The heart. What is it? The simplest definition is that of an organ, needed to sustain life within a human. It is nothing more than a pulsing muscle, pumping blood throughout a living body. According to some. Others, however, believe that the heart spurns the feeling of love, that it is a peaceful thing that lives in a human in order to make them do the right thing. In truth, neither definitions are correct. Yes, a heart is an organ, and yes, feelings of love seem to “come from the heart,” but it is so much more than that. What is the heart in reality? The heart is a warrior. It fights. It bleeds. It screams. It dies. Like a soldier in a battle, it wrestles both internal and external conflict. Some are lucky. Their hearts rest peacefully, unbothered by a storm raging within them. Others are cursed with a discontented soul, constantly declaring war. It is their eyes that the anger and argument can be seen. It is in their ears that the war drums incessantly beat.

I can remember the faces of that year. They all looked so healthy, going into the castle, so full of life and excitement. Graduation. It was coming, wafted through the air like a scent from the kitchens. You could almost taste it when you ate the food, that promise that the world would soon lay itself down at your feet. It didn’t matter to me whether I had a destiny or not. At the beginning of that year, the only thing that I thought about was the fact that I would soon be free, soon be able to call myself a “wizard.” That, and the fact that he was gone. It wouldn’t be the same, that final stretch of my education. The hands that used to guide me were gone, erased by greed and evil. A top a tower the previous year, I had watched as the man that I most admired and respected was struck down by a hidden enemy. A hidden enemy by his standards, anyway. I had known for years that Snape was evil, and yet I had been able to do nothing. Dumbledore had been too convinced of his metamorphosis to believe me. And so he had passed, shot down by the corrupted Potions master as I looked on, unable to do anything. Yes, Hogwarts would certainly be different, I knew. Things would change, and I was prepared for that.

I was a fool not to foresee how drastic that change would be. Two forces, invisible to the human eye, would fight against me in the coming year. One would cause the death of a friendship, and spurn a betrayal unlike anything I could have ever imagined. The other would cause devastation and casualty greater than any the Wizarding world had ever experience. It would be the force that would tip the scales and send us spiraling into a war. And there I would be, in the center of it all, weak and to blame. Blame. It is something that was not new to me. I felt it burn me. Perhaps that could be the word to define the year.

No. No, that year was not painted by blame. Yes, it was what I felt. Yes, it lay with me. But the year itself was not defined by blame. There was another word needed for the seventh chime of the clock, for the year in which I walked through the castle doors for the seventh time.

Mortality.

It was cool, I remember, that first day that we walked back through those doors. The leaves twisted and contorted in different directions, spinning around us like spiders spinning webs. The wind tossed Hermione’s hair in front of her eyes, and she made an attempt to push it back in order to see. It wouldn’t help. It persisted to draw it in front of her face. Eventually, she would lower her arms and give up.

“It’s too bad you hang out with two boys, Hermione,” I said to her gently, “We don’t carry those elastic things you use to put your hair up.”

“Just leave it alone,” Ron told her as she made one final try to keep it behind her ear, “It looks fine.”

“It’s not how it looks, Ron,” she snapped at him, “It’s the fact that I can’t SEE anything!”

I suppressed a small chuckle at her misfortune. I could see Ron doing the same thing, and we exchanged glances over her head. We walked like that, silently laughing, until we reached the carriage waiting to take us up to the castle. Ron opened the door for Hermione and offered his hand to let her inside. I slid in after them, sitting on the opposite side to allow plenty of room for the two to hold hands. I still wasn’t sure how I felt about them. It was nice to see them happy, to see them enjoying each other’s company in the way that they were. Yet there was something that didn’t feel right about this. I knew that if something happened, if something occurred between the two of them, that I would be the one caught in the middle. I would be the one who acted as the mediator between two feuding beings, the best friend of two people who would never speak to one another again. How would I handle that? I had no idea. These and a million other thoughts were rushing through my head as I closed the door behind me.

“Finally,” Hermione exclaimed as she tamed her knotted hair with her fingers. Ron helped her, gently pulling the strands apart to make it easier to smooth. She was able to get most of it out of her face, and soon, the giant bush that had been resting on her head began to resemble human hair again.

“Sight!” she announced, and I let out a small laugh.

“Better?” I asked.

“Much.”

The carriage jolted as the thestrals started moving. The gentle roll of the wheels against the road made something flutter in the pit of my stomach. I didn’t know if it was a feeling of excitement or dread. With a deep breath, I let it slide by.

“You okay, Harry?” Hermione asked me earnestly. I nodded, my eyes focused on the floor. I was thinking of Dumbledore in those few seconds, and she could tell.

“It’s not going to be the same,” she said slowly.

“No,” I answered, “No, it isn’t.”

“We’ll be all right, though,” Ron attempted, trying to be reassuring, “I mean sure, Dumbledore’s gone. Things aren’t going to be the same. But we kind of expected that of our seventh year, right? It’s the year that everything supposed to change.”

“It wasn’t supposed to be this drastic,” Hermione said, “I just…I was expecting him to be there for all seven years. Now…well…”

“We’ve got to be adults now,” I finished for her, “He’s not there to protect us anymore. We’ve got to grow up.”

No one said anything else on the subject after that. I think I had pretty much summed everybody’s thoughts up in that one statement. For several moments, we tossed the idea of maturity around in our heads. It was almost like it was a concept too large to grasp for any of us. And yet I knew that I had already grasped it. It had come into my grip as I stood upon the tower, watching the man in whom I held the greatest respect die at the hands of someone he thought he could trust. I had held it that night as I stood over the dead body of my mentor, looking into the once wise, empty eyes of the greatest man I ever knew. Perhaps that grip had slipped momentarily on the week that I had moped over losing Ginny.

Ginny.

I regretted breaking up with her that day on the lake. Yet regardless of how I felt, I knew that I could never take back the things that I had told her. It was for her own protection, for the best. She wouldn’t be killed, not because I loved her. I wouldn’t let that happen. I thought that I was doing the best for both of us by letting her go. And, in some shadowy corner of my mind, I held onto the thought that she would come back to me when it was all over. I didn’t expect that she would move on so quickly. But I guess Neville Longbottom held some sort of hidden quality that she found instantly fascinating. What it was, I still don’t know.

“Have you spoken to Ginny at all?” Hermione asked me.

Speak of the devil.

“Not really, no,” I answered slowly.

“We were all in the same house this summer, Harry,” she pushed, “How could you not have spoken to her?”

“Well…I mean, we said “Hello,” and things like that,” I replied, “ But, if you’re asking if we had full-on conversations, then the answer would have to be…”

“Did you see Ginny around a lot, Hermione?” Ron interrupted.

“No, not really,” she told him.

“It’s because she wasn’t around a lot,” he explained, “I mean, yeah, she was at home, but she more or less hung out in the gardens and things like that. She basically stayed out there to avoid…well…

“To avoid me,” I finished for him.

“Yeah,” Ron said, “Yeah, basically. She just kinda…she went out there and she…”

“Read and wrote letters to Neville,” I finished again.

“Pretty much,” he breathed.

“Oh,” Hermione said, “Oh, I didn’t know that she and Neville were…talking. She never told me anything about it.”

“Did she ever talk romance with you at all?” I asked her. “Did she ever tell you anything, knowing that you were friends with me?”

“I figured that much out, thank you Harry,” Hermione snapped at me, and I backed off a little bit. I had just made a small jab at her intelligence, something you never did with Hermione. She always had things figured out, even before she talked about them.

“Does it bother you?” she asked.

“No,” I lied, trying to act nonchalant, “No, it doesn’t bother me. I was the one who broke up with her, after all. She deserves to be happy.”

“Oh come on, Harry, admit it,” Ron pushed.

“Admit what?”

“That it’s killing you, mate!”

“It is not killing me, Ron.”

“Oh, please, Harry.”

“I’m fine.”

“You mean a fine liar.”

I broke.

“OKAY! OKAY!” I shouted, “It upsets me, all right? I just…I try not to think about it.”

Both of them stared at me intently, as if they expected me to explode on the spot. I took to looking out the window, avoiding their eyes. We were nearing the castle, pulling past Hogsmeade and now rolling gently along the hill that led up to the front gate. Ron made a small popping noise with his lips. I could have killed him.

“What did you think about The Prophet this morning?” Hermione asked, breaking the awkward silence that hovered over the carriage like a cloud.

“Didn’t read it,” Ron said honestly, “You know I’m only half awake in the morning, Hermione.”

“You know, you can be so ignorant sometimes?” Hermione told him.

“Yeah, I know,” he said, and he looked out her softly, “You still love me anyway right?”

She rolled her eyes playfully, and then gave him a small kiss on the lips. I made a point to look away.

“Did you read it, Harry?” she questioned.

“Not really, no,” I replied, and I looked back at her, “I caught the front page. It was something about a sighting of Voldemort out in the countryside. Complete rubbish, Hermione. Why do even keep reading it? It’s just turned into a forum for paranoid writers too scared to write about anything other than the Second War and Dumbledore’s death.”

“Well, there was a certain article that drew my attention,” Hermione informed Ron and me, “It said that Ministry officials believe that the Death Eaters may be plotting a massive attack on some public building. They don’t know where and they don’t know how, but they think that Voldemort may have created a weapon capable of unleashing a terror unknown to any in the Wizarding or muggle world.”

“And you believe this?” I asked her, my eyebrows raised.

“Well, yes,” she said, “We’ve got to be able to put our faith in something, Harry. Otherwise, we’re all done for.”

“Put your faith in something other than that paper, Hermione,” I told her, “Like I said before, it’s written by terrified journalists who don’t know which way to turn in order to find safety.”

“What if they’re right?” she asked.

“Well, it’s a pretty good possibility they are,” I said, “I mean, we know that the war is on. We know that Voldemort wants to kill as many people as he can. It’s logical to believe that there’s gonna be an attack. The only real question is where.”

“That’s my point!” Hermione said, “Where do you think he’s going to go?”

“I don’t know,” I replied, now getting irritated, “If I knew that, I would be a Seer, not an aspiring Auror.”

“I’m thinking Hogwarts,” she stated bluntly. Ron looked at her sideways, and I could see a small amount of fear in his face. I shook my head.

“It’s too secure.”

“No,” Hermione said, “No it’s not, Harry. Think about it. Dumbledore’s gone.”

