. “I had Petunia launder some of Dudley’s nicer clothes. They may be a bit loose on you, but first impressions count, you know.” Harry suppressed a groan. If he wore Dudley’s clothes on a real first date, her first impression would be that he had no idea how to wear proper clothing. Luckily, Hermione probably wouldn’t mind him changing into something a little more comfortable at some point during the day. Before taking on the odious task of slipping into yet another set of second-hand clothing, he picked out some casual clothes that he might slip into once Uncle Vernon wasn’t around.

Trying his best not to feel ridiculous wearing Dudley’s suit, Harry packed his clothes and a few other things in a small knapsack and waited for Hermione to show up. She hadn’t bothered to inform him of when or how she was coming, but he knew it wouldn’t be by any sort of magical transport, as that would kill any chance the two of them had of pulling this off. As the doorbell rang, Harry rushed to answer it before his uncle could. Hermione stood at the door wearing a pink and grey t-shirt and a pair of blue jeans and looking a lot more like a normal teenager than he did. “Oh, Harry,” Hermione said with a mock scowl. “I thought you of all people would know how to wear muggle clothes.”

“I do,” hissed Harry in a softer voice as his Uncle Vernon slowly approached from the living room. “It’s my aunt and uncle who are convinced I can wear anything that Dudley can.” Hermione let out a small laugh as Vernon Dursley approached the door.

“Come in, young lady,” Vernon greeted her warmly. He put on a large fake smile that fooled neither of them. “Would you like something to drink? Tea, perhaps? I’m sorry my wife isn’t here, pressing engagement you know. Dudley’s needed a new computer for ages, can’t really see how he’s gone this long without one. They’ve gone to…”

“Why is he dressed like that?” Hermione demanded frankly as she made a waving gesture at the outfit of Dudley’s that Harry appeared to be swimming in.

“Like that?” Vernon replied, taken aback by her question and tone. “Why I…” He stopped himself abruptly, remembering his manners (and, quite probably, his business deal). “…don’t know. I said he could wear whatever he wanted, why he would choose that, well I just haven’t the foggiest… Potter, go upstairs and change this instant! You’ll have to make some allowances for him, my dear, he doesn’t get out much.”

‘And whose fault is that?’ thought Harry bitterly. “Uh, miss,” he said as he cleared his throat to get Hermione’s attention away from the contemptuous glare of his Uncle Vernon. “I’ve brought a change of clothes in my knapsack, just in case this outfit wasn’t appropriate for whatever it is we’re doing. I think they’ll be more acceptable to your tastes.”

Hermione raised an eyebrow at him. “Very thoughtful. Although I didn’t think I’d see you stripped down to your knickers quite this soon in our relationship.” Harry’s jaw very nearly dropped. His uncle turned a shade of purple Harry hadn’t seen yet.

“Offyougothen,” Uncle Vernon muttered as he literally pushed the two of them out the door. Harry’s face was beet red and both of them seemed to have a contagious case of the giggles. He didn’t believe he’d seen anyone treat Vernon Dursley that way and get away with it. As Harry’s laughter died out, he thought about how much he had laughed over the last two days. This was probably the most fun he’d had on Privet Drive without magic. Who’d have thought that Hermione…

“Hop on,” Hermione said suddenly as Harry realized just how lost in thought he had become. Her request didn’t make sense until Harry took a good look at their mode of transport: a moped, mint green in colour, that looked brand new. As Harry’s eyes ran up and down it, he noticed that Hermione was wearing a matching green helmet and holding another one out for him to wear with an amused smile on her face. “Sorry I didn’t get one twelve sizes too large for you to go with the rest of your outfit.”

“Very funny,” Harry replied as he fastened the helmet to his head. “Whenever we reach someplace private, I’ll change.” Making sure his oversized pants legs didn’t get caught in anything vital, he climbed onto Hermione’s moped and they took off towards London.

Having never ridden in any kind of Muggle vehicle other than a car before, Harry Potter took in the experience with a small sense of wonder. The wind wafting across his face invigorated Harry, as the early summer morning came up slowly around him. Hermione had picked a circuitous route which seemed to take them past a picturesque stretch of woods. He barely even noticed (or maybe he didn’t care) how physically close he and Hermione had to be to ride this thing and that his hands had found themselves attached rather firmly to her midsection.

Harry put his head closer to hers so that he could yell a question at her, but she couldn’t hear him over the combined sounds of the engine and the wind. As they came upon a clearing in the woods, Hermione pulled the moped over to the side and parked it in a patch of dirt a few feet from the main road. “There, this should be secluded enough,” she declared.

“For what?” asked Harry quizzically.

Hermione took one last contemptuous look at his oversized outfit. “Well, for you to change clothes for one thing,” she said in a playful tone of voice.

“Out here? In the middle of a forest?” Harry asked incredulously as he looked at Hermione as though she had temporarily gone mad.

“There’s a nice big tree you can change behind back there,” she said, pointing to a large gray willow about twenty metres away. Harry was still looking at her as though she might sprout another head. “I won’t look. And really, the fewer people who see you looking like that, the better.”

Harry didn’t put up any more of a fight, trudging slowly through the forest as he held his overflowing trouser legs up until he reached the willow tree in question. Disrobing quickly (and privately thinking that a Girl Scout troupe was likely to be tramping through here at any moment to laugh at him in only his boxers), he almost missed Hermione asking him a question.

“So what was it you wanted to ask me before?” Hermione asked. Having not yet put on his jeans, Harry stole a quick glance at her to make sure she wasn’t looking before he answered.

“I wanted to know when you got the moped,” Harry said as he did a delicate balancing act to put his trousers on while staying hidden behind the tree.

“Last summer. I couldn’t actually take it out on the road until my sixteenth birthday, of course, but my parents got tired of escorting me to the library all of the time and taught me how to drive it last year.” Hermione stole a quick look at Harry to check on his progress and turned around quickly again with a blush as she saw he was no longer hiding behind a tree and while his jeans were on, he had not yet put on a shirt. “I could, uh, teach you to drive it later on, if you’d like.”

“Wow, free driving lessons from Hermione,” Harry replied with a chuckle as he came jogging out of the woods. Now that Harry did have a shirt on, Hermione saw that it was navy blue with a Manchester United logo on it. “And it’s not even my birthday.”

“That reminds me,” Hermione said as she put her right index finger up to tell Harry to wait on her a moment. “I do have an early birthday present for you.” She ran over to a tree not far from the one Harry had used to change behind, emerged with a long, thin parcel and handed it to Harry. “Open it,” she instructed.

A large grin coming across his face, Harry tore open the package with vigor. When he saw what it contained, a look of surprise came over his face. It was a Nimbus 2000, just like the first broom he had owned. “Thanks, Hermione. But…you know I already have a Firebolt.”

“Of course I do,” Hermione replied, a little flustered by his reaction. “I just thought you might like a broom you were familiar with to practice on. That’s why we’re here, you know. My guess is your aunt and uncle don’t exactly let you practice quidditch in their back yard.” Harry merely stared at her. She brought him here so he could take quidditch practice? “I’m sorry I couldn’t get a better broom, but I didn’t exactly make a fortune working part time at the library this summer.”

Guilt overcame Harry suddenly. Hermione had been trying to do something nice for him, and he was being a complete jerk to her about it. “You don’t have to apologize, Hermione,” Harry assured her. “I was way out of line. This is all a very wonderful surprise. I can’t thank you enough.” She gave him a shy smile as her eyes seemed to dart to his shoes for some reason.

“You can thank Dumbledore too, when you see him,” Hermione told him meekly. “He was the one who enchanted this stretch of forest so no muggles would come upon you flying around on a broomstick by accident and,” she reached into her pocket and withdrew a small sphere, “he transfigured a hummingbird into this practice snitch.” A blue and silver flying ball left Hermione’s hand and flew to Harry’s, as if it that was where it naturally belonged.

A dark and bitter feeling passed over Harry as he heard Dumbledore’s name, but he wasn’t going to let Hermione know about it. “Neat trick,” he replied, his eyes never leaving the odd-looking snitch. “So is anyone else going to show up and practice or is it just going to be me up there, chasing the snitch all by myself?”

“If I had known you needed the competition, I would have seen if Cho Chang or Draco Malfoy had any plans,” Hermione replied frostily.

“Come off it, Hermione,” Harry said dismissively, not quite getting why she was irritated with him now. He had said he was sorry for how he had treated her earlier. What more did she want? “Of course I didn’t want you to invite Cho or Draco! They’re the last people I’d want to see away from Hogwarts. I was thinking more about the Weasleys. Ron and Ginny are going to be on the team this year, aren’t they? It might be worthwhile to practice with them, especially with Ginny trying for a new position and Ron being so hit-or-miss as a Keeper last year.”

Hermione stopped being angry for a moment to let a quick look of regret come over her face. “I’m sorry, Harry. Dumbledore’s put a lot of restrictions on members of the Order. We’re to stay in small groups at all times, as small as possible.” Harry shot Hermione a look of frustration. “The Weasleys are barely allowed to leave the Burrow because so many of them are in the Order and I’m afraid they’re not allowed any visitors.”

“That doesn’t make sense!” Harry exclaimed in anger. “If Death Eaters attack in force there’s no way a small group would survive. Even those who can apparate…”

“Harry,” Hermione began to interrupt.

“…can’t really protect the ones who can’t and what if Voldemort shows up? Has he even thought about…”

“Harry!” Hermione exclaimed. “Perhaps you should save this for when you actually see Dumbledore rather than waste all of your good complaints on me.” She put a hand firmly on his broom and shoved it towards his chest. “Go practice quidditch. I’ll be out here with some light reading,” she indicated five thick tomes she was pulling from her own knapsack.

Harry smiled knowingly at her. Of course she had brought books along. “Thanks for doing this, Hermione. I know you’re not the biggest quidditch fan ever.”

“No, but I am a loyal Gryffindor,” Hermione reminded him somewhat sternly, sounding for all the world like a miniature Professor McGonagall. “And we can’t have our new Quidditch Captain go all summer without practicing, can we?”

Harry’s head was spinning. Did she just say what he thought she said? Harry stared at her for a moment, and then he did the first thing that came to mind. He ran towards Hermione and pulled her into a gigantic bear hug.

***
Harry Potter had spent his first few minutes in the air whooping and shouting, weaving his new broom this way and that and tossing stones into the air and catching them effortlessly. He felt as though he could take the Irish National team all by himself. He had made Quidditch Captain. Looking back on it logically, Harry supposed it made sense; only he and Katie Bell had been on the team since his first year and Katie hadn’t talked much about wanting to be captain, but of course that didn’t mean anything and oh, who cares about this logic stuff?! ‘I’ve been made Quidditch Captain!!’ Harry’s brain shouted.

After a few more minutes of glorious celebration, Harry noticed a fluttering in his pocket. It was the snitch, seemingly bouncing around in there, anxious to get out and get started. Feeling obliging, Harry withdrew the strangely-coloured snitch from his trouser pocket and let it fly away. He then decided to give it a moment to get a decent head start and then swooped down, following its path and the game was on. Harry spotted the snitch gliding through a patch of deciduous trees and set out in pursuit.

Over an hour later, Harry was still chasing the snitch without success. He had gotten his hands on it three times already, but each time it had managed a daring escape. Once, the snitch flew into his face just as he was trying to pull out of a dive, nearly sending Harry and his new broom crashing to the ground (he wouldn’t have appreciated having to explain to Hermione how that happened). Now he was chasing the snitch through a row of pines as it weaved around each one. After a few minutes, Harry had to take himself out of the hunt; he was getting too dizzy to fly.

A second hour passed and Harry now felt as though he would have trouble taking on a first year Hufflepuff practice team, much less the Irish national squad. Finally catching sight of the snitch again, Harry saw that it had now flown high up in the air and had to rise dramatically to keep pace with it. As he moved closer to it, he began to notice that the little ball was moving them away from the area that Dumbledore had enchanted. Steeling himself, he willed his broom to go faster so that he might catch up to the snitch before it could escape forever. Leaning over the front of his broom, he reached for the snitch, his shaking fingers coming within inches of actually touching it… when it dived sharply out of sight.

“No!” Harry exclaimed in frustration, but quickly pointed his own broom downward, determined to follow the snitch wherever it went. As he caught sight of the little blue and silver object plummeting sharply to the ground, he wondered idly whether it had ever studied the Wronski Feint. Shaking that ridiculous idea out of his head, he mirrored the trajectory of the snitch, his eyes darting down to where it was falling, and he noticed it was getting quite close to the ground now and approaching… Hermione?

Harry could see Hermione Granger sitting on her green moped, seemingly oblivious to everything around her as she was lost, once again, in a book. He considered his options carefully. He could pull up, avoid a near collision with Hermione and lose the snitch for good (and his chances for practicing quidditch for the rest of the summer). Or…

Harry was now headed at breakneck speed towards the ground and, incidentally, Hermione. On a positive note, he was now very close to the snitch. “Just…a little more,” Harry said aloud. With one last mighty effort, Harry’s palm encircled the snitch and his fingers closed on it tightly before it could try anything else tricky. Harry let out a victorious whoop but temporarily forgot he was headed for the ground. Tugging hard on the front of his broom, he managed to pull his Nimbus 2000 out of the dive it was in, missing Hermione’s head by only about a metre. Letting the broom soar along the ground for a while to slow its momentum, Harry turned it around and brought it to a halt in front of his friend.

“Really, Harry,” Hermione said in an annoyed tone of voice, “do you have to be such a showoff?”

Harry was breathing heavily, sweat was pouring from his forehead and his fingers hadn’t released their death clamp from the little silver-blue ball that had given him so much trouble. “I got the snitch,” Harry announced proudly, as if he hadn’t heard Hermione’s complaint.

“Yes, well, does this little stunt mean that you’re through with quidditch practice for today?” Hermione asked with a hopeful, almost pleading look in her eyes. Was it possible that Hermione had actually been bored reading books? “I’ve just been reading about some wonderful things we could do in London.” ‘Nope’, thought Harry, ‘not possible’. She held up the book in question, “The Young Witch and Wizard’s Guide to a Passable Time in Muggle London, or How Not to Be Burned at the Stake (Unless You’re Into that Sort of Thing)” by Millicent Melaflua.