“We’re still protected by charms and spells on every single side and at every single angle on the castle,” I argued.

“Easily broken if you’re as powerful as Voldemort is,” she retorted.

“Why would they want to attack Hogwarts anyway?” I asked her, “I mean, there aren’t any real powerful wizards here. Sure, McGonagall, but that’s nothing. Why attack a bunch of teenagers instead of the entire Order of the Phoenix or Ministry of Magic?’

“Because the death of their children would be the biggest blow either organization could receive,” Hermione said, sending a chill wafting through the carriage. It crept up my spine and spiraled it’s way up my body. “If Voldemort can do away with an Auror’s pride and joy, then he has just killed their soul and their will to live. That would be the way to win this war, by weakening the force that drives the offense. Attacking Hogwarts would give him that power. That, and the fact that…”

“I’m here,” I said.

“Yes.”

The carriage came to a stop before we could finish the conversation. As the door opened to let us out, Hermione made a point of looking at me.

“I’m still not all that worried,” I told her.

“I don’t want you to be worried,” she said, “I’m just telling you what I read.”

Ron hopped out, and extended his hand to help Hermione out of the carriage.

“You sure know how to dampen a mood,” Ron told her, and she smiled up at him.

“Thanks,” she replied. Before they kissed, I turned my back and walked over to where the thestrals were standing.

“Nice ride today,” I said to the creature as it stood there. It cocked its head and looked at me, as if surprised that I could see it.

“Yeah,” I said to it, “I can see you. And I wish I couldn’t.”

“HARRY!” Hermione called to me. I gave the thestral a final “Thank you” and ran to join my friends.

“What were you doing?” Ron asked me.

“I was…thanking the thestrals for the ride today,” I explained, “Yeah, I know…it’s cheesy.”

“Not cheesy,” Ron reassured me, “A little crazy, but not cheesy.”

“Thanks,” I said, and I gave him a small punch in the arm. We headed up the castle steps and through the open doors.

Instantly, I felt the wave of change hit me like water hit the shore. It was nearly enough to bring me to my knees as I entered the halls of the castle. They were empty somehow, part of their warmth erased and replaced with a chill. As the Great Hall erupted before my eyes, I noticed the black drapes that hung over the tables. They mimicked those used after the death of Cedric Diggory, but with one small difference. They were traces of purple on them, stitches of violet stars outlining the edges of the material.

“For leadership, do you think?” Hermione asked. I felt myself nod. We took our seats in silence.

“Good evening,” Professor McGonagall’s voice bellowed over the tables and heads. The room grew silent.

“To our new faces, welcome,” she said, “To the old, welcome back. Before we begin, let us observe a moment of silence for the passing of our great Headmaster, Albus Dumbledore. Please, bow you heads.”

I bowed my head for a few moments and allowed my eyes to wander. McGonagall still sat in her normal seat, Dumbledore’s left untouched. It was as if he was still there, and just running late for the feast. That, I decided, was the way it should be. I also noticed there was no Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher present. Snape had yet to be replaced. I grimaced at the thought of the murderer’s name, and pushed the image of his face from my mind. I drew my gaze to the Slytherin table. No blonde, greasy-haired boy could be seen sitting there either. Malfoy had slipped away with Snape the night that Dumbledore had died. I felt the anger well up inside me, and forced it back down.

“Thank you,” McGonagall said, and there was a wave of lifting heads from the hall, “And now, let the Sorting Ceremony begin.”

The first years advanced, their timid bodies shaking in anticipation. I watched a tear fall from one small girl’s eyes.

“I’m glad that the school didn’t close and that we came back,” Hermione told me, and I nodded. Hogwarts couldn’t have closed, I decided. It was the one place where we felt safe. I hadn’t wanted to come back this year, argued with everyone that it was time I fulfilled my destiny. It was Hermione who had convinced me that a final year would only make me stronger in my ability to defeat Voldemort. So, I had agreed to come back for one final lesson before setting out to defeat my enemy.

I looked around the hall in an attempt to lighten the darkness threatening to settle over my heart. I caught sight of Ginny, seated beside Neville a little further down the table. Our eyes met for a short period of time, and I saw her wave at me. I returned the gesture. I can remember the one thought running through my mind at that time.

I will always be alone.

Morning. It dawned too early for me. My eyes stung with sleep as the light cast a shadow across my bed. My head felt heavy, like a boulder, and all I wanted to do was put it back down on the pillow and fall back into dreaming. I groaned as I unwillingly pushed myself up off of the mattress and slung my feet over the side of the bed. I searched for my slippers, hiding just out of my reach, and realized that I had left them somewhere in my trunk. With a sigh of exhaustion, I heaved myself out of the bed and shuffled over to my luggage. Yawning, I opened the trunk and drew out my clothes. Shirt over head. Pull on pants. Tie shoes. I attempted to smooth my hair out, knowing that it was for nothing. It would stick up either way. I looked around the common room to see Neville, still lying asleep in his bed. With a jealous smile, I made my way to the staircase and set one foot down on the stair. Then, turning around, I whistled as loud as I could.

“I’M UP!” Neville shouted, his speech slurred. I found myself chuckling as I made my way down to the common room. Neither Hermione nor Ron was there, and I assumed that they had gone down to breakfast. Not wanting to run into Neville as he clumsily made his arrival into the room, I swept from the dormitory and out of the portrait.

I felt someone catch my foot as I mounted the moving staircase, and turned around slightly. I sorely wished I hadn’t. There, standing behind me and looking as tired as myself, was Ginny. Her hair was pulled back halfway, her eyes glinting with a certain morning beauty. She gave me an awkward smile, which I returned, and then looked down at her feet.

“Hello Harry,” she said, her voice muffled. I could tell she was uncomfortable. She probably wasn’t as uncomfortable as I was, though. I couldn’t even find my voice. I simply waved.

“Nice morning, isn’t it?” she asked.

Nothing came out. I nodded.

“I overslept,” she explained, “Found myself rushing to get out of the dormitory.”

“Yeah,” I croaked, happy that words were able to come again, “Yeah, me too.”

“Funny.”

There was silence. She found a fascination with her shoelaces. I admired the ceiling.

“Nice day,” I said.

“Yeah,” she replied, “I already said that.”

“Oh.”

Silence again.

“How’s Neville?” I asked, with a certain sneer in my voice. She seemed to come alive.

“He’s great,” she explained, “He’s very nice to me. We have fun, him and me. We can talk about a lot of different things and he…er…he certainly knows his plants.”

“Takes a special guy to know all those facts about plants,” I said rudely. She gave me a sharp look.

“Well, that was nice,” she spat. I bit my tongue and said nothing. She leaned up against the banister, watching the floor below us move closer and closer. I began to bounce my knee up and down in anticipation of getting off of the stairs. I thought I might kiss the ground when we got there.

“Sorry,” I said shortly. She didn’t reply to that. I drummed my fingers along the marble, praying to be delivered from this situation. I found myself wishing for a Killing Curse to strike me in that moment. It would have been better than the awkward circumstance I was currently facing.

We landed, and I felt myself breathe again. I let her pass by first, and walked down slowly. I wanted plenty of space to be between us when we got off of the staircase.

“See you later, then,” was all that she said, and I watched her enter the Great Hall. Waiting a few seconds to allow her to get ahead of me, I took a deep breath and followed behind her. Ron and Hermione were sitting two tables away, and I slumped into a seat across from them.

“You look like you just got slapped,” Ron said.

“Might as well have been,” I told him, and began to fill my plate with pieces of bacon. Hermione lifted an eyebrow.

“This wouldn’t have anything to do with Ginny coming in just before you, would it?” she asked. I answered her by viciously flopping eggs down with a spoon. A portion flew through the air and landed in Ron’s hair. He drew it out slowly.

“I’m guessing that’s a yes,” he stated, and I smirked at him.

“You guessed right.”

“Well, did she say anything to you?” Hermione pressed, and I sat back and gave a fake laugh.

“Yeah,” I explained, “She said Neville’s fascination with plants has her absolutely hypnotized.”

“Did she really?” Ron asked, “”Cause if that’s the case, I’m really going have to talk to her.”

I filled my mouth with food, hoping to avoid any further commentary on the subject. I could tell Ron still wanted to talk about it, but Hermione moved faster than he did. She picked up on my wanting to drop it, and so moved on.

“Schedules should be coming in soon,” she said, “I really do hope they didn’t cancel my Ancient Runes class. I didn’t see Professor Babbling at the table last night, and she’s not there this morning.”

“Oh God, that would be a tragedy now, wouldn’t it?” Ron remarked. Hermione shot him an angry look. I said nothing.

“Still don’t know who the Defense teacher is,” she continued, “There’s still no one up at the Staff Table.”

“Think they still have it?” I asked, swallowing a bit of pumpkin juice. Hermione gave me a look that could have made Professor McGonagall think she was an imbecile.

“Of course they do, Harry,” she huffed, “Honestly, what do you think? What with Voldemort growing stronger and the death of Dumbledore, I’m surprised it’s not the ONLY subject they’re teaching here.”

“Well, we need a damn good professor, that’s for sure,” I remarked. She nodded, and I looked over at Ron. He was watching her, like he always does in the mornings. Studying her hair, tracing her face into his memory. I found myself missing moments like that, and then looked back down at my plate. I took a sudden fascination in the intricate decoration on the sides of the china.

There was a sudden fluttering of wings above us, and we looked up to see that the ceiling was now completely blocked out by the flight patterns of various colored owls. A brown, dusty looking one dropped a course schedule into Ron’s lap. Hermione and I received ours within a matter of seconds. Other parcels of various sizes could be seen plopping onto students’ laps. Colin Creevey pulled a mysterious-looking cloak out of his own box, and explained to us that his mother had sent it to him in hopes of scaring away werewolves. Seamus Finnigan was holding an amulet upside down in his hand, examining his reflection in the gem. I guessed that his gift was for the same reason as Colin’s. It was then that I took an opportunity to look around again.

I noticed then that nearly half of the school was missing, detained over the summer by fear of Voldemort’s rising power. The death of Dumbledore hadn’t helped to calm anybody’s nerves, and many were probably feeling that Hogwarts was no longer safe. Deep in the corners of my own heart, I knew they were right. Hermione’s words of the previous night had had an impact on me, and I realized that we were a ticking time bomb. The only question that remained was when we would explode. Only the forces working against us knew that, and they weren’t letting on to anything. A matter of time…that’s all it would be.

I pushed these thoughts out of my mind as Ron ripped open his envelope. He made a confused face at the paper, and then looked over at Hermione. Her eyes were viciously scanning her classes, not doubt looking for her Ancient Runes class. I followed suit and tore my own schedule out from it’s packaging.

“We’ve got Double Transfiguration on FRIDAYS?” Ron whined, holding up his paper in disgust. I groaned with him, dreading the idea of McGonagall for three whole hours on the last day of the week. I looked down at my schedule with a glare…and then lifted my head up.

“You said you have it on Friday afternoon?” I asked, confused.

“Yeah,” he replied, “God, how are we supposed to stay awake during that class? I mean, really!”

“I don’t have that on Friday,” Hermione said, and I shook my head.

“Yeah,” I said, “Yeah, me neither.”

“Wait, what?” Ron asked, shaking his head in confusion. He made a grab for Hermione’s schedule, and then looked back up at her.

“We don’t have Transfiguration OR Potions together,” he said to her. He took a look at mine. Same result.

“What’s this all about, then?” he asked. “I mean, honestly. We’ve always had classes together. You have classes with your year. That’s how it works.”

“You didn’t get bad marks,” I interjected as Hermione made one last look at Ron’s schedule.

“No!” he exclaimed, “No, my marks were better than they’ve ever been!”

“Let me see yours, Harry,” Hermione demanded, and I gave them to her while still attempting to sort through the matter with Ron. We kept going on about how unfair it was, how it had to be some sort of mistake that they had made. We started blaming teachers and staff members. Ron went as far to curse McGonagall.

“Never liked me, she didn’t,” he spat, “I knew that the moment we defeated that troll. She looked at me like I was one of its bogies that had gotten thrown on the floor.”

“I don’t understand this,” I said angrily, “How can you not be with us? It’s almost as if they forgot to put your name in with the seventh years?”

“You would think having our Head of House as the HEAD OF THE SCHOOL would help!”

“It’s for security reasons.”

Ron looked at Hermione sideways, almost surprised at the sound of her voice. She had been sitting there for nearly ten minutes as we had continued blabbering on and on about how screwed up everything was. Hermione looked back at him and made a face as if to ask “What, moron?”

“Come again?”

“It’s to make the school more secure,” she reiterated, looking at me.

“How exactly is keeping me out of a class with my best friends going to keep us more secure?” Ron asked.

“It’s not that, Ron. Obviously, they’ve split the classes in half by numbers. Just look at the facts logically.”

“How?”

“Seamus!” Hermione called across the table. Seamus looked up from his schedule rather quickly. She held her hand out, gesturing for him to hand it to her. He tossed it across the table, and it fluttered down on top of the plate of muffins. She dusted it off and pointed words out to Ron.

“You have the same schedule as Seamus,” she explained, “Potions on Tuesday, Double Transfiguration on Friday. I…” she made a grab for my schedule, which she had placed next to her glass, “Have the same schedule as Harry; Potions on Friday, Double Transfiguration on Monday. And while you’re in Double Transfiguration, Harry and I also have Charms and vice versa.”

“So basically…”

“We have Defense Against the Dark Arts together, and all of our single core classes together,” she finished for him, “It’s these two that are flip-flopped.”

“So all of the classes have been made smaller for security purposes?” Seamus asked.

“Precisely,” Hermione said.

“That’s so DUMB!” Ron uttered, pounding his fist down on the table. His fork flew into the air as his palm came down on it. I made an attempt to catch it, but I heard it clatter onto the ground before I had a chance to get my hand high enough.

“It’s sensible,” Hermione said, “They can keep a closer watch on us that way.”

“You don’t seem to upset about this,” Ron said, rather rudely. Hermione looked at him sharply.

“I’m not going to sit and blubber about it, no,” she stated bluntly, “It’s a bit of inconvenience, but it’s not something to set and whine about.”

“Easy for you to say,” Ron said, “Your not alone.”

“It’ll be fine, Ron,” I reassured him, but I was feeling a pit in my stomach as well. I had never not had a class with Ron at Hogwarts, and I felt as if part of me would be missing. Sure, it was only for a couple of hours but still…it wouldn’t be the same.

You’ve got to stop saying that.

The clock on the tower outside chimed the hour. It was time to depart for classes. Ron groaned and grabbed his schedule and another piece of toast. He muttered viciously under his breath and slung his bag over his shoulder with a huff. Seamus moved to follow him.

“See you after class,” I told him. He rolled his eyes.

“Yeah,” he said, “See you both.”

They both became lost in the crowd of students making their way out the doors. I waited as Hermione collected her things and downed the rest of her juice.

“I swear,” she said, “Sometimes, he can be such a girl.”

“Hey, you ARE one,” I reminded her.

“I can readily except the fact that we can be emotionally unstable,” she retorted, “And I’ll be the first one to tell you that we’re moody. I’ve just never seen a boy possess all of those qualities and display them at one time like Ron does.”

“That’s your boyfriend for you,” I teased. She hit me as we made our way up the staircases and into McGonagall’s room. She had yet to come into the classroom, and we took a seat next to one another and looked around at our class.

Hermione had been right. The number of students was considerably smaller, with nearly half the desks left vacant and untouched. I noticed that Dean was in our class and, to my dismay, Neville as well. He waved at me awkwardly, and I gave him a small smile in return. We were in with some of the Hufflepuffs as well. I spotted Ernie Macmillan in the corner. He was exceptionally happy to see Hermione and me. Justin Finch-Flechey was here too.

Great, I thought, Just great.

The door opened, and Professor McGonagall swept into the room. She briskly walked up to the front of the classroom, a pile of books slipping and sliding in her arms. She put them down hastily on her desk and pushed her glasses up to the brim of her nose.

“Welcome back, everyone,” she said, and both Hermione and I could hear the exhaustion strung throughout her voice. Wonderful. She was tired. That would make for an interesting talk.

“As you can see, we are not nearly as full as we normally are,” she explained, “This is due to the fact that we are cutting down our class size in order to keep a more careful eye on the students and their activities.”

“And the prize is awarded to you once again,” I whispered in Hermione’s ear. I watched her chuckle quietly and then gaze back up at McGonagall.

“I can assure you that as a seventh-year class, I am going to be assigning much harder work this term,” she explained. Dean groaned, and Neville’s shoulders sagged downward. I felt Hermione rise up a little in the seat next to me, undoubtedly delighted at the idea of a challenge. I sighed to myself, but McGonagall heard me. She gave me a sharp look and continued to speak.

“These rigorous activities should not be taken lightly,” she warned, “They are designed to prepare you in any and all ways for any predicaments you may one day find yourselves in. In a time of war, one must know Transfiguration in order to survive. It has saved many witches’ and wizards’ lives over the years, and I hope that none of you in here believe it to be of any less value than Defense Against the Dark Arts.”

Hermione’s hand shot up like a rocket. Professor McGonagall responded with a nod of the head.

“Will we be doing any human transfiguration, Professor?” she asked. Several students straightened in their chairs. McGonagall nodded.

“Yes, Ms. Granger, we will indeed be doing human transfiguration this term,” she replied, “It is a key theme to a N.E.W.T. level class such as this one. We’ll be practicing with partners…but that will be much later in the year.”

I saw Dean’s eyes go wide with panic. He knew that he would probably be partnered with Neville, and that meant something to worry about. Nearly everyone in the class knew that Neville was not capable of great magic. McGonagall had only allowed him into this class because she saw what she called “potential” in him. It was something to admit…the kid had great determination…but still. When there was a risk that may have involved being a komodo dragon for the rest of eternity, you grew a little scared when the person changing you into the dragon didn’t know what they were doing. I found myself extremely thankful of Hermione and her wits at that moment. I just prayed that she wouldn’t hate me forever if I couldn’t change her from a toad back into a person. That would be the epitome of horrible.

“Now, for today, we’re going to practice transforming the lizard that has been placed under your desk into a snake,” McGonagall said, “Do you all think you can do that?”

There were several “Yes’s” and one firm “No!” from Neville. The girls moved back from their desk as they realized there was a lizard crawling somewhere beneath them. I reached under and drew out a small cage with the lizard inside.

“The incantation is simply “Serpentersaurasum!” McGonagall shouted. Immediately, we drew our wands.

“Swish your wand in an “S” shape movement and flick it at the lizard,” she told us. We tried.

My lizard’s tail grew longer, but otherwise remained unaltered. I made another try. Nothing.

“Focus on what you want it to be,” Hermione told me. I saw that she still had not touched her wand.

“Aren’t you going to try?” I asked.

“I’ve got to wait until I’m ready,” she explained. She stared at the lizard for a few more moments.

“Visualize it first, then act,” she said, and I watched as she moved her wand into the S and flicked it. The lizard contorted. It’s body stretched outwards and its eyes began to flatten. Within ten seconds of her wand work, the snake on the desk was slithering over Hermione’s palms. She moved her hands back as it began to chase her arms.

“Leave her alone,” I whispered to it. Neville heard me speaking Parseltongue, but he didn’t say a single word. The snake turned to look at me and then curled around the leg of Hermione’s desk and didn’t move. I took a deep breath and pictured a small garden snake in my head. Waving my wand, I made the motion. S. Flick.

The snake on the desk cocked its head to look at me. I watched its eyes trace over my face as if it were trying to acquaint itself with me. Hermione gave me a sideways look, and I shrugged and met its gaze. It stuck its tongue out into the air as if to taste my smell.

“Danger” it hissed, and I blinked. Hermione placed a hand on my arm, silently asking me to translate. I couldn’t. Not yet.

“Excuse me?” I asked, hoping it would finish what it had to say.

“ Danger lurks in the corners of the castle,” it said.

“How do you know?”

“I can smell it.”

Without another hiss, it followed the desk leg down and remained still. I looked back at Hermione, whose face was contorted in confusion. She was desperate to understand.

“Harry, what just happened?”

“I’m not completely sure,” I said, “But I think you might have been right about that attack, Hermione. I think you might be onto something.”

I stayed after class that day.

Weeks began to pass by, and nothing had come of what the snake had said. I began to slowly forget about its subtle warning. I had to. Seventh year had brought with it a homework pile as tall as the North Tower itself, and I was ready to go out of my skin with stress. There was no time to brood over whether or not Voldemort would come bursting through the door to kill us all.