Harry finally looked down at the troublesome little snitch that had been transfigured from a hummingbird by Dumbledore, still clutched tightly in his left hand. He really was in no mood to chase this blasted thing again. Reluctantly stuffing it back in the parcel with his broom, he stashed it behind a tree for safekeeping and turned to face an expectant Hermione. “Right. Let’s go then.”

Harry didn’t say anything to Hermione on the drive into London, mostly because he knew she couldn’t hear him if he tried, but also because he didn’t know exactly what to say. He wasn’t really used to spending time alone with Hermione. Or was he? Didn’t they save Sirius together? Prepare for the Triwizard Tournament together? And last year, didn’t they go on several adventures alone…together?

‘Those times don’t count,’ Harry’s brain assured him, ‘because she was helping me with something I had to do’. He didn’t think he had ever chosen to be alone with Hermione, except for the time when Ron wasn’t speaking to him in fourth year. Oh, and when she met him at Hogsmeade with Rita Skeeter last year. That had gotten him into a lot of trouble with his then-girlfriend Cho, hadn’t it? But still, he hadn’t minded.

‘Those don’t count either,’ Harry’s brain piped up eagerly again, although this time it failed to elaborate. The point was that he had never set out to do anything fun with Hermione; that aspect of friendship had always been something he had associated with Ron. Hermione was his study partner, his partner in crime, actually it was almost like they were partners fighting crime, like those police officers you always saw on American TV shows. And could he think of a description of Hermione that didn’t include the word ‘partner’?

Before Harry knew it, the two of them were in London and Hermione was searching for a place to park her moped. Finally they found a spot that wasn’t ridiculously far from Piccadilly Square. It was nearing midday. “I thought our first stop might be the Texas Embassy,” Hermione suggested.

“Couldn’t we get something to eat first?” Harry complained at the behest of his grumbling stomach. Dudley might have gone off of his grapefruit diet, but breakfast at the Dursleys was still a thoroughly unsatisfying experience. “I’m famished.”

“Splendid Ron impression, Harry,” Hermione said as she rolled her eyes. “The Texas Embassy is a restaurant.” She let out a dramatic sigh and grabbed his hand, pulling him along as if she had to. “Honestly…”

After sampling the best TexMex cuisine London had to offer, Harry Potter decided that he and Hermione didn’t need to do that again for the rest of the summer. ‘Or ever,’ he thought as he remembered his singed mouth. After lunch, Hermione had suggested that they watch a production of the Reduced Shakespeare Company, so that they could take in a little bit of London culture. Much to their surprise, however, the show turned out to be a very funny send up of the famed English playwright’s works. Harry looked over at Hermione to make sure she was having a good time. To his great relief, she seemed to be laughing and enjoying herself along with everyone else.

Curiosity weighed on Harry’s mind as they exited the theatre. “You seemed to get a lot more of those bits than I did, Hermione. Are you a Shakespeare fan?”

She nodded enthusiastically. “I read all of his plays when I was a little girl. Although my favourite’s ‘The Tempest,’” Hermione remarked with a somewhat dreamy, Luna Lovegood-esque look on her face.

“I don’t think I’ve heard of that one,” Harry admitted with some reluctance, hoping that she wouldn’t launch into a complete retelling of the story.

“I think you’d like it,” Hermione replied, a strange smile coming over her face. “It’s about a wizard who lives on an island with his daughter, who’s kind of like a squib because she doesn’t have any magical powers. The only company she’s ever known is a sprite and a kind of fish monster. So naturally she’s fascinated when a bunch of muggles show up on the island.”

“Shakespeare wrote about wizards, squibs and muggles?” Harry asked in disbelief.

“Not using those words,” Hermione scolded him lightly. She looked away from Harry again and let out a long sigh. “It’s so romantic when Miranda sees Ferdinand for the first time, the first real man she’s seen her whole life. And then they fall in love, of course…it must have been so lonely for her.”

For some reason, this entire conversation was making Harry uncomfortable. He also began to notice that they were walking along the streets of London although they didn’t seem to be headed anywhere in particular. “Uh…Hermione?” He hadn’t yet captured her attention. “Hermione!” She finally met Harry’s eyes. “Where to next?”

“Oh right,” Hermione said with a slight blush. “Well…I guess I should consult the guide again. There was a charming little museum around here somewhere…”

The sound of the word ‘museum’ sent Harry’s eyes darting around for an acceptable substitute activity. He finally settled on something that he wasn’t sure Hermione would go for, but which seemed unusually alluring to him. A crowd of people about their age was queued up in front of a nightclub. Harry began slowly guiding Hermione towards it while she flipped idly through her guide to muggle London. “Why don’t we try this place?” Harry suggested offhandedly as they began to approach the line to enter.

Hermione’s head snapped up as if someone had just suggested she’d cheated on a test. “‘Serpent’s Tooth’,” she read aloud. A frown crossed her face, as her fingers changed position within the large tome in her hands. “Let me see if it’s listed in here.”

Harry let out an overly dramatic sigh. “Can’t you… er, we just be spontaneous for once?” He raised his eyebrows at her expectantly.

“Oh, alright,” Hermione replied with a small permissive smile. “I suppose it could be fun.” As they got into the queue, she added as if in her own defense, “Besides, the name is a clever ‘King Lear’ reference.”

Deciding not to touch that remark, Harry waited patiently with Hermione, who was still flipping through the guide, until a few of their fellow teenagers (some of whom were dressed much more, er, festively than they were) filtered into the entrance in front of them. After a few minutes, they got to the front of the line. A tall, lanky man in his early twenties with silver hair looked them over with disdain. He put his right palm against Harry’s chest as he attempted to enter. “No way.”

“What?!” Harry exclaimed. “Why not?”

The man let out a contemptuous snort. “Not only are you probably underage, but the two of you look like rejects from a library. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone stand in queue with a book before,” he said, indicating Hermione.

Harry felt the crowd behind him growing restless. “Look, this is our first outing on our own in London,” Harry explained in what he hoped was an impressive manner. “We’re just looking for a good time.” Hermione even put her book away as if to prove it.

The silver-maned man looked as though he was going to say something else nasty until another man stepped in front of him. At first, Harry thought it was Professor Snape, but upon closer examination the man was too young (probably in his mid-twenties), he sported a goatee that Snape would never dream of growing, not to mention that he was wearing a smile. But his dark clothing, large nose and long, greasy black hair gave him a very Snape-like appearance. “Oh, let them in, Marty. They look as though they need to let their hair down.”

A sour expression crossed ‘Marty’s face. “If you say so, Mr. Moseby,” he replied mechanically. Harry and Hermione entered without further incident. Unless you counted the fact that the place was so packed once they were in there that they could hardly move. The two of them did their best to make it upstairs, off of the main floor, but found themselves constantly shoved back in the direction of the dance floor, where a massive, pulsating group of their peers seemed to be enjoying themselves quite a lot.

“I guess we should dance then,” Harry yelled at Hermione. Hermione gave him a suspicious look, as if somehow he had planned this all along in order to humiliate her publicly. She eventually agreed and the two of them began doing their best to mimic the other dancers on the floor.

Harry wasn’t very good. Much to his surprise, however, Hermione wasn’t bad. She didn’t have much time to show off, however, as Harry trampled on a tall brunette with purple streaks in her hair, who just happened to be dancing with Mr. Moseby, the man who had allowed the two of them into the club in the first place. As he backed away awkwardly, Hermione steered him to what finally looked like a clear path away from the floor.

The two of them quickly made their way upstairs. Taking a seat, Hermione picked up a small card that lay in the middle of their table and was reading it over when Harry decided to make conversation. “Where did you learn to dance like that, Hermione?” Hermione couldn’t hear him the first time over the music, so he repeated himself in a louder tone of voice.

“France,” Hermione answered simply and loudly. Her eyes turned back to the floor filled with dancing teens below them. “Not exactly the Yule Ball, is it?”

“What?!” Harry asked, holding his hand to his ear. Hermione folded her arms and looked frustrated. Grabbing the card she had been looking at earlier and a quill she had been hiding somewhere on her person, she wrote something on it and passed it to Harry. “Let’s get out of here and go somewhere we can talk,” it read. Harry turned the card over and read the front. “Why did King Arthur turn down a date with Westminster Abbey?” There was no answer to the strange-seeming question, but Harry decided to take Hermione’s advice and get out of there. Maybe this had been a bad idea, after all.

As they walked back downstairs to leave the club, the man who looked like Snape stood in front of them, blocking their path. Harry gulped, but tried to look brave. However, Mr. Moseby didn’t seem to be angry. He offered both of them another warm smile. “Come back anytime,” he offered kindly, and then moved out of their way, leaving them both looking perplexed as they made their way back onto the streets of London.

***
“Are you certain this is a shortcut?” Harry Potter asked Hermione Granger with exasperation evident in his voice. “I think we’ve passed this tree before.”

Hermione was unperturbed. “If I’m reading this map correctly,” and her tone left no doubt that she was, “the street where we parked should be right beyond this…” She pointed first, looked at where she was pointing second and then pretended as though what she was actually pointing at was what she meant to. “lake… over here.”

Harry let a slight grin escape his face. “Right.” As he took in their surroundings, Harry couldn’t help but be struck by how picturesque the night was. A half-moon hung above a cloudless sky and reflected beautifully off of the shimmering surface of the lake. A small grove of trees cast a canopy around the shoreline and a thin, curvy paved road ran parallel to it. Their feet seemingly moving of their own accord, Harry and Hermione ambled slowly along the path so that they faced the middle of the lake.

They stood there in silence for a few minutes, taking everything in. It was a nice moment, tranquil and happy, something that Harry Potter, boy wizard prodigy destined to end the reign of terror of Lord Voldemort, wasn’t used to. Sure there were fun times, when he was at the Burrow or playing Quidditch, but those were hardly relaxing. And the quiet moments, when he had some down time, were usually dull. So this was something Harry definitely wasn’t used to. A nice moment.

But, of course, he had to go and spoil it. “I miss him,” Harry confessed in a whisper.

The words hung in the air for a few seconds, as a large weight seemingly descended on them both. The problems of the wizarding world promptly returned to their minds. “I know you do,” Hermione replied and there was no question as to who they were talking about: Sirius Black. It was nice having a friend who could practically read your mind. Harry soon found Hermione’s reassuring hand on his shoulder.

“He was like a brother to my father. He was my only connection to my parents, to the lives that they led. And he suffered more because of their deaths than I did. I…I loved him.” Harry hadn’t expected to be pouring his heart out like this, particularly not to Hermione. But then again, now that Sirius was gone, was there anyone besides Hermione who he would feel comfortable talking about this with? Upon consideration, Harry thought not.

“You know it wasn’t…” Hermione started, but she stopped herself before he could. He didn’t need to hear “your fault”, he just needed the sentiment behind it expressed aloud.

Harry nodded slowly. “I know.” Silence fell again. The intimate friendship between them was palpable as he gave her an appreciative half-smile and Hermione’s hand had not left his arm. It was another nice moment and Harry wasn’t about to spoil it

Turns out he didn’t have to. Hermione did it for him. “I’m thinking of asking Ron out,” she said suddenly.

As far as Harry’s brain was concerned, she might have just announced that she was going to try to fly to Mars on a broomstick. “Asking Ron out? You mean, out on a date?”

“Of course, Harry,” Hermione retorted, removing her hand from his arm so she could give it a light and playful punch. “There’s been…something…between us for a while now. Of course, he’s been too thick to really see it, but I thought you would have picked up on it by now. You’re usually much more sensitive about these things.”

‘You know all about the Martian SuperBroom, don’t you Harry?’ seemed to be reverberating around his mind. When did this happen? I mean, sure there were all of those arguments and there was protectiveness of Hermione on the part of Ron (although Ron was perhaps the single most partisan and possessive individual Harry had ever met). He soon became aware of a strange feeling in the pit of his stomach. It wasn’t jealousy, as Harry wished both of his best friends all of the happiness in the world. Instead, it felt somewhat similar to how he felt about Sirius’ death: that something special had been lost, possibly before he had even really experienced it.

Harry just now became conscious of the fact that he had been standing there in front of Hermione, mouth agape, saying nothing for about twenty seconds. He closed his mouth and tried to think of some way to respond. There wasn’t anything he wanted to say, but he had to say something. “That’s great, Hermy,” he heard some voice that sounded roughly like his own say. “I hope you and Don are really together happy.”

“Are you feeling alright, Harry?” Hermione asked with a frown as she placed her hand to his forehead. “You look flushed.”

“I’m fine,” he replied, turning away from Hermione quickly, although he felt his face go hotter.

“No you’re not,” Hermione said in an authoritative tone of voice she usually saved for the classroom, as she stepped in front of Harry, practically shoving her face in front of his. “That’s why I wanted to bring this up now, before I actually asked him. I thought you might feel this way.”

Harry felt a great knot in his stomach, as if his insides were being transported by portkey while leaving his skin and bones behind. Hermione knew how he felt? How? And if she did, could she maybe explain it to him? “Er, what way?” Harry asked lamely.

“Excluded. Like a third wheel. Isolated. Alone.” Hermione’s words seemed to cut at his heart like a dagger. She was right. Why was she right? Happiness for Ron and Hermione was something that would naturally make Harry happy too, wasn’t it? “It’s been something that you’ve struggled with for most of your life, hasn’t it? Ron told me about what you saw in the Mirror of Erised. That a family was what you wanted most.” Why was Hermione saying this? And why did it seem like the most compelling thing in the world right now to Harry? “Other than the Dursleys, who I know are horrid to you and always have been, the only family you’ve had is Sirius…and us.”

“Us?” Harry repeated mindlessly. The two of them had been moving closer together without either of them really noticing. Their heads hadn’t been that far apart to begin with.