Ron was having a rough time of it. Normally, all three of us would be working on our Transfiguration and Potions homework together. However, McGonagall and Slughorn had both come to an absolution that would change things dramatically. Seeing as they now had four different classes to survey, and seeing as there was great incentive for cheating, they had decided to switch their course order around. McGonagall had begun with a different unit for Ron’s class then for ours. Slughorn had done the same. We never had any of the same homework or the same assignments, and it was enough to make his blood boil. What was more, he had been extremely short with Hermione lately.

“I just don’t understand it!” he shouted one particular morning. Hermione was in the middle of cutting her waffles, and jumped as Ron’s fist collided with the upside of the table.

“What?” she asked, pulling her plate closer to her.

“This whole ‘let’s be safer’ thing!” he replied, “I mean, why do you have to separate the three of us? And why me, of all people?!”

“You’ve always been the lucky one,” I joked, but there was no laugh. Ron merely shot me a look as if to tell me to shut up. I looked back down at my plate of pancakes without another word. Clearly, teasing wasn’t going to make him feel any better. I watched him stab a piece of bacon firmly with his fork.

“It just doesn’t seem fair that I’m always the one who comes up short of something,” he said, “I mean, I hardly see you guys anymore! You’re always in the library working on your Transfiguration assignments, and I’m somewhere else working on Potions.”

“You could work on your Potions in the library with us,” Hermione interrupted. Ron glanced at her quickly, and then continued.

“It’s not like I can just bring my vials in there and make Madame Pince happy!” he hollered, “She’d kill me with all those concoctions leaking everywhere!”

“So you work on your written assignments in there with us,” Hermione said. Ron’s fists clenched and then unclenched. I swallowed my mouthful of food and then stuffed another bite down my throat so as to prevent any opportunity for comment.

“I’m working with Seamus on them, Hermione!” he said, “We both help each other out!”

“So bring Seamus with you!”

“Four’s a crowd!”

“Since when?”

Ron didn’t say anything else, but merely took to mumbling. I thought I heard him say something about Seamus and how he didn’t particularly care for him, but I couldn’t be sure. Hermione rolled her eyes at her grumbling boyfriend and went back to eating her breakfast. I took a swig of my pumpkin juice and looked back up at Ron.

“You looking forward to the Quidditch season?” I asked him. He sighed and stared at the ceiling.

“Dunno, Harry,” he said, “I was thinking that I might not go out for it this year.”

“Why? “ I asked earnestly. He had to be kidding. There was no way he was telling the truth.

“Not really that interested anymore,” he replied, “I’m not that good, and you don’t really need me.”

“We do so!” I shouted, “You’re…you’re our Keeper! The Hell we don’t need you!”

“You can find another Keeper,” he told me.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Ron,” Hermione interjected, “You love Quidditch. You’d be a prat if you didn’t try out again!”

And without warning, Ron rounded on her, pouncing like some kind of wild beast. I was so taken aback, I nearly fell out of my chair.

“WOULD YOU JUST SHUT UP?!” he hollered at her, and his voice attracted the attention of several students behind us, “YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT I WANT, SO YOU CAN JUST KEEP QUIET ABOUT IT, ALL RIGHT? I CAN MAKE MY OWN DECISIONS!! AND I DON’T ENJOY YOU CALLING ME A PRAT…SO DON’T! JUST KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT!”

He heaved in a ton of air, recuperating from his shouting fit. Hermione just sat there, and it seemed that she couldn’t decide whether to cry, laugh, or slap him straight across the face. She was frozen, looking nearly Petrified. She looked at me, hoping that I would say something. I didn’t disappoint her.

“Ron,” I said, and my voice nearly caught in my throat, “She didn’t…she wasn’t literally calling you a prat. She was just…she just didn’t want you to do something you’d regret…she’s doing what…”

“Oh, put a cork in it, Harry!” Ron snapped. My brow furrowed in confusion. He’d been fine a minute ago. What was prompting this sudden spurt of anger?

“Ron,” Hermione said, her voice small and reserved, “calm down, all right? You were fine a minute ago, so why the sudden spurt of fury?”

“You’re both sitting here, trying to tell me what I want,” he said, and his voice was calmer, but still laced with fury. “There’s a key word in there…I. Me. I get to decide. And neither of you are in my classes anymore…”

“We’re in two of your classes!” Hermione blurted out. Ron ignored her.

“So you have no right in telling me what I want to do,” he continued as though she hadn’t spoken, “I don’t want to do Quidditch. I don’t want to come to the library. I don’t want any of it.”

“We were just giving suggestions, Ron,” I told him, “We were telling you different things that you could do so that we could hang out more.”

“Yeah, okay,” he said, but he didn’t seem convinced. Hermione glanced at him sideways.

“There’s something that’s really bothering you, isn’t there?”

“I…no,” he said finally, “Everything’s fine.”

“You sure?” I asked.

He didn’t answer for a minute, as if battling with himself. In his mind, something was whirring back and forth, and it was killing him. He didn’t know whether to act on it or not. Hermione and I both could see it, and began to grow nervous.

“What is it, Ron?” Hermione asked, “I mean, whether we’ve been separated of not, we’re still your best friends. And I’m still…”

“I’ll talk to you guys later,” he said, and he picked up his bag and stood up. He kissed Hermione briskly on the cheek, and began to set off down the table.

“But we have Defense next!” I shouted after him. He continued walking, as if I hadn’t said anything. I looked at Hermione, my eyes full of confusion and surprise. She shrugged and scooped up the last bit of her food left on her plate. I looked at her questioningly.

“That didn’t upset you?” I asked her earnestly. She chewed her food quickly, swallowed, and wiped her mouth.

“Sure it did,” she said, “A bit, anyway.”

“Hermione, he went at you like he was going to kill you!” I reminded her, “He’s your boyfriend…he shouldn’t be doing that!”

“He’s frustrated,” she told me, “I know that, and I’m giving him time to recover from it all.”

“It started from nothing!”

“He’s fine, Harry. He just…he needs time.”

She picked up her bag and looked up at the clock on the wall. I followed her gaze. It was time for class. Hurriedly, I drank the last bit of my pumpkin juice and stood up with her.

“He’ll probably be fine once we get in class,” she assured me, and I nodded. But somehow, I was doubtful.

Ron was sitting next to Seamus when we walked in. There were two open seats next to him, and I saw Lavender hustle over and take one just before we arrived. I took a small, secret glance over at Hermione. She didn’t seemed phased by it. Instead, she marched right over to her and smiled.

“Good morning Lavender,” she said, showing her white teeth in the most pleasurable way. I nearly laughed at her. Lavender snapped her eyes up, reacting like a mouse caught in a trap.

“Oh, hello there, Hermione,” she replied, and she stood up, “I was just discussing some…homework with Ron here.”

“I’m sure,” Hermione chuckled, and she took the now vacant seat, “You guys enjoying Transfiguration this year?”

“Yes,” Lavender said, and I thought she was about to turn around and return to her seat. She had started walking backwards, away from the seat. And then, she added another comment about Transfiguration.

“Ron and I are partners, did you know that?” she asked, and I could almost hear the sharp blade inserted into the words. Hermione merely blinked. I couldn’t help but admire her grace at that moment.

“Nope,” she said, “No, Ron hadn’t mentioned that. He told me that he and Seamus were working together.”

“Sometimes,” Ron told her, and she whirred around to look at him.

“Well of course,” she said, “I didn’t expect you to work with the same person all of the time.”

“It’s not very often he works with Seamus,” Lavender continued, “It’s more me than anybody else.”

“Harry, would you please sit down?” Hermione asked. It was more of a demand than anything else. I nodded, and made my way over to the vacant chair.

“Nice talking to you, Lavender,” Hermione said to Lavender, signaling an end to the conversation.

“You too,” Lavender replied, “See you after class, Ron.”

And she left, leaving Ron to explain himself.

“She’s just my partner for a few things,” he assured her.

“I’m sure,” she replied, and she didn’t say anything else. I nearly felt myself laugh at Ron’s discomfort. After all, he deserved it.

Why would you think that? I asked myself, Ron’s your best mate.

The door to the classroom opened slowly, and Professor Lupin emerged. He looked tired and worn, a sign that the full moon had only just passed, but I knew the lesson would be interesting nonetheless. Ron, Hermione, and I had been extremely pleased when we had learned he was teaching again. McGonagall had sent a plea to the parents, asking permission for him to return. She had made it clear to them that he was the most capable Defense teacher, and that he was entirely safe when controlled by a wolfs bane potion. After a handful of Howlers and a few interrogative owls, it had been decided by a slim majority that Lupin could in fact return to teach at Hogwarts. And where some of the Slytherins would groan and complain, the Gryffindors were more than happy to have him back.

“Good morning everyone,” he said cordially, and there were a few murmured “Good morning’s” and “Hello professor’s.” Our table said nothing, and I found it a bit unusual. I took an opportunity to glance over at Ron and Hermione. They were refusing to look at one another, merely staring at Lupin’s back with an intensity I would sure would cause him to implode in an instant. I felt an uneasiness enter into the pit of my stomach. They were drifting, I realized, and it wasn’t going to be easy. I had known that something of this caliber would occur, had only been thinking about it nearly a week ago. And here it was, happening now. How would they get through it? Would they turn out to be stronger because of it? Or would their friendship die as the candle of their relationship was extinguished? I had no way of knowing how anything would turn out. And I didn’t want to think about it.

“Today, we’ll be discussing the Patronus charm,” Lupin told us, and I heard a shuffling in the seats behind me. Neville, seated just two rows in front of me, glanced backwards. He gave me a quick smile and a thumbs up, which I returned stiffly. The sting of Ginny and Neville had begun to deaden as my heart began to let go, but I could still feel the wound open every now and again. It wasn’t terrible today, though. Hermione nudged my arm, and I took a deep breath and silently thanked her for her comforting gesture.

“Can someone tell me what the Patronus Charm is used for?” Lupin asked, and seven hands went into the air, including my own and Neville’s. Lupin smiled, and called on the latter.

“Patronuses help to repel Dementors,” Neville told the class.

“Excellent,” Lupin said, “Five points to Gryffindor. Now, can anyone tell me what Patronuses look like?”

The seven hands shot up again. I was allowed to answer this time.