“Us,” Hermione said again in a muted voice. What were they doing? “And…and you’ve lost Sirius already…you don’t want to lose…” She couldn’t make herself say the rest. Their lips were dangerously close and they weren’t getting any further apart. Kissage seemed imminent.

Hermione’s brain, however, had other plans. “The Lady of the Lake,” she interrupted suddenly.

Harry looked at her as though she had suddenly suggested that they both apparate to Madagascar for the weekend. Actually, that might have been more in keeping with the moment. “What?” Harry asked, completely perplexed.

“Westminster Abbey is where English kings are crowned, but that was after King Arthur’s time. It was the Lady of the Lake’s presentation of Excalibur to Arthur that made him king,” Hermione announced as if it had something to do with anything that had been going on in the last few minutes. “So King Arthur turned down a date with Westminster Abbey because he’d been crowned by the Lady of the Lake.”

Something was buzzing inside Harry’s mind, but he couldn’t quite pin it down. As he got ready to ask Hermione what in the world she was going on about this time, he caught a glimpse of something odd out of the corner of his eye. It was a girl, about their age, thrashing about in the lake below them. “I don’t believe it,” Harry exclaimed.

“I know,” Hermione replied with a look of disgust on her face. “Jokes about domestic violence towards men aren’t any funnier than the ones about women.” Harry didn’t bother to reply to that, but instead took off towards where the girl was to get a closer look. It was as he feared. She was drowning.

“Harry!” Hermione called as Harry Potter rushed towards the lake at a full run. “What do you think you’re doing?!”

Harry’s eyes darted quickly to Hermione, but then found themselves looking again at the girl as she bobbed precariously in the water. “Help…” she cried out in a gurgle. “Me…snake…” Upon getting those words out of her mouth, she was pulled back underwater.

“I have to save her!” Harry declared as he hastily removed his socks and shoes and prepared to go into the water.

“Harry, you’re not thinking!” Hermione declared as if it was the eighth deadly sin. “You can’t use magic, remember?! How are you going to fight whatever’s down there?”

“If it’s a snake, I can talk to it,” Harry said as he launched himself into the water. “I’m a parselmouth, rememb…gurk!” Harry was jerked suddenly underwater by something strong and slimy. He thought he heard Hermione yell out his name again, but it seemed faint and distant, as if a thousand miles away. It was dark down here, much too dark to see and all of the brilliantly heroic things he imagined he might do to the beast flew quickly out of his mind. Harry’s hand tugged at the serpentine body encircling him, but the effort only seemed to make it constrict tighter. He attempted to speak parseltongue, but only useless bubbles of air came out of his mouth. Trying another tactic, Harry kicked violently at where he imagined the snake’s head to be, as he felt the last of the air in his lungs give out and he suddenly became very lightheaded.

However, instead of hitting the snake, Harry’s feet seemed to touch the bottom of the lake. He felt a jolt all through his body, as if he were suddenly coming alive. Bright light registered in his eyes as they widened at the sight before him: dozens of dead bodies, drifting along the bottom, appearing to look at him with haunted and accusing eyes. Feeling mysteriously strengthened, Harry caught sight of the girl and the large sea serpent’s head, then with one bound grabbed them both and surfaced.

As Harry felt sweet air flow in and out of his lungs for the first time in over a minute, he spoke frantically in parseltongue to the snake, who took a lot of persuading before it decided not to try to kill the young blonde he had jumped in to save (not to mention Harry himself). With an angry hiss, the serpent disappeared below the surface, leaving Harry and the young woman alone, floating in the water. “Are you alright?” Harry asked. When the girl, who still seemed to be in shock, nodded in the affirmative, Harry guided her to the shore and the two soggy teenagers walked around shakily, as if getting their land legs back.

Harry suddenly realized in somewhat of a panic that Hermione was nowhere around. His eyes darted frantically around the mysterious lake, searching for any sign of her. ‘What a stupid prat I am if I jumped in the water to save some stranger and let something horrible happen to Hermione.’ Harry was just imagining what horrific things some Death Eater might be doing to her when he caught sight of her large brown, bushy hair moving through the trees in front of them. He should have known that nothing tragic had befallen her, as she was a very capable witch. A smile crossed Harry’s face as he made out her concerned visage, but a look of confusion soon replaced it as he noticed she wasn’t alone.

The first person he saw with her was a large, older man who put Harry in mind of Hagrid, striding along right beside her. Unlike Hagrid, however, his hair was gray, curly and neatly quaffed, his face was clean-shaven and his chiseled features made him look like nothing so much as a contented gargoyle. He could hardly miss the next new face that was traveling in the pack with Hermione, as its male owner rushed quickly towards the two of them. For a moment Harry thought he would be in for a fight, but as he drew closer it became clear that it was the girl he was interested in. “Violet!” he cried out and pulled her into a tight hug. “Thank goodness you’re safe! When that girl told me you were in danger, I…I…”

As ‘Violet’ assured the young man that she was alright, Harry cast an appreciative glance at Hermione. She smiled back at him as she came near. “I went for help,” she explained, as if Harry hadn’t already figured this out. As she came closer, Hermione whispered to him so that the others couldn’t hear, “That was a very brave thing you did, Harry. Stupid and dangerous too, of course, but brave.”

Harry moved to where Violet and the young man who he presumed to be her boyfriend were standing. Violet looked up into Harry’s eyes. “You saved my life,” she declared breathily. Harry only grinned somewhat shyly in response. He was a little surprised, however, when fear and confusion registered in her eyes. “You… you talked to that snake, didn’t you?” she asked, her American accent apparent for the first time.

“Of course,” Harry started to answer without thinking. “I’m a…”

“Snake charmer,” Hermione finished for him quickly while casting a pointed glance back at Harry. “We’ve spent several summers in India together and he has a very unusual affinity for snakes. The maharaja who taught him said he was the most exceptionally talented snake charmer he’d seen in generations.”

“Well then, thank goodness for summers in India,” the young man said with a broad smile. He looked Harry up and down and suddenly the young wizard realized how ridiculous he must look in his soaking wet clothes and bare feet. “Terry Nichten-Teach,” the man introduced himself. “And you are…?”

“Harry Potter,” the broad-shouldered man Harry had seen earlier answered for him. As his eyes turned to look at the strange, and strangely familiar-looking, man, he saw both Mr. Moseby and the brunette with purple streaks in her hair with whom he had been dancing out of the corner of his eye. They appeared to be holding back raucous fits of laughter, although it wasn’t clear what they thought was so funny.

“Er…yeah, that’s me,” Harry said in a low voice.

“Well, Harry Potter, it seems I am in your debt,” Terry said as he shook Harry’s hand fervently. Terry Nichten-Teach would have made a handsome young man, Harry thought, if only his nose weren’t so long and his ears weren’t so large. He looked a bit like Percy Weasley, come to think of it, only with curly brown hair instead of fiery red. “You’ve saved my girlfriend’s life. I don’t know how I can repay you…”

“Best not to try,” Harry replied modestly. Mr. Moseby and his female companion were openly laughing now, although Harry still couldn’t see the cause of it.

“Ah, but where are my manners,” Terry said as he cast a reproachful look at Mr. Moseby. Harry had just noticed with mild surprise that Terry, too, had some sort of American accent. “Harry Potter, these are my employees,” he added particular emphasis to that word, “Lloyd Moseby and Elmira Pinnix. You’ll have to excuse them. They have a very morbid sense of humor.” Lloyd and Elmira managed to hold a straight face for a few moments after his reproach, then promptly went back to snickering. “And I take it you two know each other,” Terry said of Harry and the large man standing next to him.

“Actually no,” Harry answered sheepishly as he reshaped his wet bangs in hopes of covering his scar. “We haven’t met. It’s, er, not a surprise that he recognizes me, though. In some circles, I am quite well known.”

The man looked at Harry as though he were a dung beetle. “Atlas Filch,” he announced, as if that explained everything.

Harry looked slightly dumbfounded. “Atlas Filch?! Are you related to Argus…”

At that point, after being unusually silent these last few moments, Hermione intervened. “So, Mr. Nichten-Teach, by the fact that you employ Mr. Moseby and Ms. Pinnix, can we assume that you are the proprietor of the Serpent’s Tooth?”

“Indeed,” Terry answered as the slight furrow that had found its way onto his brow began to disappear. “I don’t believe we’ve been introduced, Miss…?”

“Hermione Granger,” Hermione answered with a smile. “I’m Harry’s girlfriend.”

Harry shot her a confused glance, but after Hermione gave him a death gaze in reply, he chimed in quickly, seemingly just now remembering their cover story. “Right. She’s my girlfriend. Sorry about that.”

“You’re welcome to use my establishment any time you’d like,” Terry Nichten-Teach told Harry and Hermione with a benevolent look on his face. “Including now. I’m sure you’d like a few refreshments and the opportunity to change clothes. You can even borrow some of mine, if you’d like.”

“That would be nice,” Hermione answered him as if it were only natural for him to make the offer. “But Harry already has a change of clothes.” She then held up the bag with Dudley’s hand-me-down suit in it. Harry could only manage a groan in response.

***
The weekend flew by faster than Harry Potter would have thought possible, considering that he was still spending his mornings and nights with the Dursleys at Privet Drive. Hermione had been picking him up every morning, he had been practicing quidditch (fastest time to getting the snitch thus far: one hour, forty minutes and Harry was bound and determined to break that time) and then they had been spending more time together in London, mostly with their newfound friends and decidedly overeager hosts, Terry Nichten-Teach and Violet Mogle. Terry had just recently come into possession of the Serpent’s Tooth upon his father’s death and was still changing it around so that it was more suitable to his tastes, including catering to a younger crowd. (Apparently that had been why Lloyd Moseby had been so keen on letting Hermione and himself in the day they first saw the place.)

Harry very much enjoyed the company of his new friends, as he had never spent much time with muggles who weren’t completely loathsome before. They seemed to live carefree lives and obsess over trivial matters, and although they didn’t know what grave danger they were in from the likes of Lord Voldemort, their naiveté somehow set Harry’s mind at ease. He felt comfortable in their presence in a way that he didn’t in the wizarding world. Of course, it helped that the single most calming force in his life at Hogwarts, Hermione, was there, too.

If Harry was being honest with himself, there was one other reason that he enjoyed spending so much time with Terry and Violet. He was suddenly uncomfortable spending time alone with Hermione. They had nearly kissed at the lake, and Harry got the feeling it kind of freaked Hermione out. She had been the one to stop it from actually happening, after all and whenever Harry had tried to talk to her about it afterwards, she had just changed the subject. ‘Way to go, Potter,’ Harry thought bitterly. ‘In one day, you manage to make things awkward with the only friend you can spend time with this summer.’

To make their relationship possibly more strained than it already was, the Grangers had insisted on having dinner with Harry tonight, and possibly every Monday night to come if they hit it off. Harry was already imagining doomsday scenarios where he and Hermione barely spoke to each other throughout the evening and her parents were left to wonder if the two of them were really even friends. The pretend dates would stop, Harry would be stuck at the Dursleys for the remainder of the summer and boredom and frustration would ensue, just like last year.

Harry Potter resolved then and there to make things right with Hermione. Not only was it in his own self-interest, but he owed it to the strong friendship the two of them had built over the years to get things out in the open. ‘If Hermione wants to be with Ron, I’m not going to stand in her way,’ he resolved. His actions that night were still a mystery to him, but he soon blamed it on his sense of isolation and fear after Sirius’ death. ‘I shouldn’t worry about losing Ron and Hermione as friends if they start dating,’ Harry falsely assured himself. ‘We’ve been inseparable for years. This won’t change anything.’

Even though Hermione wasn’t picking him up this morning, as the Grangers had decided that Mondays would be their day to spend with their daughter, Harry had plenty enough to busy himself with. Moody’s threat to Vernon Dursley notwithstanding, he had a lot of chores to do around the house, normally twice as many as Dudley (although his cousin was forced to do them when he was out with Hermione, a thought which filled Harry with glee). The time until Hermione would pick him up for dinner with the Grangers seemed to drag very slowly as Harry washed the dishes, cleaned out the pantry and did some gardening in the front yard. ‘House elf work,’ Harry thought with resentment, although Hermione would surely have chastised him for thinking so.

Finally, after hours of toil and sweat, his Aunt Petunia gave him permission to take an hour to get ready for the big date. As Harry showered and changed into some nice clothes that actually fit him this time, thanks to Violet and Terry’s idea to go clothes shopping on Saturday, he went over some things he might say to Hermione once she was here. As he rehearsed some practice conversations, nothing sounded quite right. Plus, Dudley overheard him and he had to quickly make up a lie and say he was preparing for his role in a Hogwarts production of The Winter’s Tale. (Harry had found a collection of Shakespeare’s works and had discovered a play that featured a character named Hermione, a fact which he found rather amusing.) Dudley teased him about it anyway.

As time seemed to fly forward at breakneck speed, Harry soon found himself answering the door and being ushered outside by the hand by Hermione. After a few seconds, Hermione released his hand as if she had just been instructed by a professor to drop it. “Ready to go?” she asked somewhat shyly.

“Not quite,” Harry answered with quiet assurance. “We need to talk.”

Hermione nodded briskly but didn’t meet his eyes. “Of course,” she whispered. “I knew this was coming.”

Harry raised his eyebrows in mild surprise. Maybe he wouldn’t have to go through any of his painfully rehearsed dialogue after all. But just how much did this girl know about what he was thinking? Suddenly resuming Occlumency lessons with Snape sounded like a pretty good idea. “You did?”

“I’m not stupid, you know,” Hermione replied indignantly. Harry did his best not to smile. If there was anything in this world that he knew, it was that Hermione wasn’t stupid. “I saw the way you looked at her all this weekend. And the way she looks at you, like you’re her knight in shining armour… You want to be with Violet, don’t you?”

Harry felt as though he had been kicked in the chest by a centaur. Why in the world would Hermione ever think that he would be interested in Violet? He had just met her! The idea struck him as so ludicrous that he could no longer keep an amused smile from his face. “Hermione…” he started.

But she wouldn’t let him finish. “It’s OK, Harry. I understand.” Hermione did her best to shoot him a sympathetic look, but only managed a slightly sad one. “She is very pretty and boys do like that, you know, at least I think they do and you did save her life so she’s bound to be appreciative…”

“Stop,” Harry insisted, as he fought off nervous laughter. “Please. Before you hurt yourself, stop.” Harry put his right index finger on her lips without really realizing it. “I don’t want to date Violet. I wanted to talk about us…on Friday night…down by the lake…”

Hermione met Harry’s nervous blathering with a relieved expression on her face as Harry’s finger slipped gently off of her mouth. “Oh, that. It was my fault. You were vulnerable and my teenage hormones were on parade. If it makes you feel strange, though…”

“It doesn’t,” Harry said, although he wasn’t entirely sure if this were true or not. What he was sure of was that everything was now pretty close to being right with Hermione and he wasn’t about to ruin that. His own amusement was an unstoppable force spreading across his face. “Did you really think that I fancied Violet? For goodness sakes, Hermione, she already has a boyfriend.”

As Hermione climbed onto the moped, an infectious grin curled up around her mouth. “Well, I didn’t think Terry would be much competition for you. He looks a great deal like Percy Weasley, don’t you think? And he knows just a little too much about men’s fashions.” Before Harry could comment on what Hermione was implying both about Terry Nichten-Teach and Percy Weasley, the moped roared rapidly towards the Granger house.

As they approached the Casa del Granger, as Hermione had called it, Harry Potter felt a strange sense of elation. Having spent the day with a knotted ball in his stomach, agonizing over the awkwardness that existed between Hermione and himself, his heart felt suddenly light now that he knew they were on good terms again. As a grinning Hermione opened the door, Harry suddenly remembered that he was going to be spending serious amounts of time with the Grangers, Hermione’s parents for crying out loud!, and would likely be expected to make a good impression on them.

A sense of fear drifted across Harry’s mind like a dementor approaching on a summer’s day. What should he say? Should he tell a joke? No, he was no good at that. Where were Fred and George when you needed them? Regale them with stories of his heroic exploits? ‘Yes, I should remind them of all the times I’ve led their daughter into mortal peril,’ Harry thought sarcastically. As he entered the house and shook the hands of both Mr. and Mrs. Granger (neither of whose names he had bothered to get from Hermione ahead of time, what was he thinking?!!), all he offered them was a polite smile and an otherwise closed mouth. At least that wouldn’t get him into trouble.

But Harry quickly realized that something else was about to. “Mum, Dad,” Hermione announced, sounding to Harry’s ears as though she were about to talk about her imminent engagement or pregnancy. “I’d like you to meet Harry Potter.” Oh, if only she’d stopped there. “The world’s greatest wizard.”

If Harry could have apparated away right then and there, he would have, despite the complications it would create for the ruse he and Hermione were perpetrating. He was certain the shock that registered on his face was as great as when Dumbledore had read his name out of the Goblet of Fire. He rummaged through his brain for something, anything to say that would make the situation better. “That…that’s not exactly…” he stammered, stopping himself only when he realized that he would, in essence, be calling their daughter a liar. After another moment of awkward silence, Harry decided to just make the best of it. “Right. That’s me. You can just call me Harry, though.” Hermione managed some weak laughter as thin smiles appeared on the faces of the two dentists and the four of them hastily sat down to dinner.

The meal was excellent, but the dinner was, well, maybe not quite disastrous, but very close. For some reason, Hermione insisted on explaining why she had called Harry the world’ s greatest wizard, sometimes referring to it as a mistake and other times explaining her reasoning as if it had been the most logical statement in the world. “Well, certainly he can’t apparate or do wandless magic like some older wizards, but he’s not even sixteen yet! He could conjure a patronus at thirteen, which is really impressive and which I’m just now learning by the way, and he’s a parselmouth. Not that that’s such a great power. I mean it’s usually associated with dark wizards, isn’t it? Although Harry isn’t a dark wizard, of course. After all, how could he be? With him going up against Voldemort all the time…”

Harry practically willed Hermione to be quiet and she did fall silent for a moment. However, that silence soon reigned over the dinner table and Hermione’s parents were shooting him fleeting glances that seemed to indicate that they thought he was some sort of combination delinquent-prodigy, so that Harry felt compelled to say something to acquit himself. “Well, Defense Against the Dark Arts is my best subject. We haven’t got our OWLs back yet, but I’m fully expecting an O on that one. I even conjured a patronus right then and there for the examiner. It was easy, as I just imagined that toad U…” He stopped himself mid-sentence. Maybe the idea of a teacher getting fired giving Harry pleasure wasn’t the best thing to discuss with the academic-minded Grangers. “Er, toad of Neville’s being properly taken care of and given a happy home. Hermione’s told you about Neville’s toad, I’m sure. His name’s Trevor.”

No Granger looked like they’d heard anything he’d said after the word OWLs. It was evidently a topic of great interest around the Granger household and both adults seemed to descend on that subject like birds of prey. “How many OWLs are you expecting, Harry?” Mrs. Granger asked thoughtfully. When Harry didn’t respond right away, she continued, “What career goal were you shooting for, anyway?”

“Auror,” Harry squeaked helplessly.

“Won’t that be rather difficult given the trouble you have with Potions?” Mr. Granger inquired pointedly. Harry’s jaw nearly dropped in disbelief, but he managed to hold it up with only a little difficulty. Hermione had told them he was bad at Potions? Did she want them to think poorly of him? Not to mention that they knew doing well in Potions was important to becoming an Auror. Since when did muggles know so much about wizard careers?

“I’m actually not as bad as my grades may make it seem,” Harry attempted to explain. “You see, Professor Snape isn’t exactly fond of me due to…well, lots of things, actually…”

“I told them that,” Hermione insisted as if she were just now getting the opportunity to speak. “But they said blaming the teacher was just what bad students did to make excuses for themselves. I assured them that they would think differently if they’d ever met Professor Snape.” Harry then felt a wave of gratitude wash over him for not making that wisecrack about Umbridge.

Mrs. Granger looked completely unsatisfied with his answers thus far. “So what are your safeties?” she asked with one eyebrow arched.

‘Safeties?’ Harry’s brain asked itself. ‘Am I supposed to know what safeties are?’ As he hemmed and hawed for a few moments, his brain rummaged through everything he knew that had to do with safety: the safety on a gun, safety pins, the Safety Dance…

“So, no safeties then,” Mr. Granger declared with a sigh. Harry desperately wanted to apparate again. Why didn’t he just give up all hope of seeing Hermione again right now?

Hermione let out her own frustrated sigh. “Honestly,” she pronounced haughtily, “even the Ministry of Magic aren’t big enough idiots to keep Harry from being an Auror if he wants to be. He’s faced Voldemort three times now by himself and once with all of his friends and he’s lived to tell the tale.”

“Yes, but others haven’t, have they?” Mr. Granger responded coldly. Harry seemed frozen in place with tiny tingles of shock running throughout his body. “You nearly didn’t just this past year. And that Sirius fellow you were so upset about, didn’t he…?”

Before Mr. Granger could finish, Harry rose quickly, mumbled something really lame about needing to get back to the Dursleys, and fled the place as quickly as possible. He didn’t even realize there were tears in his eyes until he reached the street, as he tried to decide which direction he had come from. He felt like collapsing right then and there in front of the Grangers’ beautiful house in their upscale suburban neighborhood. Why hadn’t he been expecting this? Of course his friends’ parents would see him as a walking disaster area. The scar on his forehead alone practically screamed ‘trouble with Voldemort ahead’. He wondered idly why Arthur and Molly Weasley didn’t hate him for putting Ron in danger, time and again.

“Harry!” Hermione cried, seemingly from nowhere. Before Harry knew it, she had pulled him into a tight embrace. She began muttering ceaselessly through occasional sobs and Harry couldn’t make everything out, but the gist of it was that her father was being an insensitive prat, she was so, so sorry and please don’t be upset. Hermione was usually able to comfort Harry, but as he pulled back from her and looked at the tears streaking down her face, it was hard for him not to let his darker emotions fill him.

“He’s right, you know,” Harry said softly. “In his own way, he’s right. I do put you in danger. You, Ron, Hagrid, practically everyone at Hogwarts. Just by being me. I…” He couldn’t bring himself to say more. Now wasn’t the time to tell her about the prophecy, as neither of them was really thinking straight.

“Don’t do this to yourself, Harry,” Hermione pleaded. “The fact that we’re in danger from Voldemort isn’t your fault. I’m a Muggleborn. Ron’s parents are in the Order of the Phoenix. And Hagrid’s one of the most loyal Dumbledore supporters I’ve ever met. We’d all be in danger no matter what. And we would be in even more danger if you weren’t around. I don’t know why you can’t see that.”

Hermione was right. As of right now, he couldn’t see it. He said nothing else as Hermione quietly told him to get on the moped. She was taking him back to the Dursleys. He had rarely been so happy to be going there.

***
Harry was absolutely certain that nothing could make today worse than yesterday. Hermione’s parents disapproved of him (or if they didn’t, they were the best actors Harry had ever seen). He had no idea whether Hermione would be coming to see him today or for the rest of the summer, for that matter. If the Grangers were truly mad at him, they might even phone the Dursleys and let them in on the entire game, perhaps cinching or scuttling the business deal that temporarily linked the two families in one day. Moody’s threat notwithstanding, he would suffer severe consequences if the latter happened.

Harry slowly dragged himself out of bed after sleeping as late as he dared on a day when he might be spending it all here, under the watchful eye of Aunt Petunia. As he came down to “breakfast”, cold eggs and tomatoes, Petunia and Dudley looked at him in shock. They had likely expected him to have left with Hermione before sunrise. Taking his shrugged answer to Petunia’s question about whether or not he would be spending the day with the Granger girl as a no, his aunt quickly doled out the day’s chores disproportionately between Harry and Dudley. Harry wasn’t in much of a mood to protest and so quickly took to his tasks, thinking bitter thoughts about how this would likely be all he did between now and September 1st.

As Harry was dusting the staircase with unusual fervor, he heard his Aunt Petunia make a strange noise as she moved towards the door. As he lazily turned his green eyes to look at her, she began shrieking like a howler monkey. Harry rushed down the stairs at the same time that Dudley tramped in from the kitchen. Petunia Dursley was clutching a small piece of paper in her hands and her eyes darted furtively from its contents to Harry, seemingly accusing him of something horrible.

Dread filled Harry’s heart. Had the Grangers sent the Dursleys some kind of note detailing what had happened the night before? Dudley tried to peek at the small sheet of paper, but Petunia would have none of it, instead making a mad dash for the phone. Harry leaned in as close as he might dare to the telephone, hoping to learn exactly who it was that Aunt Petunia was calling in such a hysterical panic. Unsurprisingly, it was Uncle Vernon, who sounded extremely irritable and even louder than usual.

Harry couldn’t make out what his aunt was saying over all of the sobbing and Uncle Vernon’s booming voice as it carried across the room (although he mostly said things like “That miscreant!” and “He’ll pay for this!”), but it didn’t sound promising for him. He tried to back away slowly, perhaps avoiding punishment, if only for a little while. ‘It must have been the Grangers,’ Harry thought. ‘They’ve sent something over by post. But how could it have gotten here this quickly?’

Just as he was almost out of the room, Petunia yelled out his name and insisted that he talk to Uncle Vernon. Picking up the telephone receiver as though it were some sort of dangerous weapon, Harry reluctantly placed it to his ear. Before he could even say anything, Uncle Vernon’s ranting nearly deafened him as he recited punishments for Harry that ranged from starving him for a week to shipping Hedwig overseas to an American zoo Vernon had read about. Harry was a bit surprised by just how mad his Uncle Vernon really was; he knew his uncle would be furious if the dentist drill deal went sour, but as the head of the Dursley household was detailing how he would be given exactly one hour to move his things back to the cupboard below the stairs and that he had better be done by the time Vernon got home from work, Harry asked an unexpected question, just to see if his luck could get any worse. “What exactly is it that I did?”

Vernon Dursley clearly had not expected this question from Harry as his sputtering response proved. “I…Petunia said…you…must have done something! It has to be you! Nothing about this business has come up for years! It must be your fault!”

Harry suddenly felt both relief and confusion. Whatever this was about, it didn’t sound like the Grangers had blown the whistle on his already knowing Hermione from Hogwarts. At least Hermione could still come to see him this summer, assuming that was even still possible. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Harry said truthfully. Quickly remembering the paper that had so upset Aunt Petunia, he added, “Whatever was in that message, I didn’t write it, I swear.”

“Of course you didn’t!” Uncle Vernon bellowed back, unimpressed with Harry’s protests of innocence. “But whoever did has obviously been provoked by something you’ve done! And if all that strangeness starts again, so help me Potter…”

“It won’t!” Harry assured him, a bit alarmed at the protective growl in Vernon Dursley’s voice. This seemed to satisfy his uncle, who then proceeded to tell him in no uncertain terms that his punishments would be set once he got home and finally allowed him to lower the telephone receiver back onto its cradle. Still confused and a little shaken, Harry tried to make his way close enough to his Aunt Petunia to get a look at the note. She was still clutching it tightly in her hands, however, so much so that the paper was getting crumpled. Not knowing what else to do, Harry returned to his chores, his mind wandering naturally to the contents of the message and what he might have to do with it.

Harry tried to put what pieces of the puzzle he had together in his mind. He had never seen his Aunt Petunia this upset; she was usually the one who kept calm while Vernon blustered and ranted. Also, while his uncle hadn’t told him much about the note, he had said that nothing had come of it for years and that he didn’t want strangeness to be starting ‘again’, so it must be something having to do with magic and something the Dursleys were familiar with from the past. Harry’s brow furrowed in thought. Things just weren’t adding up. He needed to see that paper.

After an hour in which he dusted everything from Dudley’s room to Dudley’s closet to Dudley’s hidden trunk of contraband (nobody else seemed to want to acknowledge that it existed, so the task was always left up to Harry), he stealthily snuck back downstairs. He no longer heard his Aunt Petunia’s muted sobs or Dudley’s constant protests about his assigned housework, so he felt it was safe to proceed to the dining room. Checking twice to make sure the coast was clear, Harry picked up the crumpled bit of paper and began to read.