“It depends on the wizard who conjures it,” I said, “They’re different for everyone. A skilled wizard can conjure one with a shape that looks sort of like an animal. Some look like otters, and others might resemble stags. And then there are certain wizards who can only conjure wisps of silver clouds.”

I saw Neville shuffle nervously in his seat, and I felt a slight pang of guilt in my gut. I had meant to hurt him, but regretted that decision instantly.

“Good, Harry,” Lupin said, and he did not reward me points. He knew that I knew the information all too well, and so he didn’t feel as though I was using knowledge I’d received on my own. “You would be correct. Patronuses take shape for wizards who have practiced them or have the knowledge of how to conjure one. And in order for a Patronus to be conjured, what must be done?”

Hermione’s hand was first in the air. I laughed at her as she waved it incessantly around. Lupin called on her, and as she brought her hand down, she slapped me playfully on the hand.

“You have to think of an exceptionally happy moment and speak the words Expecto Patronum! with force and strength,” she replied.

“Well, I see you’ve all been taught well,” Lupin said, “Take ten points, Hermione!”

“Thank you sir,” she said, and she looked at me admirably, “We did have a good teacher.”

I smiled at her, and felt something flip in my stomach. It was excitement for the class. Wasn’t it?

“We’re going to begin to work today on conjuring a Patronus itself,” Lupin announced to the class, “No real practice will be done with Dementors anytime in the near future, but it’s best to know how to do it. If you would all rise and form a circle around the room please.”

We obeyed without hesitation. Each student hustled to find an adequate place to stand. The Slytherins separated themselves from us as usual. Neville frantically attempted to stand by me, and I found myself feeling uncomfortable. Hermione saw it, and took the liberty of standing on my other side. I nodded at her in thanks, and watched Ron. Surprisingly, he wasn’t rushing to stand with Hermione or me. Instead, he was dawdling in the back, and coincidentally found himself sandwiched between Seamus and Lavender. He shrugged at me, and I returned it with a small shake of my head. I’d ask him about it later.

“Think I’m ready to impress people, Harry?” Neville asked me anxiously. I gave him a small chuckle and swallowed the lump rising in my throat.

“Of course, Neville,” I told him, “You’ve had more experience than most of the people here.”

“You think?”

“ I know.”

“Wands at the ready please!” Lupin announced, and we all lifted our wands high in the air. Hermione glanced at me and gave a small wink, which I returned with a friendly smirk.

“Now… Expecto Patronum!“ Lupin announced.

“Expecto Patronum!”

The room erupted into silver clouds. A beautiful silver otter shot out of the end of Hermione’s wand, and it galloped around her in circles, stirring up her hair. My stag chased after it playfully, dancing and prancing in glory. I could barely see Ron through the wisp of silver and was unable to see if he had conjured an animal yet. Lavender was struggling to get anything to come out of her wand. Neville…well, Neville impressed me.

His Patronus did not form into any kind of animal, but it had begun to shape something before it disappeared. I gave him a pat on the back as the haze of the room began to dissipate.

“Excellent!” Lupin announced, “I saw great progress there! Tremendous effort, all of you!”

“I saw an otter!” Parvati Patil announced, and she looked around the room for a reaction. There were a few nods of agreement, and I saw Hermione blush beside me. Ron looked at her, nodded, and then looked back at Lupin.

“Up for another go, everybody?” he asked, and there several excited “yes’s.”

“All right then,” he said, “Try again, then!" he uttered

“ Expecto Patronum!”

My eyes snapped onto Ron, and I watched as the Patronus exploded from his wand. The cloud of silver swirled upwards toward the ceiling. There, it began to gather into a shape. I caught Hermione looking too, and her eyes grew wide with mine. There, sliding and slithering through the air, was a serpent. And it’s fangs were showing in it’s open mouth.

We left Defense class with puffs of silver mist caught in our hair. Hermione walked out without Ron and waited for me at the door. We had Potions next, and would make our way to the dungeons without him. I told her to wait.

“I just want to see what’s got him,” I said, and she huffed.

“Personally, I think he’s PMSing and needs some time to relax,” she said.

“Maybe,” I replied, “But then, that Patronus thing was just too weird.”

Ron came out alone, with Lavender following close behind him.

“I’ll see you next class?” she giggled.

“Yeah,” he told her, and he stopped beside me. I motioned with my eyes for him to walk with us, and he followed me without a word.

“So,” Hermione began beside him, “you care to explain Lavender Brown to me? I thought she annoyed you.”

“It’s…none of your business,” he said. I bit my lip, and sent up a silent plea.

No. Please. Not this.

“It is my business, Ron!” she scolded, “I’m your girlfriend!”

“Really?” he asked, “Are you still? We never see each other!”

“We see each other every day!” she retorted. I could hear the hurt in her voice, but she attempted to hide it. “It’s two periods!”

“Well, you’re always with Harry doing homework,” he said, “And I do my homework with Lavender, so there!”

“You could do your homework with us, Ron,” I interjected, and I felt as if I were defending my own honor.

“This isn’t your argument, Harry,” Hermione told me sternly, and I wasn’t about to argue with her. She looked back at Ron. “So what are you saying here? Are you saying that you won’t come do homework with Harry and me because you’re doing it with Lavender?”

“Well…I…yes,” he said, and Hermione backed away as if he had hit her.

“Are you two…are you…”

“I don’t know, okay?” Ron said, “Maybe…maybe you and I just need to take a…take a little break so I can figure things out.”

All three of us stopped walking. I knew we were going to be late to Potions, but it didn’t matter right then. Hermione and Ron stood glaring at each other, both planted completely parallel with one another.

“So you can figure things out?” Hermione asked, “What kind of things do you want to figure out, Ron?”

“Just…just things, all right?” he said, “My mind just needs to think things over without any complications.”

“And I’m a complication?”

“Yeah, you are.”

Hermione took a breath in, and then nodded. She swallowed hard, and I saw the tears well in her eyes. She didn’t let them fall.

“Fine then.”

Ron didn’t say anymore. He took a deep breath and turned around. And he left her in the hallway, standing with me. And she turned around to see me, and she was crying. I led her down to the Potions classroom as the bell rang. We sat down next to each other, and I let her collapse into my shoulder. I had no idea what to say.

Now what? What else could go wrong?

Slughorn did not seem to notice the sadness in Hermione’s eyes as he entered the classroom. He strutted past us as if we were photographs, something to be looked at later. Others, however, had begun to turn their heads and stare at the silently sobbing girl cradled in my arms. Ernie Macmillan coughed as if to ask me what was wrong with her. I merely shook my head and motioned for him to turn back around. There was a soft hum escaping from the room, and I knew that it was from various whispers and questions. Hermione sensed it. I felt her tense beneath my fingers. Her back straightened and she drug herself up and out of my grasp. I wanted to pull her in again, only for the mere fact that I felt she wasn’t ready, but she was up and out of my reach. She wiped the small bit of water from underneath her eyes, straightened her clothes ever so lightly, and sat up as if nothing had happened. Slughorn was scratching a word on the board as she came back into herself. I watched him turn around, and his eyes went directly to her.

“Well, Ms. Granger, aren’t we looking upset today,” he said, and if there had been one person in the class who hadn’t observed her at all, their eyes were now drawn toward her seat. Slughorn smiled sympathetically, unable to realize that he just needed to stop talking about it. Instead, he continued. “Care to tell us all what happened?”

I found myself looking down at the desk table, unable to even comprehend what was going through Hermione’s mind. This was public humiliation, nearly equal to that of the stocks or the rack. I could almost feel physical pain as Slughorn’s words drove into her like an axe. I waited for her to burst from the room, hoped that she would merely shrug off his words and come back into the cradle of my arms.

But she would seem weak that way, I thought, I don’t want her back in my arms.

I was disappointed in both aspects. She didn’t buckle under the pressure and run from the room, and she didn’t cry into me again. She sent up a small chuckle and shrugged slightly at him.

“It’s totally ridiculous, actually,” she told him, “I stubbed my toe on the way in here, and I had to use Harry as a way dull the pain.”

“So Mr. Potter cradled you in order for the pain to go away?” Slughorn asked, unconvinced. I could have killed him.

“No,” Hermione answered briskly, “No, he was merely holding me back so that I wouldn’t hit him again. See, he tried to help me inside, and I was so aggravated with the pain that I just whopped him right across the face.”

That sold Slughorn. He gave a tiny giggle and looked over at me, his eyes twinkling. I shot daggers at him with my own.

“She have a hard slap there, Potter?” he asked me, amused at my supposed misfortune. I allowed him to be.

“Very hard, sir,” I answered, “Nearly sent me into the wall.”

There was a sweeping laugh that wavered across the students in the room. Most believed the story that Hermione had contrived. Others were more skeptical, but we let them be. The stifling atmosphere had been slightly cooled, and we left it to dissipate on its own. Slughorn turned his back and returned to the front of the classroom, gesturing out towards the cauldron. I shot a sideways look at Hermione to inquire whether she was okay. Her eyes told me to wait until later. Steam rose over Slughorn’s hands as I turned my attention finally to the class itself.

“Angst,” Slughorn said, and heads shot up, “For teenagers, it is possibly the most…well, most felt feeling of all. I remember myself as a teenager…so grumpy and moody. I could hardly stand any of my teachers, I was so angry.”

“Angry?” I heard Dean Thomas mumble behind me, “The man’s a walking Mr. Smiley.”

I swallowed my laughter.

“Mood swings are the sort of thing that end friendships,” Slughorn continued, “They break people’s hearts, they ruin a day, they impose hatred upon a person that you generally get along with. Who honestly enjoys hanging out with a moody person?”

“Should I raise my hand, Harry?” Hermione whispered to me lightly, and I saw a small, sad smile spread across her face. I playfully kicked her under the table.

“Yes,” the professor continued, “Moods are something that get in the way of life. And yet, they spice it up a little, too. Imagine if you couldn’t express sadness. Imagine life without anger or anxiety. No happiness, either. Is that world the same?”

No one answered him. For the first time in a while, he was making us think about his words instead of dread them. He was imposing thought, and we all found it extremely strange.

“Any thoughts on the subject?” he asked us ironically, and Hermione’s hand shot into the air. Of course she had something to say. Slughorn nodded at her.

“I don’t think that all moods are bad,” she said simply, “They make life unpredictable and change it up a bit. That’s always a good thing. But I think that if you can deaden certain moods and heighten others, it would make life a whole lot easier for people around you.”

“Am I correct to assume then, Ms. Granger, that you know what potion we will be looking at today?” Slughorn asked.

“I do.”

“And?”

“It’s called Animus Essencia. The Essence of Feeling.”

“Very good,” Slughorn remarked, “Ten points to Gryffindor for that. And it does exactly what Ms. Granger said.”

“Which is what again?” Dean asked, “I wasn’t…er…I wasn’t paying attention.”

“It is a potion that amplifies a certain mood in a person,” Slughorn explained, “Let’s say you’re feeling particularly mean and nasty one day, Mr. Thomas. Harry there….well, he doesn’t like this grumpy Dean at all. So, to counteract your foul and egregious mood, he chooses the emotion he wants you to feel and slips a bit of this potion into your drink to make you feel the way that he chooses you to feel.”

“And do I know what’s going on at all?” Dean wondered.

“You have no inclination of what has happened except for the sudden feeling of happiness that suddenly washes over you.”

“Oh,” Dean said, “Ok, then.”

“Please open your books up to page 545,” Slughorn ordered, “There, you will find the recipe for The Essence of Feeling potion. Read over it carefully and gather your ingredients.”

I grumbled as I reached for my book. Since the new year had dawned, I almost missed the Prince’s book and the power that it had given me. Slughorn had thought me flawless, and was as proud of me as he had been of my mother. But now, he was beginning to discover how horrible I was at Potions. And he had begun to see that I had been cheating last year. Still, I tried my best. And though it had been nice to be the top student, that grimy book deserved to waste away in a dark corner forever. It had been Snape’s, and if I ever touched it again, I would surely destroy it. I stared down at the ingredients list. Hermione, already three steps ahead of me, had risen out of her seat as if preparing to grab what she needed. I forced her back down gently with my hand.

“I’ll get it,” I told her, and I knew that in other circumstances she would have argued. Now, however, she was more than happy to allow me to get her her things. She thanked me with a solemn nod, and I scanned the list for the ingredients and made my way to the cupboard. I grabbed the eye of newt, and the two small vials labeled “Root of Ginger.” The potion called for three drops of water from the inside of a Mimbulus Mimbletonia, and it sat perfectly sliced into little bunches in the corner. I grabbed two handfuls and turned around to return to the table. Hermione smiled at me thankfully, and looked back up at Slughorn, who was passing around various colored containers.

“In these containers is what you will need to create the mood,” he told us, and he placed one in between Hermione and me. We opened it up to shakers full of salt, pepper, sugar, and cinnamon. I shot a quizzical look at Hermione, who jerked her head in the direction of Slughorn.

“The pepper imposes the mood of agitation. Salt is anger and scorn. Sugar, of course, is happiness. Cinnamon is excitement. Mix them together in various ways and you should be able to create intermediate moods. But only put a large amount of one in and a dash of the other. If you have an overexcited, agitated, scornful person on your hands, you’re setting yourself up for injury. Clear?”

There was a small mumbling of understanding that burst out of the class. Slughorn chuckled lightly, and gestured for us to start. We bowed our heads over the potion, our fingers running along the page of our books. Slughorn gazed at us all inquisitively, and then made his way over to our table. I looked up at him and gave him a friendly smile.

“’Lo, Professor,” I said, and I nudged Hermione to get her attention. She looked up quickly and then mimicked me.

“Hi, Professor Slughorn,” she smiled.

“Harry, m’boy!” Slughorn exclaimed, “And Ms. Granger! How are we really doing today?”

“Great,” Hermione said a little too quickly, but he didn’t seem to notice, “And you?”

“Oh, can’t complain,” he said, “Just wanted to come and tell both of you of the little party I’ve got planned for Friday night. You’re both welcome to come. It’s going to be sort of a dance, if you will.”

“A dance?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said, “You know…couples only.”

Hermione’s hands balled into tight fists, but she said nothing.

“I thought we could all use some…well, some happiness,” Slughorn stated, “After all of the tragedy that occurred at the end of last year, we could all use a night of fun, couldn’t we?”

“Yeah, we could,” I said, trying to get him to leave. Hermione was growing more uncomfortable by the second. I could tell by her wrinkled profile.

“You just bring yourself and a girl, Harry,” he told me, and then he looked to Hermione, “And you bring that little boyfriend of yours, Ms. Granger.”

“I will, Professor Slughorn,” she said, and she suddenly became entirely focused on her potion. Slughorn looked back at me.

“Eight ‘o clock in the dungeons then, Harry,” he told me.

“We’ll be there,” I assured him. And he left us to our potions. I glanced over at Hermione, who was swirling the eye of newt into her concoction.

“You all right, Hermione?” I asked her.

“I’m fine, Harry,” she assured me. And she squeezed her Mimbelus Mimbletonia so hard, it flew across the desks and splattered onto the back of Ernie Macmillan’s head.

“A DANCE!” Hermione exclaimed as we exited the dungeons, “A COUPLE’S DANCE!!! Why does it have to be a COUPLE’S DANCE?!”

“I…er…I don’t know of any other kind,” I said to her matter-of-factly. She ignored me as if I had just been a simple puff of wind.

“It’s ironic, don’t you think?” she asked me, “The week I get broken up with is the exact same week Slughorn throws a party that I should bring Ron to? I mean, can I be any more unfortunate?”

I stared at her.

“Don’t answer that,” she warned me. I gave her a friendly smirk. We continued walking.

“You know, you don’t have to go,” I told her. She laughed at me as we rounded around a corner.

“Oh, that looks brilliant!” she said, and I could see tears bubbling in her eyes again, “The girl stays home because her boyfriend crushed her! She’s weak and depressed and distraught!”

“But you are depressed and distraught!” I reminded her.

“BUT I DON’T HAVE TO LOOK LIKE IT!” she bellowed, and a few heads turned in the hallway. I gave one girl an apologetic smile as Hermione breezed by her and nearly knocked her to the floor. She glared at me as if I were Voldemort himself. As I turned away from her, I had to break into a small jog to catch up to Hermione. She was halfway to the Great Hall by the time I was walking back at her side.

“Hermione, I think maybe you need to…to go take a break,” I said softly, “Don’t…don’t go in there and eat lunch. I’ll get you something and bring it up to you. I’ll even eat with you in the common room.”

“Oh, and that way I can make it look as if I’m upset in front of Ron?” she snapped, “I can make it look like it pains me to be in the same room with him?”

“I’m just saying that it might hurt more than you think it’s going to,” I said, “You…you haven’t had time to process it yet. I…I just think you might want to rethink eating lunch near him.”

Hermione huffed in agitation and impatience. But she had stopped walking. I had gotten her to turn around and look at me just before she went through the doors and into the hall itself. She stared at me for a moment or two, and then began to walk slowly over to me. I heard her shoes click against the stone floor.

“I will not look defeated in his eyes,” she told me as she brought her nose level with mine. I felt my face go red and my palms sweat as her chocolate eyes locked onto mine. I saw anger there, mixed with contempt and scorn. But in the corners were sadness and heartbreak, and I knew that she thought I could be right. She refused to let on to it, refused to admit it to herself, but she knew that everything I was saying made sense. She didn’t want to be in the same room with Ron right now. It would hurt too much. All she wanted to do was escape into the common room and wallow. But her female pride wouldn’t let her. And no matter how much the lump in her throat would hurt, no matter how hard the pressure of the tears would be, she would eat at that table. She would sit across from him and act unaffected and coy. It would be torture. It would be agony. But she would do it because she was Hermione Granger and you could expect nothing less of her.

“All right then,” I said, “If this is what you want, then I’m not going to hold you back from it. But at least let me sit with you. You could probably…use a friend right now. Am I right?”

She sighed, arguing with herself. And then grudgingly, I saw her head go up and down in a nod. And she wrapped her arms around me in a hug that would somehow strengthen her. And I gave her all of the strength I had in me. Then, taking a deep breath, she gave herself a last reassurance in her own mind and walked into the hall.

And Ron wasn’t there.

“Well, there you go,” I said to her, and I felt her punch me. She collapsed into the chair, her arms crossed and her face contorted in frustration. There was a basket of rolls sitting on the table, and she made a grab for one and stuffed it in her mouth. She chewed as if she were biting into Ron’s skull.

“Careful you don’t chip a tooth there,” I teased. But she wasn’t listening to me. Her eyes were on the ceiling, lost in bitter thoughts. I took a roll and placed it down onto the plate in front of me. I cut it into two pieces and spread a small amount of jelly onto it to give it some taste. And as I looked up from my food, I noticed him.

He was a boy I had never seen before, merely sitting in the corner absorbed in a book. His face was shrouded in shadow, and his long dark hair hung down to obscure his face. I cocked my head, trying to see if his profile matched any that I knew. But it didn’t. He was a stranger, some new person who had only just arrived at the school.

“Hey, look over there,” I told Hermione, and she brought herself out of her own thoughts to follow my gaze. She spotted him too.

“Who is that?” she asked me. As if I should know. I shrugged my shoulders. She turned back around to look at him again.

“Awfully pale, isn’t he?” she remarked. I gave a sardonic laugh.

“Who in England isn’t?”

“No, Harry. I mean…extremely pale. Almost blue.”

I had no idea what she was talking about.

“Must be a trick of the light from your angle,” I told her, “He looks perfectly normal to me. You girls looks at things way too closely.”

“And boys never pay attention enough to see anything for what it really is,” she retorted.

“You’d be surprised how blind you can be sometimes,” I said, and I didn’t mean to. It was just something that slipped out accidentally.

“And by that you mean what?” she asked. I couldn’t answer it, and I took a drink of water to keep myself quiet. She took another look over at the boy.

And I saw him look up. And look. At her. His eyes were a vivid blue, almost milky white. Eerie.

She didn’t move for a few moments. I thought he had her locked in some kind of silent spell, and to this day, I don’t know what passed between them in those moments. All I know is that she sat there, staring into him as if he could solve all of her problems. She was rigid, like stone, and I grew anxious at her stillness. I reached out an arm to touch her. She came alive at the feel of my fingers.

“You alive there?” I asked her. She just nodded, and pushed her hair back behind her ears.

“Bit odd, wasn’t that?” I suggested.

“Yeah,” she said, “Yeah, it was.”

I took a bite of the small sandwich that I had made for myself out of the bread and condiments left on the table. Then, swallowing it down, I asked her.