The Potter and the Mudblood
Were an extraordinary pair
For meddling and foolishness
They had an unusual flair
Their keeper of the garden
Kept all the flow’rs in bloom
Auburn Summer then arrived
And brought the shroud of doom

Harry’s face went red, his teeth gnashed together in anger and his fists crumpled the paper even more, to the point where the words were now barely legible. Someone had clearly seen him and Hermione together, figured out who they were and had written this filth. The use of the word ‘mudblood’ had always been extremely offensive to Harry, but for some reason now the term really got under his skin. Discriminating against Hermione based on her parentage was just downright idiotic. (The fact that Harry himself wasn’t happy with her parents right now temporarily slipped his mind.)

Harry let a deep frown cross his face as he read the message again. While there was nothing specifically threatening in the verse, it did seem ominous somehow. But how did the Dursleys know what it meant?

The buzzing of the doorbell barely registered in Harry’s brain until the realization hit him that this could be the person who’d left the note in the first place. Didn’t the criminal always return to the scene of the crime? Maybe not, but Harry was determined to answer the door before his cousin Dudley or Aunt Petunia could. Yanking the front door open with his temper still hot, he was determined to give the person on the other side of it a piece of his mind. That was until he saw who it was and realized she had no need for any part of his brain. “Hermione?”

There were several good reasons that Harry Potter didn’t want to let Hermione Granger out of his arms at this very moment, or at least so Harry assured himself. There was the problem with the Grangers that made Harry doubt whether he would even see Hermione for the rest of the summer (or anytime ever again other than at Hogwarts). There was the vaguely threatening poem he had just discovered had been delivered to the Dursleys, which seemed to name Hermione and him as part of something called ‘Auburn Summer’. Plus, Hermione was clutching him really tightly, so it might actually put him in physical danger if he were to try and remove her. And then there was the not unimportant fact that it felt really, really good.

Unfortunately, Aunt Petunia and Dudley Dursley had at this point come to investigate the simple mystery of who had rung the door bell, only to find Harry (who was not popular with either of them at the moment) hugging his faux girlfriend (who they had to placate in order to make sure an important business deal didn’t fall through) for dear life. Dudley openly mocked the duo and Petunia only hesitantly made him stop. Eventually the two of them tired of having Harry’s obnoxious relatives for an audience and they quickly made their way upstairs to his room.

They both sat down on Harry’s bed and spent about a minute assuring each other that they were alright before they got down to business. “I’m sorry it took so long for me to get over here,” Hermione explained, her face slightly pink. “Dad was still pretty furious about last night and even getting out of the house took Mum covering for me. And this note,” she handed Harry a piece of paper with the same rhyme that had found its way to the Dursleys’ doorstep, “didn’t help matters much. When Dad saw this, he got steamed all over again. He’s ordered me to stay away from you.”

Harry found he could no longer look at her, so he conveniently cast his eyes upon the sheet of paper she had handed him. “I got one of these notes, too. I’ve never seen the Dursleys act as afraid as they did when Aunt Petunia read this.” Harry paused, gulped and made his eyes find something interesting to gaze at on the floor. “Listen, Hermione, I…I understand if you don’t want to see me any more this summer. Your parents…”

“…aren’t important right now. You are.” Hermione took his hand in hers and Harry made his eyes look at their joined hands, although he still couldn’t look her in the eye. “I’m…we’re still all so sorry about what happened last summer. I just can’t leave you alone again. Especially now, when this stupid poem was sent to both of us.” She made an emphatic gesture at her own pristine piece of paper with the ‘Potter and the Mudblood’ verse written on it.

“Yeah, I can’t believe someone wrote this about us,” Harry replied, some of the anger that he had felt only moments ago upon first reading it coming back to his face.

“Are you certain that…whoever it was… wrote it about us?” Hermione asked, as she raised one eyebrow poignantly.

“Of course,” Harry answered her, his brow furrowing in slight confusion. “Who else could it be about?”

“I’m not sure of anything right now, mind you,” Hermione told him in a somewhat apologetic tone. “But it could be talking about your parents.”

The idea struck Harry like a thunderbolt. ‘My parents were James Potter and Lily Evans, a Muggleborn.’ Hermione must think he had the collective IQ of Crabbe and Goyle not to think of this earlier. The Dursleys’ reaction certainly seemed to make a lot more sense in light of this revelation and the anger that Harry felt turned into a deep burning sensation in his stomach. “Of course,” Harry said again, this time in a completely different, wondrous tone of voice. His eyes scanned the poem again quickly, looking for further clues. “‘The keeper of the garden’,” Harry read aloud, wheels finally turning in his head. “My grandfather Evans was a gardener. It’s why he named his daughters after flowers. Or so my Aunt Petunia always said. I never knew him.”

“Do the Dursleys have anything of your grandfather’s?” Hermione asked pointedly. When Harry gave her a mildly questioning look, she added, “Or of your mother’s? We could look through them and see if we find anything about an ‘Auburn Summer’.”

“Aunt Petunia wouldn’t have anything that belonged to her sister Lily,” Harry replied as he let a little note of sadness slip into his voice. “There was too much bitterness between them. But I think she does have some of my grandfather’s belongings out in the garage.” He rose somewhat reluctantly from his bed and pulled Hermione up. “Come on.”

Explaining halfheartedly to his Aunt Petunia that he wanted to show Hermione something in the garage, he ignored her completely perplexed and disdainful look and led the way to the dusty side garage. It was mostly packed with things Dudley had gotten tired of playing with over the years, but which Harry either didn’t want or couldn’t use. Rummaging through boxes of rubbish which included exhaustive tax records kept by Uncle Vernon and a ridiculous number of baby pictures (all of Dudley, of course), he finally came to a box labeled ‘Mum and Dad’ in barely legible scrawl. “This is it,” Harry announced and the two of them unceremoniously dug through the pile of unorganized paperwork and photos, hoping to find some clue as to what the poem they had both received meant.

Much to their dismay, Harry and Hermione learned little useful information as they dove through the pile. Harry did discover, however, that his grandfather apparently had managed to clip every article the London Times had ever written on growing turnips and then arrange them in chronological order. After nearly an hour of searching, Hermione finally found something that mentioned the words ‘Auburn Summer’. Disconcertingly, it was in a front page news story from the late 1970s…about the Evans’ murder.

“Harry!” Hermione exclaimed in shock upon finding it. “You never told me your grandparents were murdered.”

Moving so quickly to look over Hermione’s shoulder that he nearly smashed their two heads together, Harry looked just as astonished as she did. “That’s because I didn’t know! Aunt Petunia never told me. Why would she…” He stopped speaking and started reading, his amazement growing at nearly every moment.

Hermione read the important tidbits aloud. “…authorities believe the murder may be in connection to a series of unusual events involving their daughter Lily and her boyfriend, James Potter…” “…only clues at the murder scene were a solitary thumbprint which has yet to be identified and a key which is of similar unknown origin…” “the words ‘Auburn Summer’ were written on the walls in blood. According to their daughter Petunia, the phrase meant nothing to relatives of Reginald and Agatha Evans…” After a few moments of stunned silence, Hermione and Harry shared a worried glance.

“Harry,” Hermione mouthed almost breathlessly. “If this ‘Auburn Summer’ is here again, and everything happens the same way…”

“Your parents could be in terrible danger,” Harry finished, a slight chill running up his spine. “Which means we have to stop it from happening again. And to do that, we have to find out exactly what happened twenty years ago.”

***
Hermione had insisted on writing Dumbledore straight away, detailing everything that they had discovered. Harry felt very much like protesting. ‘We hardly need Dumbledore’s permission to investigate my grandparents’ murder,’ he thought to himself. However, Hermione pointed out that he could know something about the case or at the very least arrange a meeting between them and the Auror who looked into the case originally.

“An Auror?” Harry questioned. “But my grandparents were muggles. Shouldn’t we be looking through police reports or something?”

Hermione shook her head. “Their daughter was a witch and the story said something your parents did might have been related to the murders. Trust me, an Auror would have been put on the case. Besides, who do we know who could get us access to old police records?”

Harry agreed without further comment and the two of them spent the rest of the day going through some more of Reginald and Agatha Evans’ personal belongings, speculating what else they could do to find out more about ‘Auburn Summer’ (suffice it to say there was nothing in Hogwarts, a History or any of the other books Hermione had brought along for light reading about the phrase), and eventually fending off Vernon Dursley, as Hermione insisted that Harry not be severely punished or her parents would be very displeased. Harry inwardly winced as he realized that this was now a bluff. His Uncle Vernon seemed to fall for it, however, promising that Harry would indeed be well fed, allowing him to stay in Dudley’s second bedroom and giving Hedwig a reluctant pat on the head just to be safe.

Although all three Dursleys gave Harry dirty looks throughout, Hermione stayed for dinner (thus ensuring Harry got normal portions of food) and then the two of them made their way back to Harry’s room. “I don’t know how long I can stay here, Harry,” Hermione announced warily as she took her place next to him on his bed. “Mum told Dad I’d be spending the day at the library, doing research for Muggle Studies. He’ll probably be expecting me home soon.” She then gave him a look that defiantly declared that she would much rather stay.

Harry nodded knowingly. “You should probably go then. If you can’t make it back anytime soon, I’ll send Hedwig…”

Hermione interrupted him forcefully. “I’ll be here tomorrow, bright and early.” She let out a wide grin that relaxed Harry instantly. “It’s taken care of, Harry. You don’t have to worry about my father…or me.”

“I can’t help that,” Harry declared without thinking. He was getting that strange buzz of confusion around his head, like when they were by the lake. “When I thought that that poem was about you, was about us… I…”

“I know,” Hermione stopped him, her eyes filled with understanding in the face of what seemed like an overwhelming sense of uncertainty on Harry’s part. “I’m kind of surprised you didn’t think of your parents immediately, really. I mean, why would you think of us as a pair? It’s not like we….well, you know…”

“I don’t know,” Harry answered, his fingers suddenly feeling restless, as though he should be doing something important with them. His eyes looked away from her and he suddenly found his dresser absolutely fascinating. “It just seemed…right. Somehow. Does that make sense?” He turned back to face her and found that her face was much closer to his own than he had realized.

This must have shaken her somehow, because she suddenly stood up. “I should go. Dad will be livid if he thinks that I’ve been out with you. If Mum gets worried about me and tells him it could ruin everything.”

Harry felt a sense of disappointment that turned itself into mild anger. “Right. Wouldn’t want your Dad to think you’ve been out with me. Off you go then.” Hermione didn’t seem to pick up on his feelings as she quickly said goodbye. Harry listened for her moped speeding off and then kicked his shoes across the room in frustration. What was wrong with him? Why was some part of him trying to ruin everything between him and Hermione? Maybe it was Voldemort, playing tricks with Harry’s mind. Except Hermione seemed to be helping things along, and he didn’t really think the ‘Dark Lord’ would stoop to trying to make things difficult between two teenagers, even if one of them was the Boy Who Lived.

Harry was thinking idle thoughts about Voldemort making a plan with his Death Eaters to lure Harry into having a row with Ron over Quidditch practice scheduling when he suddenly drifted off to sleep. In one of his dreams, Cho Chang was kissing him again and he seemed to have even less choice in the matter this time. As he tried to break away, she began crying all over him and her tears seemed to paralyze him, holding him in place. Before he knew it, water began pouring all over him, no longer from Cho Chang’s tear ducts, but from a waterfall above him.

Harry found the strength in his legs to move away from the waterfall, leaving Cho on the other side so that he could no longer see her face, only her Ravenclaw Quidditch robes. As he attempted to make his way out of the water he was confronted by a suspiciously dry (and inexplicably alive) Cedric Diggory in his own Hufflepuff Quidditch robes, pointing accusingly at Harry and Cho. Harry attempted to defend himself, saying that he hadn’t meant to kiss Cho, who he of course knew belonged to Cedric, but she had just been so insistent and he hadn’t been able to pull away. This did little to satisfy the former Hufflepuff Seeker, and in truth Harry was finding that his story was somehow unbelievable even to him. As he looked back towards Cho, she no longer looked like herself. Her robes were still the color and style of Ravenclaw but her face was changing and her hair was getting lighter…

At that point, his dream seemed to shift gears, and he instantly knew he was the snake again, crawling on the floor of what looked like a very old and very posh wizard’s house. What he was doing there, he wasn’t sure, but… Suddenly he saw a man with a mid-length black beard with streaks of gray in it sipping tea. Harry knew that this was a man who had been marked for death by Lord Voldemort. He felt the killing strike more than witnessed it and then awoke with an ear-splitting scream.

The Dursleys ignored the interruption of their nightly routine but continued to give him funny looks over breakfast the next morning. Harry contemptuously ignored them back, waiting anxiously for Hermione to show up so that he could tell her about his dream. Eventually he heard the sound of the doorbell ringing and rushed to greet her with a crooked, tentative smile on his face. However, from the bounce in her step and the poignant way she looked at him, he knew she had big news as well. Not even paying attention to Dudley’s snide remarks, the two of them snuck back up to Harry’s room and before Harry had even closed it, Hermione burst out “Do you want the good news or the kind of strange news first?”

After Harry’s dream last night, the choice was clear. “The good news.”

Hermione practically beamed. “My owl came back from Dumbledore with a note addressed to my Dad that said he was asking me to help you with a special summer project for school. He’s still not happy with you, so I wouldn’t recommend coming to visit any more, but he’ll more or less have to let me see you whenever I want.”

Harry let a relieved look cross his face. “That’s great, Hermione.” She had a slightly nervous smile on her face that let him know there was more. “Er, so what’s the strange news?”

Hermione shot him a slightly bewildered look. “Well, Dumbledore apparently was familiar with what happened to your grandparents, and he has given us the name of one of the Aurors who was investigating at the time. He, erm, also says that there were two main suspects in the case, neither of whom were ever brought up on charges. Two people we've recently become familiar with.”