“What exactly just happened there?”

“I…I’m not sure,” she said, “Whatever it was, it’s gone now. Probably just one of those moments where your brain just catches itself and stops working.”

“Maybe,” I remarked. That wasn’t what had happened, but I let it be the explanation for now.

“Where’d he come from, do you think?” she asked, gazing back at him, one more time. I tapped the table to pull her away.

“Probably some other Wizarding School,” I said, “Maybe Durmstrang. Looks like he might be their type.”

“Mm…”

There was silence between us for a moment. Her thoughts were either centered on the strange boy in front of us or on Ron. I couldn’t tell. I merely took another bite of my sandwich and waited for her to say something. Didn’t matter what, really. I just knew I was there for listening. She deserved that much.

And then, five minutes before the bell rang, he showed up. Ron walked in, Lavender following close behind him, her eyes twinkling. Seamus wasn’t far away either, merely two steps behind Lavender. Ron shot a look over at me, as if to say “Hello,” without using words, and then sat parallel to us with his back turned. I watched Hermione melt in front of my eyes. Her solid expression softened into that of an emotional mess, and her lips quivered. I watched behind her as the boy stiffened in the corner, his eyes drawn to her again. I looked from him to her and, without thinking, grabbed her hand.

“It’s okay,” I told her, stroking the top of her fingers, “It’s all right. You’re strong, remember? You’re strong.”

She nodded, but I heard a small sob escape from her. Her shoulders sagged as she stared at Ron’s unmoving back. He couldn’t see her, which was good. Still, his presence was unraveling her rope. Once an unlighted and clean wick of a candle, she was quickly becoming the wax that dripped from the sides.

“Do you want me to take you out of here?” I asked her, and the boy in the corner must have read my lips. He moved as if to get up and follow us. I gave him a quizzical look to tell him to stay away.

“Hermione,” I asked her, “Do you want to leave?”

And I saw her nod ever so slightly.

“Okay,” I said, and I let her get up first. It would grant her a bit of dignity to appear to be the one who initiated the leaving. I thought I saw Ron turn slightly to look at her, but I couldn’t be sure. What I did know was that the boy in the corner watched us leave. I saw his eyes follow Hermione, and I felt his gaze on the back of my neck as I walked out. And it was as if icicles were shooting into my head.

We were on the staircase when she looked at me and spoke again. And there were no tears, for she had forced them away. She just looked at me, a pool of sadness and pain.

“Can you tell me what I did wrong?” she asked.

“Nothing,” I said, “Nothing at all. He’s just…he’s Ron and you’re Hermione. And maybe…maybe it wasn’t meant to…”

She looked at the wall, refusing to believe anything else that I said. I could almost see Slughorn’s party sitting on the surface of her mind. It was there, floating just above her head. And she fought back the temptation to cry when she thought of how lonely she would be. I saw what she could see. She was picturing herself laughing with her arms around Ron, knowing that she would never have another moment like that again with him. And before I knew what I was doing, before another thought went into it, it was coming out. I tried to hold my tongue, to hold myself back from jumping into the abyss, but my feet were off the ledge already.

“Go to the dance with me,” I told her quickly. It was so quickly she couldn’t understand me.

“Hm? I didn’t catch that.”

“Go to the dance with me, Hermione.”

The light in the dormitory was horrible. I could hardly see my own reflection in the mirror, the candles were so dim. I was by myself, and severely in need of aid. The tie refused to go around my neck, and my shoulder was stuck fast in the arm of my jacket. I looked like a chicken pacing back and forth on the floor. I wrestled with the cloth, hoping that I wouldn’t tear it. Then, I heard the door open, and I looked up at the ceiling in silent gratitude.

“Help!” I shrieked. “Whoever’s there, I need help!”

I felt hands on my back, pulling the jacket up and straightening it out. It came off at first, and then was slipped roughly on again. I thought I felt something pop in my arm, and I gritted my teeth and let out a small grunt.

“Oh, stop whining,” said a familiar voice. I felt myself choke on my own saliva. He released me, and I turned around to see Ron standing there, smirking at my misfortune.

“You better fix that tie,” he told me. “Slughorn’ll tease you all night.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, thanks.”

There was an awkward silence that followed. I pulled at my tie and secured it around the collar of my shirt. I tugged too much, and it grew tight, nearly choking me. I wrestled with it as Ron continued to look at me, just standing and waiting for me to say something.

“You get an invite?” I asked him, and he shook his head.

“Nah, but it’s all right,” he said calmly, and he was being serious. “I think I might head down to the Three Broomsticks for a bit. Think about things.”

“Things?” I questioned him, but I knew what he was talking about. I didn’t say anything.

“Yeah…” he told me, “I’ve…er…I’ve got a lot on my mind right now.”

“Right,” I murmured, “Yeah.”

We stared into space for a few moments, just gazing past each other. I felt like the floor was going to drop out from beneath us at any given moment, and I almost hoped that it would. It would at least give us means for conversation, or remove us from the agonizing situation.

“Did you have a chance to meet the new guy?” Ron asked me suddenly. I shook my head.

“Didn’t exactly meet him, but I saw him,” I told him. “He was kind of…staring at Hermione the other day at breakfast.”

“He…he was?” Ron blurted out anxiously. “Did she talk to him? Did he walk up to her?”

“No,” I said, “my face sort of told him to stay away.”

“Oh.”

“Did you meet him?”

“Yeah. He’s in my Transfiguration class. He um…he’s in Slytherin.”

“Figured that.”

“Name’s Valil.”

I merely nodded at that.

“Kind of a weird bloke,” Ron continued. “He sticks to his little corner of the room. Almost like he’s afraid to step into the light or associate with any of us.”

I laughed at that. “Yeah,” I remarked, “He stuck himself in a corner that day at breakfast too.”

“That’s more than a bit odd then,” Ron chuckled. I joined him.

“Yeah,” I replied. “You going to Broomsticks alone?”

“Seamus might come,” he said, “but between you and me, I don’t want him to. He’s getting on my nerves a bit. Never stops talking…and the accent is enough to drive you mad.”

I smiled softly as he raved on about Seamus. It was nice, talking with him like this. We had hardly spoken in the last few days, and I had thought that perhaps our friendship was dwindling due to the rift that had formed between him and Hermione. Now, it was like old times. We were back to being best mates again.

“Yeah, his nose is a bit flat,” I tossed in as Ron began to talk about the physical aspects of Seamus.

“He’s cool, though,” Ron interjected, hoping to throw off the negative vibe he’d created. “I mean, it’s not like we can’t talk or anything. He’s just…just…”

Not me, I thought, and I turned away to look at my tie one more time. Ron cleared his throat and stopped talking. I worked to smooth my hair down a little, but there really was no use in it.

“Something fancy going on at Slughorn‘s?” he asked me.

“Just a dance,” I said. “He wants us to forget last year’s events and have some fun.”

“Oh,” Ron observed, his eyebrows raised in interest, “sounds like it’ll be entertaining.”

“Yeah,” I replied. “We’re all just supposed to forget…you know.”

There was another space filled with silence, and then he nodded as if to say “Goodbye.”

“Have fun,” he encouraged me, and he meant it. He was headed for the door, and then he turned.

“Think you could help me with my Patronus tomorrow?” he asked me. “It’s…it just doesn’t exactly feel like me when I cast it. It’s like…like something’s wrong. I think I’m not doing it right.”

I nodded. “Yeah, no problem,” I said, and he smiled at me in gratitude. Then he turned, and I heard him go down the stairs. He bumped into something down in the common room, and then I heard the slight sound of the portrait hole swinging open. Taking a deep breath, I walked down into the common room and plopped down onto the couch. The smoke from the fire formed spindles as it twirled up the chimney. I thought I saw the shape of a snake in the ashes, and ignored it at first. Then, I looked again.

The serpent was resting next to the grate, coiled into a tight ball and moving it’s head ever so slightly. I squinted to get a better look at it, and it came alive as I moved. It lifted it’s head up to study me, and I saw that it was black, with a trace of gray running along its back. I couldn’t explain its presence in the fire, but I knew that it was some sort of sign that would only add to those I’d already been given.

“ What do you want?” I asked it in a whisper.

“Be weary of the shadows,” it hissed, and my brow furrowed in confusion.

“What shadows?” I demanded.

“You talking to someone?” I heard a voice behind me ask. Feeling my breath catch in my chest and the heat rush to my face, I turned slowly around. The serpent went out of my head completely as my eyes took in the sight of her.

She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in my life. Her dress was short and black, and her hair was pulled halfway up in a way that I had never seen on her before. She smiled shyly as she saw my reaction, and it only made her look that much more like an angel. Her bag swung back and forth as she played nervously with her hands.

“You…you look amazing,” I felt myself say, and Hermione looked down at the floor in happy embarrassment.

“Thank you,” she said. “You don’t look half bad yourself.”

“Well thanks,” I replied.

“Was there someone down here with you a minute ago?”

“What?”

“You were talking to someone when I came down.”

My memory was clicking, and it caught on the vision of the snake coiled in the cinders. I forced myself to pull my eyes off of my date and back into the fire. But the snake was gone, disappeared into the flames that were crackling there. I huffed in annoyance and decided not to tell her about what I had seen.

“It was nothing, really,” I explained. “Just some things I was sorting out in my own head.”

“Ah, well then,” she said, “did you get them all figured out?”

“I think so,” I lied.

“Good,” she said, and she offered her arm. “Shall we go then?”

I gazed at the bracelet that dangled off of her porcelain wrist, and I felt a strange sensation wash over me. I couldn’t explain what was happening to me. Suddenly, any pain left over from Ginny was gone. I didn’t have a single care in the world. The battle with Voldemort was gone, the image of Dumbledore’s body. For an instant, I was just another teenage boy escorting a girl to a dance. A beautiful girl. A girl that I considered my best friend. A girl that had dated Ron. A girl that I…

“Slughorn’s probably wondering where we are,” she reminded me, and I was forced out of my thoughts. I locked my elbow around hers, and felt my stomach fly down into my toes and back into place as her perfume wafted through my nose. The portrait opened as we made our way out.

“I heard you talking to Ron,” she told me. “Did you tell him about going to the dance with me?”

“Nope,” I told her truthfully, “forgot to mention that part.”