Harry’s eyebrows shot up in interest. “Out with it, Hermione. Who were the suspects?”

“Frank Nichten-Teach,” Hermione replied softly. “And Atlas Filch.”

“It was that muggle what done it,” the grizzled-looking man who played host to Harry Potter and Hermione Granger declared in a muted growl. His name, Harry recalled, was Charles Fournier, but his nickname was Three-Arm Charlie. According to Dumbledore, he hated being called this. Harry had wondered idly at the time why the Headmaster had even included this little tidbit in his letter. Now he realized it was a warning, and Harry was certainly grateful for it.

Charles Fournier held a book that contained some of his Auror records in one hand, flipped through it with another and held a cup of tea he was sipping with his third. The short, sinewy arm grew out of his side, covered by an improvised sleeve that stopped at the elbow. Hermione felt brave enough to ask a question, the first time either of them had spoken a word since both had let out a fearful “Hello” at the front door. Appropriately enough, it was about the muggle in question, the father of the young club owner they had met last week, Terry Nichten-Teach. “Excuse me, Mr. Fournier, but what motive did Frank Nichten-Teach have to murder the Evans’?”

Three-Arm Charlie gave her a mild look of disgust. “Since when do muggles have to have a reason to kill other muggles? Who knows why they do what they do? I told ‘em, no point in us investigating this one. Best leave it to the Aren’tors.”

‘Aren’tors’, Harry knew from Mad-Eye Moody, was a term Aurors used for muggle policemen that wasn’t exactly complimentary. “But,” Harry spoke up nervously, “they were the parents of a witch and Atlas Filch was a suspect. Surely you interrogated him, didn’t you?”

“Of course,” Mr. Fournier answered with a scowl. “But he had an alibi, didn’t he? All sorts of people saw him at that muggle club of his. Besides, I don’t think I’ve ever seen no proper wizard go on about ‘Auburn Summer’. Usually it’s just kids pulling pranks or some muggle who’s found out about the wizarding world for the first time and wants a li’l piece of the action.”

“Sir,” Hermione piped up in the most polite voice she could manage, “what is Auburn Summer?”

“A fairy tale,” Three-Arm Charlie snorted contemptuously. “Muggles, squibs and wizards with limited powers thinkin’ they can become Order of Merlin-class wizards by killin’ a couple o’ dozen muggles and chanting some old incantation. Not a bad idea in practice, but it never really works.”

“You weren’t in Slytherin house, by any chance, were you?” Harry asked wryly without really thinking. Hermione shot him a look of exasperation.

Charles Fournier shook his head dismissively. “Nah. Didn’t go to Hogwarts. Me Mum insisted I attend Durmstrang, like she did. Wonderful old place. Lots of good memories there.” Three-Arm Charlie seemed to lose himself in thought for a moment and then turned his attention back to the two teenagers. He handed Hermione a folder that must have contained information on the case. “Open and shut, really. The thumbprint at the scene was the muggle’s and that master key to his club could only have belonged to him or Mr. Filch.”

“Sir, if you don’t mind me asking,” Hermione began cautiously, “if Mr. Nichten-Teach was so obviously guilty, why didn’t the muggle police bring him up on charges?”

The old Auror waved all three of his arms in a gesture of disgust. “They believed a bunch of tripe from some young muggles about him being at the club, wearing a mask. Said they could recognize his voice anywhere. They were having some kind of disguise celebration that night, apparently. Leave it to muggles to celebrate their limited ability to conceal their identity.” He scoffed. “But even muggles have those wreckherding devices that capture their voices and play them back. I for one didn’t see how even they could be that monumentally stupid.”

As Hermione perused the folder she had been handed, it was left to Harry to make awkward conversation. Unfortunately, he came up empty. “Well, I suppose we’ll be going then.”

“If you’ll wait a moment,” Charlie Fournier said with a slight growl, “I’ve owled my old partner about you two. He’s active, so if you need any help from someone who’s still in the field…” As if on cue, a brown and red spotted owl flew through his window. “Ah, there’s Talon now.” The bird flew to his right-most hand and the old Auror used his other two to remove a message from the bird’s leg. When he read it, his eyes flew open in horror. “Britannicus, he…he’s been attacked!” Hermione dropped the manila folder in her lap and Harry rose to look at the message once it fell from the old Auror’s worn hand.

“A serpent,” Harry stated aloud and he and Hermione shared a knowing look. Harry had told her about his dream from the night before and both of them had almost instantly known that it was related to ‘Auburn Summer’ somehow. This, evidently, was the how. Harry folded the message and returned it to Mr. Fournier out of respect for his privacy.

However, the ex-Auror revealed the rest of its contents to the two teenagers anyway. “He’ll be fine, for the most part. Britannicus always did keep loads of anti-venom potions around, but he’ll be incapacitated for a while. The Ministry’s asked me to fill in for him until he gets back on his feet. Er, so to speak. I reckon they’re swamped now that everybody knows You-Know-Who is back.” His middle arm withdrew a pair of spectacles and placed them gingerly on his face. “I’ll owl them back, let them know I accept…”

Hermione shot Harry an urgent look that said that it was time to go. “We’ll just leave you to that, then,” Harry rambled quickly.

“If we would need more information on the case, sir, would you be so obliging…?” Hermione started to ask, but his one idle hand shushed her with a wave.

“Yes, yes,” Charles Fournier declared, his eyes never leaving the parchment in front of him. “Now go on. Must be more exciting things for young ones like yourselves to be doing on a day like this than investigating twenty year old murder cases. Solved ones in particular.”

“Harry,” Hermione practically hissed as soon as they had bounded down the steps of Charles Fournier’s small flat and in the direction of her green moped, “if you saw that snake attack Britannicus Leslie, then it had to be…”

“Voldemort,” Harry finished for her, giving her an apprehensive and appraising look. “He was behind it. I suppose the question now is: why?”

Hermione’s face filled with worry. “I’d like to say that it’s a coincidence, that V..Voldemort is just trying to get at any Aurors that he can, but I just don’t think so. This has something to do with what happened to your grandparents, I know it. I can almost feel it.”

Harry nodded solemnly. “There’s something else, too. I don’t agree with Three-Arm Charlie in there. Mr. Nichten-Teach is dead, so he could hardly be doing it again. This case is far from solved.” He interpreted the fact that Hermione didn’t immediately disagree as a sort of understood assent. “Which means we have to do it. And I know just where to start.”

***
Harry Potter inserted a copy of the old master key to the Serpent’s Tooth from twenty years ago into the lock and sincerely hoped that it still worked. To both his and Hermione’s relief, it did. As Harry tentatively entered the “muggle club”, as Charles Fournier had called it, that the two of them had visited only last week under very different circumstances, Hermione withdrew the key and looked at it apprehensively. “Mr. Fournier probably left this in the folder by mistake. I can’t imagine that we’re actually supposed to have any old evidence from the case.”

“Yeah, well we’re not supposed to be here, either. But we are.” Harry’s voice, although practically a whisper, carried through the empty building much more than he would have liked. Mentally, he willed no one else to be here, as it might make things terribly awkward. Making sure that Hermione wasn’t looking to back out, he grabbed her hand and the two of them advanced as quietly as possible through the abandoned nightclub. It seemed spooky somehow, in a way that most places he’d run across in the wizarding world didn’t. Houses where muggles lived seemed utterly lifeless when they were away from them, as there were no moving portraits or enchanted objects to give the place a sense of vivacity.

Taking a quick look around the first floor, Harry and Hermione discovered nothing out of the ordinary: the large dance floor Harry remembered with some embarrassment from when they had been here before, a few tables and chairs (and some nicer furniture probably left over from when this place was for adults only), and several bar counters from which drinks were dispensed. “I guess the business offices are upstairs,” Hermione told Harry in a barely audible whisper. With a quick nod, he led the way back to the spiral staircase and ascended it as quickly and quietly as possible.

As the two of them looked around, they discovered that Hermione’s suspicions proved to be correct. A row of similar-looking doors led down a hallway not far from the small row of tables where they had briefly sat their last time here. Harry used the key to open each one in turn, as there were no signs indicating which one led to what. After discovering a broom closet, a matching set of blue and pink-painted loos, (which he could only imagine were for public use but he really couldn’t fathom why they weren’t labeled) and a luxurious reading room that looked like it hadn’t been used in years, Harry found what he had been dreading most: someone else, emerging from a door Harry was just preparing to unlock.

Letting out a startled gasp, Harry came face to face with Violet Mogle. The faintly pretty young blonde’s eyes were wide and she too looked very startled. ‘No reason she wouldn’t be,’ Harry thought glumly to himself. ‘We’re not supposed to be here.’ “Hullo, Violet,” Harry said quickly. Thinking fast, he withdrew the key from her sight, but did not pocket it, as he didn’t want to look like they had anything to hide. “What brings you here?” he asked, as if it were she who was the one trespassing. He could practically feel Hermione hiding a grimace behind his head.

Luckily for the two Hogwarts students, Violet did not get huffy and turn the question back around on them immediately. “I…I was looking for Terry,” she stammered, her eyes looking glazed over and hazy. She looked rather like Luna Lovegood at this moment, Harry thought idly, although slightly taller and with a flatter nose.

Hermione’s face wrinkled in confusion. “Didn’t he say that he’s taking day classes for that summer business course at Oxford on Wednesdays?” Harry hadn’t remembered this, but Hermione had reminded him once they had exited the ex-Auror’s house. Harry had managed to tease her about hanging on Terry Nichten-Teach’s every word, but privately he appreciated the fact that Hermione was so attentive to detail.

“Oh, of course,” Violet replied, her eyes darting around as if they were searching for some quick method of escape. “I must have forgotten.” They stood in silence for a moment, all three of them feeling awkward at their current situation. “So…what brings you two here?”

Before Harry could speak, Hermione blurted out, “We’ve been hoping to revive the Youth Masque, a festival this club used to host back when Terry’s father was alive. Harry and I’ve been reading old newspaper articles about the ‘Serpent’s Tooth’ ever since we left here. It’s all so fascinating.” Harry did his best not to look shocked as Hermione said this. She was getting so good with cover stories it was scary. “It was going to be a surprise for Terry, so if you wouldn’t mention it…”

“I won’t,” Violet assured her quickly. “That is, if you won’t say anything about my being here. Wouldn’t want Terry to think I’d been so forgetful.”

“Of course not,” Harry answered, finally finding his voice after what seemed like hours of silence. “Hermione and I were just going to see if there was anything in Mr. Nichten-Teach’s old files about the, er…” ‘Youth Masque,’ Hermione reminded him under her breath. “…so that we could help recreate the atmosphere a little better. I hope you don’t mind.”

As Violet assured them that she didn’t, Hermione grabbed his arm and looked straight into his eyes. “Actually, Harry, I’m feeling rather tired. I think I’ll take a seat and wait for you out here while you look through the files. After all, this was your idea.” She seemed to be speaking to him, but her voice was louder than it needed to be, as if she was hoping that Violet would overhear.

“OK,” Harry agreed in a rather confused tone of voice. Violet pointed them to the room she had just departed as the one they were looking for and, casting one last curious glance at Hermione, he entered the business offices of the ‘Serpent’s Tooth’ and began to examine them.

The room he entered was small, dusty and mostly empty. It contained a large oak desk with a swivel chair behind it, two rows of book shelves which now contained precious few books, a plain wooden door that likely led to a closet and a huge file cabinet over by the corner. Harry’s eyes roamed freely about the room, although nothing seemed immediately promising. The desk had nothing on it except an old calendar from 1988, a typewriter that was missing a few keys, an empty picture frame and a few pencils that had clearly been chewed. The desk drawers similarly revealed nothing of interest: paper for the typewriter, extra pencils and, Harry noted with disgust, more than a few mouse droppings.

Turning away from the desk, Harry Potter perused the shelves, finding only two books left on them: Norman Vincent Peale’s “The Power of Positive Thinking,” and William Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar”. ‘Everyone’s a Shakespeare fan,’ Harry thought as a thin smile crossed his face. Harry then let out an anxious sigh as he faced the metal cabinet, which seemed even more enormous now that he’d walked across the room. He couldn’t imagine how long finding anything relevant in there was going to take. Why wasn’t Hermione here with him to at least cut down on his workload? She would have some explaining to do once he got out of here, and he found himself strangely enjoying the idea of interrogating her. Finding the first drawer he tried unlocked (luckily, as he doubted his master key would work in the tiny hole on the file drawer), he pulled hard on the handle…and was nearly knocked down by the force he exerted.

Staggering slightly, Harry peered into the cabinet drawer, only to discover that there was absolutely nothing in it. Puzzled, Harry looked in every other drawer in quick succession, finding nothing but dust. ‘Why would you have this giant file cabinet at your disposal and not use it?’ Harry thought to himself. The answer came to him in Hermione’s voice as quickly as if the witch herself were there. ‘Because you have somewhere else you want to keep your information, of course. Someplace better protected.’

Harry moved to face the door that was to the immediate right of the mysteriously empty file cabinet. Perhaps this wasn’t to a closet after all. Harry opened the door timidly and stepped through to what seemed in the dark to be a large room, hoping he would find no one else who he didn’t want to run across, like Atlas Filch for instance. Harry had his suspicions about him, and if he was anything like Argus…

Harry’s fears seemed to be realized immediately, however, as the room was illuminated with artificial light. Someone else was here. Harry wondered if he should hide, but then thought better of it. He didn’t know the place well and his cover story would likely work better if he acted as though his presence here was normal. He suddenly found himself wishing fervently that he had brought along his invisibility cloak.

But, as Harry waited for someone to confront him accusingly, he was surprised to discover that there was nobody there. The lights could have been programmed to come on automatically, but Harry was almost positive that it was done with magic. For one thing, he could see no lights emanating from the ceiling. And for another, this was clearly Atlas Filch’s office, as evidenced by the nameplate on the spotless desk and the colourful portraits on the wall, which included one of Argus Filch. ‘So that proves it,’ Harry thought. ‘They are related.’

Deciding to look around the decidedly brighter and more lived-in room, Harry found a wood file cabinet that was similar in size and height to the metal one in what he assumed must have been Frank Nichten-Teach’s old office. Letting out a mental groan, Harry opened the topmost drawer and a file fell out almost immediately, its contents spilling all over the floor. He began to gather everything back together when a picture caught his interest. As he held it up to the strange light, his jaw dropped. It was a baby picture of Harry himself.

Harry Potter’s eyes fixated on the muggle photograph in front of him. He couldn’t have been more than two years old and he was surrounded by Dursleys: an irate, red-faced Vernon who seemed as though he’d rather be anywhere but there, a surprisingly young and anxious-looking Petunia, and baby Dudley was, well…baby Dudley, just as he’d seen him in a hundred different pictures around the house growing up, only not in the center of the photo for once. Whoever had taken the picture clearly was interested in capturing him on film, despite the fact that all the Dursleys seemed to be pushing him into the background.

Dozens of thoughts flurried around in his head. Why hadn’t he seen this photo before? Who had taken it? What was it doing here? Harry forced his eyes away from the picture for a moment and gathered the other items which had fallen out of the folder into his arms. Placing it on top of the wooden cabinet, Harry decided there would be time to answer these questions later, after he had done some more digging (and it would be better to try to answer them with Hermione around, Harry reminded himself). He went to open the same drawer to the file cabinet as he had opened before…only to find that he could no longer budge it.

“What?!” Harry exclaimed in disbelief. He tugged at the handle again, but the drawer still would not move. It was as if someone had nailed it shut in the few moments it had taken him to recover the folder and examine the photograph. After a few valiant last efforts, Harry gave up trying. None of the other drawers opened for him either. ‘Some kind of protection charm,’ he thought to himself. ‘It must be.’ Realizing that he was not only denied access to further information, but that he would not be able to return the folder to its original location, either, Harry decided to simply take it with him so that he and Hermione could examine its contents together.

Harry stealthily made his way out of the Serpent’s Tooth’s business offices, careful not to disturb anything else that might indicate that someone had been in here that shouldn’t have been. As he stepped outside the door, folder in hand, he saw that Violet was gone, but Hermione was sitting quietly at one of the tables, examining something small in her hands. When she caught sight of Harry, she shot him a surprised smile and beckoned him to sit down next to her. “That certainly was quick,” Hermione pointed out, as her eyes darted between meeting Harry’s and trying to take a peek at the manila folder in his hands. “What did you find out?”

Harry explained to her what few pertinent details he had learned: that Atlas Filch worked here, that Frank Nichten-Teach’s office had been largely cleaned out and about the mysterious baby picture. Hermione, as Harry had expected, was most interested in the photograph. “Have you ever seen this photo before? At the Dursleys, or in your photo album you got from Hagrid?” Harry shook his head no. “How odd.”

“It isn’t that strange that the Dursleys wouldn’t have wanted to keep this picture around,” Harry said wistfully. “They’ve always made a point of losing pictures with me in them. You should have seen what they did with the ones I got from school before I went to Hogwarts.” He let out a halfhearted chuckle. “But why would one of my old baby pictures end up in Atlas Filch’s office? What am I to him?”

“It is an intriguing mystery,” Hermione assured him, although her eyes continually darted to the folder he had swiped from Filch’s office. “But it’s not the one we came here to solve. So if you don’t mind…” Hermione raised her eyebrows and the two of them immediately started looking at the information Harry had swiped.

Luckily for their cover story, there was a lot of information about the Youth Masque in here: what it was about, what activities went on, the winners for each year, etc. There was also a copy of the same story out of the London Times that Harry and Hermione had found in the Dursleys’ garage. Joined to it with a paperclip, however, was another piece that he immediately brought to Hermione’s attention. “‘Serpent’s Tooth’ reopens as a gentleman’s club,’” Harry read aloud. “‘Attempting to overcome the nefarious image it took on after becoming associated with a grisly double murder last year, club owner Frank Nichten-Teach announced that his establishment would be altering his clientele to serve an older crowd…’” Harry screwed up his nose curiously. “That’s odd. You’d think a little thing like a murder investigation would shut the place down for good. Wonder why he bothered to try to change the image?”

“I don’t know,” Hermione replied honestly, her eyes never leaving the sheets of paper in front of her. “But apparently it worked out well for Mr. Nichten-Teach and Mr. Filch. Their profit margin skyrocketed once they converted the place to an adult club.” She then frowned one of her trademark suspicious frowns. “Frank Nichten-Teach’s signature gets less and less frequent on these financial records. It’s as though he was being phased out.”

Harry wasn’t listening to her anymore. His entire attention was focused on a photograph. Hermione glanced up for a moment and let out a small sigh. “Harry, I know your baby picture is fascinating to you, but I’m certain there are other relevant artifacts in this folder. If you would just…”

Harry shook his head dumbly and this seemingly interrupted her. “It’s not my baby photo.” Gently, he laid the photograph in front of Hermione.

“Your mother?” Hermione questioned, and although she got no response, she knew that this was indeed Lily Evans. Hermione’s hands flew to Harry’s pile of information and what she read there made her eyes go wider. “Harry, her costume took top prize twenty years ago. The year that her parents were murdered.” Her eyes turned sad as they examined the image of Harry’s mother from what seemed like so long ago. “She was Juliet.” A half-smile broke out across her face. “But your dad was Mercutio. Not exactly traditional, was he?” She looked up at Harry expectantly.

Harry couldn’t really put his finger on what he was feeling at that exact moment, except that he was exceptionally worried about Hermione. “Are you sure you want to go through with this, Hermione?” he asked her softly. “The last time something like this happened, people were murdered,” the word felt cold and harsh in Harry’s mouth, “and nobody had to use the Killing Curse to do it. This is the Muggle world, Hermione. It may seem like less can happen to us here than in the Wizarding world, but killers can be just as dangerous and we can’t use magic to combat them. We’re out of our element.”

Hermione bit her lip and shot him an inquisitive look. “Why are you telling me this, Harry?”

“I’m just giving you a chance to back out,” Harry explained apologetically. “I know when you agreed to spend time with me this summer that this wasn’t what you had in mind. It would be a lot safer for you if I did this alone.”

“Are you ‘backing out’?” Hermione asked him with derision in her voice, as if he had just suggested she switch houses from Gryffindor to Slytherin.

“I can’t,” Harry said with a sigh. “They were my grandparents. Whatever happened to them, whatever my parents were involved in, it could be happening all over again. I can’t just walk away from that. I can’t pretend like it’s nothing.”

“Then neither can I,” Hermione retorted stubbornly. Before Harry could say anything else to dissuade her, she grabbed his hand and pulled him up. “Come on. We’re done here. But we do have a lot of planning to do.”

“Planning?” Harry asked, a puzzled expression dominating his forehead. “For what?”

Hermione smiled disarmingly. “Why, the Youth Masque, of course.”

***
Following Hermione’s advice, early the next morning Harry Potter wrote a letter to his former Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, Remus Lupin, asking for his own recollections about that summer and anything else that might help he and Hermione understand exactly what it was that had happened. Harry stuffed his quill back into his knapsack of school supplies as he finished up the letter, tied the note to Hedwig’s leg and sent her off to find Professor Lupin.

As Harry watched her fly off, a slight twinge of sadness overcame him. ‘Sirius would have probably known about it, too,’ he thought wistfully. ‘He was my father’s best friend. He would have been the perfect person to ask.’ If only he hadn’t rushed off to be the hero, Harry would have had the chance. There was no point in dwelling on it now, however. Sirius was gone.

Unhappily, Harry turned his attention back to the book in front of him. It was an illustrated history of Medieval costumes that Hermione had checked out for him out of a muggle library, with instructions for him to pick out a costume he might like to wear. Given that Hermione was planning and organizing everything else about the Youth Masque, it really didn’t seem fair for Harry to be resentful of the fact that he had to do this, but nonetheless it struck him as completely pointless. However, when he had suggested that he simply go as “Spiderman or something”, Hermione had given him such a disgusted look (one she usually reserved only for Ron) that he agreed to choose an authentic costume on his own.

None of these muggle outfits particularly suited his fancy, although Harry thought it might be worth a laugh to go as a wizard (or at least how muggles thought wizards dressed). However, about the time he had completely given up, he caught a reference to the Lady of the Lake and his eyes quickly fell upon a rather dashing knight’s costume. “Sir Lancelot,” Harry read aloud. He seemed to recall the name from one of the accounts of Merlin’s life in Professor Binns’ History of Magic class, but, as he usually repressed anything related to that particular class, he couldn’t remember anything specific about the knight. No matter. One costume was as good as the other, he supposed.

As he pushed the thick tome underneath his bed, he barely noticed as another one was slammed in front of him by Vernon Dursley. His uncle’s face was already red, but he didn’t look angry. As a matter of fact, he looked…scared. Harry couldn’t imagine why, as he hadn’t done any magic in a while, he hadn’t received any owls from anyone and there had been no dementors (or dementoids, as his slightly clueless Uncle Vernon called them) in sight all summer. Then he looked down at the book in front of him.

“‘Growing and Being’?!?” Harry questioned as a frown filled his face. The frown only grew as he examined its contents. “What kind of a book is this?”

“It’s as I feared, Petunia,” Vernon told his wife as if Harry wasn’t in the room. “They haven’t taught him anything at that freak school of his about…that thing.”

“What thing?” Harry asked indignantly. His voice seemingly shocked the two of them, as they recoiled slightly from the sound of it. Maybe they had forgotten he was there.

“I…it’s alright to be confused,” Aunt Petunia told him in what came very close to passing for a sympathetic voice. “Just look over the book and if you have any questions, feel free to come to us.”

Uncle Vernon shot his wife a reproachful look. “Yes, well, perhaps Dudley might be better with that sort of thing. It is his textbook, after all.”

“What are you going on about?” Harry demanded to know, confused as all get out. “Why are you giving me one of Dudley’s old schoolbooks and why would I want to ask him any questions? None of this makes any sense!”

Instead of answering his questions, however, the Dursleys promptly retreated from his bedroom as quickly and quietly as they had arrived. This left Harry alone with the book and his own befuddlement. He considered placing the textbook on his shelf and forgetting about it for the time being. However, he had taken a shorter time than he had expected to choose his costume for the Youth Masque, and Hermione wouldn’t be here for another hour, so he cracked the book open and examined its contents.

After looking over the text for about ten minutes, Harry was officially unimpressed. Sure, there were some technical terms he had been unaware of, but most of this stuff he had found out from conversations with Dean and Seamus over some of their longer games of exploding snap. ‘Alright, so some of it might have been exaggeration, but still, I can’t believe the Dursleys thought I made it almost to sixteen without knowing…’

And then it occurred to him. The reason they had given him the book. Hermione. They were afraid he might do things like…uh…that illustration on page 167 (the one that had “Don’t Do This!” written in marker over it)…with Hermione.

Harry nearly laughed aloud. Oh, he knew that the Dursleys thought that Hermione was his girlfriend (and, in fact, if they didn’t think so it would have been extremely difficult for them to meet over the summer), but he had no idea they had them convinced this thoroughly. I mean, he and Hermione weren’t even acting differently around each other.

Harry froze. If it was so easy for the Dursleys to believe that he and Hermione were dating without them doing anything special around each other, what did it say about their relationship? Did it say anything at all? ‘Or does it say everything?’ Harry asked himself. Wait, where had that thought come from?

Harry shook his head as if to clear it. No, it couldn’t be. Hermione had feelings for Ron. She was planning to ask him out once they went back to Hogwarts. That was that. Hermione couldn’t be his girlfriend. She was about to become Ron’s.

Feeling as if this should put the matter to rest, Harry rose to his feet, stretched and left the muggle textbook ‘Growing and Being’ sitting next to his bed. Taking more care to choose his clothing than he normally did, Harry found his way to the shower, turned the water all the way to hot and stepped in.

Thinking about how lucky he was to have an ample supply of water again after how horribly hot and dry it was last summer, Harry took an especially long shower, letting the water run over his head and shoulders. He toweled off and dressed quickly, getting a sinking feeling in his stomach that he was running a tad late. Sure enough, when he emerged from the loo, there was Hermione looking irritable and flustered.

“Can you believe that that idiot cousin of yours still wants to try and impress me?” Hermione asked, as the two of them exited the Dursley household and made their way to her green moped. “It’s like he’s trying to steal me away from you or something.”

A thought suddenly struck Harry like a thunderbolt. He didn’t want Ron to date Hermione. He wanted her for himself. “Yeah,” Harry replied, his mouth suddenly going dry. “I can believe it.”

Harry Potter had had a rough week. His anxiety over the impending prospect of Auburn Summer arriving was growing by the day, as despite their best efforts, he and Hermione had discovered precious little about what it was, who had orchestrated it last time and what the two of them might do to stop it. Their only hope was the Youth Masque, which Hermione hoped would do something to attract the culprit from twenty years ago. Harry had mixed feelings about their upcoming costume party, however, as while it seemed like a reasonable plan to bring the killer out into the open by recreating events from that summer, the frantic planning Hermione was putting into it meant she was spending less time with him than he might like.

Given his newfound affection for Hermione, any amount of time they spent together now seemed far too short...or perhaps far too long, as Harry had to hide how he felt as best he could. He had tried telling himself numerous times that there was no use in having romantic feelings for her, as she very clearly wanted to be with Ron. This did not appear to be a winning strategy, however, as Harry was sweating profusely and becoming increasingly tongue-tied in her presence and was now sitting at his desk not writing a reply letter to Remus Lupin, as was his intent, but doodling Hermione's name across his parchment idly.

Aside from thinking about Hermione, telling himself not to think about Hermione, and then thinking about Hermione some more anyway, Harry had accomplished next to nothing in a week's time. He had not even attempted to get hold of a Sir Lancelot outfit, eventually confessing to Hermione on their last outing together that he had no idea where to look. Harry was secretly delighted when she then announced with a sigh that they would have to spend an extra day together picking out their costumes. That was what was on their agenda for today, other than the usual morning quidditch practice and doing as much digging as they could about Auburn Summer.

Today, however, Harry had two bits of news to deliver to Hermione. One involved the aforementioned Professor Lupin, who had finally answered Harry's owl of a week earlier. After the usual greetings (as well as the increasingly typical "How are you?" that Harry no longer knew how to answer), Lupin explained that Harry's parents had told him very little of what happened over the so-called auburn summer, owing to a "bit of a falling out between myself and your father around that same time." Harry's former Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher did not elaborate, but the idea of the Marauders not getting along while they were at Hogwarts did not sit well with Harry, and a frown crossed his face every time he thought about it.

Other than this puzzling piece of information, Remus Lupin had sent him a large volume called Muggle Use of Magic Over the Centuries. The book was nearly nine hundred pages long and contained several large sections dealing with auburn summer, or at least so Professor Lupin told him in the letter. Harry was waiting for Hermione to arrive before actually examining its contents, as he was not typically as adept at deciphering lengthy literary works as she was. With so much text to examine, he often misinterpreted what he was reading, which sometimes led to disastrous consequences.

Harry shoved the thick tome into his knapsack between a spare set of clothes (he had learned his lesson from the 'Violet Mogle in the lake' incident) and his transfigured hummingbird snitch, which fluttered around restlessly, as if preparing itself for Quidditch practice. As he walked wordlessly past the Dursleys, he remembered talking to Aunt Petunia only last night about the mysterious photograph he found in the offices of the Serpent's Tooth, which brought his mind quickly to the other piece of info he had for Hermione. The Dursleys had met Frank Nichten-Teach and it had been he who had taken the photo.

"Oh yes," Aunt Petunia said with a rarely achieved look of haughty disgust on her face. "He seemed quite taken with you. Apparently he knew your parents and thought well of them." She let out a contemptuous sniff. "Aside from that, he was a nice fellow. A bit cold perhaps, but very polite and cultured."

"Why don't I remember him?" Harry asked, as much to himself as to Aunt Petunia.

Aunt Petunia unexpectedly answered him. "He stopped coming to visit right around the time you were learning to talk. Became quite ill, I believe." As Aunt Petunia shook her head, Harry tried his best to hide the confusion that had to be showing on his face. "Shame about that, really. We sent him a card."

Breaking from the usual tradition of waiting inside for Hermione to ring the doorbell and retrieve him, Harry ventured outside and sat on the front step, turning things over in his mind. Why had Frank Nichten-Teach come to visit him as a baby? Aside from posing this question to Hermione, he was going to have to ask Terry about it the next time he saw him. His curiosity, on that subject at least, shouldn't rouse the young club owner's suspicions. And then there was the matter of Professor Lupin's revelation. The vagueness of it frustrated Harry, so much so that he felt as though he needed to have a conversation in person with his father's old friend as soon as possible. Perhaps he could ask Hermione to take him over to Grimmauld Place...

As soon as Hermione's name crossed his mind, he saw the familiar mint green moped out of the corner of his eye. Harry did not even try to stop himself from flashing a wide grin. "Hermione!" he called as she dismounted to walk towards him. His heart was pounding and his palms were getting sweaty again. Harry shoved his hands in his pockets so that she hopefully wouldn't notice. "Erm, how are you?" he asked somewhat lamely.

"I'm fine, Harry," she answered earnestly, looking him over as though something might be the matter. Once she decided that there wasn't, a slightly amused look crossed her face. "What are you smiling about?"

Harry cursed himself. He had forgotten about that stupid grin on his face. This 'concealing your feelings' bit was hard work. "Nothing," he answered too quickly. Harry then added, "There are just some things that I need to tell you and I have a book for you to look at, too." It might have been his imagination, but Harry could have sworn that this wasn't how he had talked to Hermione before he realized he wanted to snog her senseless. He had some faint recollection of having said somewhat clever things to her in times past, so why couldn't he think of any now?

"Show it to me later, Harry," Hermione instructed lightly. "We've got to get moving. And I'm afraid we're going to have to cut Quidditch practice a bit short today."

Harry considered whether or not he should make a remark about how Dumbledore's transfigured snitch would have more control over the matter than he would, but decided that he would just mess it up if he tried to say it aloud. "Uh, OK." He then managed to climb aboard the moped behind Hermione without further embarrassment.

The ride over to the enchanted forest where he had been practicing Quidditch gave Harry the sensation of being comfortable and uncomfortable at the same time, courtesy of his arms being tightly wrapped around Hermione's waist. How on earth did he manage this before without going crazy? 'I had just never thought about her that way,' Harry thought to himself. 'I really am a clueless git.'

Remembering Hermione's advise to keep his practice time to a minimum, Harry caught the snitch easily in under a half an hour, after spending most of his time speeding around on his broom to release some of the tension from his body. He wasn't as proud of his new personal best time as he might have been (mostly because the words "Accio snitch" might have been muttered under his breath at some point), but flying always gave him such a powerful jolt of energy in the morning that he felt disspirited when he had to skip it. Landing the Nimbus 2000 that had been her gift to him right next to Hermione, Harry stashed it behind a tree and turned back to her quickly, hoping to find out what she had learned from the book Lupin had given them. "Find anything?" Harry asked as casually as possible.

"Quite a lot, actually," Hermione answered, her eyes as bright as they usually were after she'd just been reading something that interested her. Wait, when had he started noticing that? "Apparently auburn summer started as a blood purity ritual for muggle-borns and half-bloods," Hermione's scorn was written all over her face as she said this, "but then when muggles got themselves involved..." She closed the book abruptly. "I can tell you the rest later. Right now we need to get to London. I promised Mrs. O'Connor that we'd be there by 10:30 and it's already..." A worried frown filled Hermione's face as she looked down at her watch in dismay and her tone took that soft whine that it often did when she was concerned about him. 'I've grown to adore that whine,' Harry thought pleasantly. "Well, never mind how late it is. We have to go! Hop on." Harry didn't have to be told twice, although the thought that it might have been fun to make her do so crossed his mind fleetingly.

***
Harry and Hermione soon found themselves entering a quaint little costume shop that wasn't located far from Diagon Alley. The sign outside read "Polly's", which was presumably Mrs. O'Connor's first name. Although it seemed from the outside as though the store couldn't be that large, the amount of space inside nearly overwhelmed Harry. All sorts of costumes, ranging from those for little muggle children (mostly fairy outfits and other such trifles, although Harry was amused to see at least one Spiderman outfit) to very elaborately designed ball gowns and other, more adult-oriented, attire. Harry guessed that Mrs. O'Connor would be unlikely to go bankrupt anytime soon.

Hermione offered a simple greeting and introduced Harry to Mrs. O'Connor. The costume shop owner, who Harry noticed wore a lot of make-up despite the fact that she would probably be reasonably attractive without it, already knew who Harry Potter was, as did most everyone else on the planet Earth who knew anything about the magical world. "I know we'd already discussed what I was looking for, but I was wondering...do you have any knight costumes? We were searching for Sir Lancelot in particular, but I suppose any one would do."

The older woman reached for something that was hanging on one of the lower racks and withdrew it from behind a row of leotards. It was a simple cloth facsimile of a suit of armor which bore a red and yellow coat of arms on the chest that was reminiscent of the Gryffindor colours. Harry thought it was perfect and was just about to tell Mrs. O'Connor so when Hermione let loose one of her trademark scowls. "That's fine for young children, I suppose. But do you have anything with real armour?" Harry looked at Hermione as though she had temporarily gone batty. "Nothing too cumbersome, mind you. Just maybe some light chain mail?"

Hermione's eyes flittered between Mrs. O'Connor and Harry, but instead of meeting his confused gaze, she seemed to be focusing on his scar in a way that she usually didn't. In fact, she was one of the only ones who almost never looked at his scar, except when it was hurting him, as it did so often last year. Harry frowned at her for a moment, but then realized she was subtly using his status as the famous Harry Potter to get what she wanted. Finally, Mrs. O'Connor consented with a sigh. "I'll see what I have in the back."

As the costume shop owner departed, leaving Harry alone with Hermione, he turned to face her with an utterly perplexed expression written all over his face. "What exactly was that all about?!"

"Auburn summer, Harry," Hermione explained in a patient half-whisper. "It turns out that your choice of costume might have been brilliant, even if you didn't know it yet. Chain mail armour was sometimes used successfully to protect potential victims of the ritual sacrifice."

"Ritual sacrifice?" Harry questioned reflexively. "What...?" But before he could finish, Mrs. O'Connor had returned with a bulky-looking costume that Harry knew he would have a difficult time squeezing into.

"Here you are, Mr. Potter," she informed him coolly. "You may change in the back. Third booth to your left." Harry felt as though a tonne of bricks had been dropped into his arms as he managed to tote the suit of armour towards the rear of the shop. 'Why didn't she just leave it back there and tell me where it was?' Harry groused inwardly as he walked with his knees bent slightly from the weight of the metal suit as he lugged it in the general direction of the dressing rooms. "Now, Miss Granger. As to your costume..."

As Harry dropped the suit of armour unceremoniously on the floor, he suddenly realized he had given no thought whatever to what Hermione would be wearing to the Youth Masque. Suddenly visions of her Yule Ball dress flooded his memory and it was a few minutes before Harry realized that both Mrs. O'Connor and his best friend would be expecting him to come out sometime soon fully armoured. With a sigh, he began devoting himself to the task at hand, managing to slip some of the more accessible parts of the costume onto his extremities with little difficulty. After a little more struggling, tugging and some pinching (not to mention an unfortunate mishap with the visor and his glasses which would likely take an "occulis reparo" to correct), Harry was fully suited up.

Taking a look at himself in a conveniently placed full-length mirror, Harry Potter felt completely and utterly ridiculous. Pushing his visor up over his glasses much more carefully than he had last time to take a better look, he thought he resembled nothing so much as one of the scared young knights from the portraits in the Astronomy tower that Sir Cadogan seemed to enjoy terrorizing so much. Staggering slightly as he exited the changing room, Harry began to question whether this costume was really such a great idea after all. 'But then, Hermione said it was brilliant,' Harry thought to himself, his heart suddenly lighter. As he returned to the front room of Mrs. O'Connor's costume shop, he continuously pushed his visor up and forced his metal-encased legs to step laboriously forward, hoping to catch a glimpse of Hermione in whatever outfit it was she had chosen for herself.

Just as he turned a corner, Harry heard Hermione call his name in that oh-so-familiar way...just as his visor clamped shut over his eyes. His gloved hands struggled with his helmet valiantly, attempting to pry it open as best they could, but to no avail. Eventually he felt Hermione's hands cover his own and, after a few moments of awkward fumbling, they managed to shove the visor back to the top of the plumed helmet. Harry blinked his eyes furiously as they adjusted to the light and took in Hermione's form in front of him. "Well?" she asked, a twinge of nervousness entering her voice. "What do you think?"

Harry was speechless. Hermione wore a small straw hat with a red ribbon around it, a very frilly white silk blouse with buttons that held it tightly closed all the way from her neck down, and a very strange-looking set of baggy pants. "It's nice, Hermione. I like it," Harry lied. "But, uh, what exactly are you supposed to be?"

"I'm a suffragette," she announced, for all the world as though Harry should know what she was talking about. His confusion must have showed itself on his face, because Hermione looked at him with exasperation. "I'll tell you what it is later." She then stood back and took a good look at Harry dressed in what was now feeling very much like an oversized tin can. Hermione must have agreed, as she seemed to be stifling laughter. "You look very...dashing, Harry."

Harry suppressed a groan. The only thing 'dashing' about this costume so far as Harry was concerned was the dashing he'd be doing to get out of it, assuming he could even get his legs to move that fast. "I suppose the only thing left for us to do," Hermione mused thoughtfully, "is figure out how we're going to get this back to the Dursleys'."

If Hermione hadn't been here to do his thinking, Harry realized he would have been sunk. The thought of how to transport this clanky monstrosity away from the shop had never occurred to him, and the mint green moped that had carried them around for nearly a month clearly didn't have the room for it. "Maybe we shouldn't take it back to Privet Drive," Harry suggested, his mind wandering to the Dursleys' reaction as he lugged a suit of armour up and down their staircase. "Maybe we could stow it somewhere. Your house...or the Serpent's Tooth, maybe?"

A stormy look seemed to appear on Hermione's face for a moment, but then it disappeared. "Alright," she told him cheerfully, then turned and walked across the store to say something to Mrs. O'Connor. Harry took a long look at Hermione's suffragette outfit as it looked from behind and wondered idly what kind of outfit he had expected her to pick. 'Something very feminine and revealing, no doubt,' a somewhat Snape-like voice of cynicism resounded in his head. Harry shook his head as a half-smile formed on his lips. That just wouldn't have been Hermione's style.

"It's settled then," Hermione announced as she returned with Mrs. O'Connor in tow. "My mum will pick up the knight outfit tomorrow while we're out doing...other things." Hermione flushed suddenly and Harry's brow furrowed in confusion.

Harry walked to the front counter and paid for their costumes with galleons he had withdrawn from Gringotts earlier in the day. "I don't normally allow pick up for anyone other than the customer themselves," Mrs. O'Connor remarked somewhat airily, "but seeing as it is you, Mr. Potter, and she is your girlfriend..."

"She's not my..." Harry started, but then remembered their cover. "I mean, she is my..." But wait, did he need to maintain the illusion that they were dating (even though Harry no longer wanted it to be an illusion) for someone in the know about the wizarding world? And how on Earth did people with cover stories keep them straight? He suddenly felt a pang of sympathy for Snape, but suppressed it quickly. "Er, thanks," he finished awkwardly as he took the receipt from her hands.

As he returned to Hermione's side, Harry shot her a questioning glare. "So, just what are these 'other things' we'll be doing tomorrow?"

Hermione's cheeks went pink again and she let out a small sigh. "Well, I was going to save it for a birthday surprise," Hermione began tentatively, and Harry only now realized he had completely forgotten about his birthday being tomorrow. Where was all the time going? And why was he suddenly getting ideas about what he wanted this 'birthday surprise' to be? "But now...I suppose since you know something's up...oh, Harry, we're going to the Burrow!"