The lights were flashing brilliantly as we entered the dungeon. The dark, dank walls had been transformed with brilliant colors. Decorations hung from the ceiling, and one streamer wrapped itself around Hermione’s curls. I put my fingers gently in her hair and extracted it. She seemed to grow uncomfortable as my hand grazed her ear, but she didn’t let me know it with her words. Instead, she let me carry on until the streamer was on the ground.

“Thank you,” she said, and I shrugged and grabbed her arm again. We entered into the crowd of people that awaited us. Cormac McClaggen spotted us, and he attempted to come over. Hermione tugged me in the opposite direction, and we hid behind a rather tall Slytherin who was standing behind the punch table. The music was blaring where we were, and it was hard to grab at any thought whatsoever.

“Let’s go over there!” Hermione said, pointing to the far wall. There seemed to be space to move over there, and so I followed the pressure of her hand as she pulled me through the crowd.

“There’s a lot of people here!” Hermione shouted over the music. “A lot more than there were last year!”

“I think it’s his way of meeting new people!” I bellowed back. “He picks new students out and looks at how they interact with others! Besides, who doesn’t know about Slughorn’s little parties? I’m sure there’s a few here who don’t actually have an invitation! It’s not that hard to sneak into the dungeons!”

“True!”

I felt a tap on my shoulder, and I turned around to see Ginny and Neville. Ginny looked nice, dressed in a bottle green dress that complimented her eyes. Neville wore a matching tie. And I felt myself smile at them.

“How are you?” I asked them both.

“Great!” Ginny replied, and Neville gave an agreeing nod. “How about yourself?”

“We’re hot, but we’re doing fine!” I said loudly.

“It’ll get better in a minute!” she assured me. “Slughorn mentioned something about an evaporating wall or something, so I think we’re going to have a bigger space!”

“That’ll be nice!” Hermione said, and I laughed in agreement.

“We’re going to get punch,” Neville told us. “You want anything?!”

“I’m fine!” Hermione replied. “Harry?”

“No, I’m good!” I said. “You guys have fun!”

“You too!”

And as fast as they had come, they were part of the crowd again, moving toward the table that we had just left. Hermione turned to look at me.

“You okay?” she asked.

“Perfectly fine.”

And it was true. For the first time since the break-up, I felt no kind of sadness or bitterness. The jealousy that usually stirred at the sight of them had remained dormant, and it was as if nothing had ever happened between us. We were friends again, nothing more. And I felt okay with that. Finally.

“Well, we came to dance,” Hermione said, and she gestured out toward the open floor. “What do you say?”

“I’m ready if…”

“Excuse me.”

There was someone coming toward us, demanding our attention. I looked over to see who it was, expecting Cormac or Neville again. I was disappointed. Standing before us was a boy taller than me, with long, black hair and a dark cloak drawn around his shoulders. At first, I found myself unable to recognize him at all. And then I saw the eerie blue eyes and the white skin. He smiled at me as if he was ready to murder me.

This was Valil. And I am ashamed to say that he terrified me in every possible way. Everything about him sent a chill running along my spine, and I held myself back from shivering in front of him. His eyes snapped from me to Hermione. I felt her move slightly closer to my side.

“Pardon my intrusion,” he breathed, and I could barely hear him, “but I realized that we haven’t met.”

“And you approach us out of the hundred or so people here?” I snapped, but he didn’t turn away like I hoped. His gaze was fixed on Hermione in such a way, I was surprised she wasn’t splitting in two from the intensity.

“Some people are more noticeable than others,” he told me, and he took her hand up and brought it to his lips. She tried to pull away, and his eyes locked onto hers. She didn’t resist anymore, but rather let him carry on.

“Valil,” he said, and he gave a small bow that disgusted me. “Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Ms…”

“Hermione,” she said, still trapped by his eyes. “Hermione Granger.”

“Unique name,” he said. “I dare say I’ve never heard it in the Wizarding World.”

“I’m Muggle Born, actually,” she told him, and I looked at her in awe. She never divulged her origin if she could help it, and here she was telling a perfect stranger about it. I was amazed and knew instantly that something wasn’t right. Carefully trying not to look suspicious, I slipped a penny out of the pocket of my pants and dropped it to the floor. Stepping forward to pick it up, I pressed my heel down into Valil’s toe. He looked down to see what was happening, unlocking his eyes from Hermione. I watched her blink and shake her head, and then she looked at me.

“It’s a bit stuffy in here, Harry,” she said. “Why don’t we…why don’t we get some fresh air?”

“Allow me to escort you to the terrace,” Valil said, shooting up off of the floor. “It’s just up the stairs.”

“We know where it is, thanks,” I told him sternly, and he shot me a look, trying to lock his eyes with mine. It worked for a moment, but then he looked as if something was burning him and his gaze was diverted away. I began to pull Hermione with me toward the closest stairway. He trudged after us, and he caught her hand.

“Let go of me!” she demanded of him, and she tried to wrench it away, but he held fast to her. I turned around, refusing to release her.

“Let go of her or I swear, I’ll hex you so fast, you won’t know what hit you!” I bellowed at him.

“Is that supposed to frighten me?” he asked me.

“You don’t know what I’m capable of,” I told him. “You don’t know what I’ve seen.”

“Why don’t you show me?” he demanded. “Make me let her go!”

But Hermione was faster than I was. Drawing her hand out of my grasp, she balled it into a fist and took a swing at his face. She hit his nose, and he let go of her hand, giving us an opportunity to run. I thought he shouted something up at us as we went up the stairs, but I couldn’t be sure. I didn’t care. And we ran all the way out to the first floor terrace.

Both of us heaved in gasps of air as we rested against pillars outside. Hermione’s breath was shaking from fear, and I put out my hand and grasped her shoulder.

“You all right?” I asked her.

“Yeah,” she told me, “Yeah, I’m fine. Just…just frightened, that’s all. He…he scared me.”

“Me too,” I replied, and I gave her shoulder a friendly squeeze. She walked back over to the pillar and out of my reach, resting her head against the cold stone. I followed her over to it and looked at her.

“What did you feel when you looked into his eyes?” I asked, and the snake from the fire was flashing across my memory.

Be weary of the shadows.

“I was…I was numb,” she reminisced. “I couldn’t think. At least, I didn’t think like me. Every thought that was running through my mind wasn’t my own. It was everything that he wanted. I would have done anything he asked me to do in that moment. I would have followed him out of that dungeon and jumped from the tallest tower if he had ordered me to. It was like possession…like hypnotism.”

I stood there, my mind full of worry. Why had he wanted her so much? Why had he singled her out? And what would have happened if I hadn’t been there to break his gaze?

“Do you think he’ll bother you again?” I asked, and I saw her smile.

“Maybe after his nose heals,” she joked, and I gave a worried laugh. She looked up at the stars, and we heard music leak out from beneath our feet.

“I just want to forget about it,” she told me. “It’s a nice night out and we’re supposed to be having fun. Let’s not dwell on something that could be nothing.”

“Nothing?” I asked her. “You think that was nothing?”

“Harry, not now, okay?” she demanded, and I gave in. I didn’t want to think about it anyway. She was right. We were there for the party. And we were going to have fun.

“That band is really wailing tonight,” she said, and I chuckled as the music flooded from the dungeons onto the terrace where we stood. It was slow, lulling almost, and I felt myself moving closer to her. I nudged her elbow, and she returned the gesture.

“You wanna dance?” I asked her, and I opened my arms up. She swung out from the pillar and came into my arms. She brought her hand up by my neck, and I secured my arm around her waist. We started.

I felt like my feet were in the wrong places, like my head was going to spin off from the nervousness I was feeling. I didn’t want to trod on her feet, and I was afraid that I would spin her too fast and send her crashing into the pillar or out onto the lawn. But she knew what she was doing. When I lost the lead, she picked it up without a word. She didn’t tease me or rush me…she just let the dance go on. And as I grew more comfortable, and as she began to feel more in step with me, I felt her head go up against my chest. And we just stood swaying gently as I breathed in the scent of her, and I found myself trapped in my own confused thoughts.

It’s been a week since Ron, Harry.

It doesn’t seem like she minds.

But you know that she does.

What about Ginny?

Ginny who? It’s not like she’s coming back to you, mate.

She’s your best friend.

Is that really all you want her to be?

Kiss her.

Let it die.

You wanted to protect her for a reason…you didn’t want him touching her for a reason.

Because she’s my friend.

Harry, be realistic.

I heard the song end, and she pulled her head off of my chest and looked up at me.

“You can’t dance to save your life, can you?” she asked, smiling. I returned her smile halfheartedly. And she sensed something was wrong with me as she backed up to look at me completely.

“What’s bothering you?” she asked. “If it’s Valil, think about it later. We just talked about this.”

“No,” I said, “it’s…it’s not Valil.”

“Ginny?”

“No, Hermione. No, it’s not Ginny at all.”

She looked at me questioningly. And I wanted to shoot her for being so blind. She was so smart, so intellectual. How did she not see what was happening to me? I ran my fingers through my hair as a nervous habit, and I turned my back to her and gazed up at the moon. Its light burned my eyes ever so slightly, but I couldn’t look back at her. I couldn’t look back at her because she was my best friend. I couldn’t look back because Ron was thinking about things at the Three Broomsticks. But then I felt her hand on my shoulder. The hand that was forcing me to turn around. And as her face came into my view and I beheld the sight of her again, I couldn’t stop myself. She opened her mouth to say something, but I never heard it. I never heard it because in that moment, I did it.

I kissed her. I kissed her, and I kissed her, and I kissed her again.

The taste of her was something of wonder. It was something sweeter than butterbeer and more warming than firewhiskey. I was in a strawberry field, and then flying on my Firebolt over a luscious valley filled with sugar cane. I had come to heaven, passed through to the other side without fulfilling my destiny. And then I felt her pull away, and my body felt as if it were dying as my lips met open air again. I opened my eyes to see her standing in shock up against the pillar. Her hands were clasped around it, as if she were holding herself away from me.

“Hermione,” I said, but she shook her head.

“No,” she told me. “No, Harry. This…this isn’t right.”

“How is it not right?” I begged her. “Can you tell me something that’s wrong with it?”

“I…neither of us are ready for anything like this! It’s not…this isn’t…”

“Not what?” I demanded. “It’s not what, Hermione? You can’t tell me that you didn’t feel anything in that kiss!”

She didn’t answer me. Her eyes were full of the fear, the confusion I had only felt moments before.

“It…it’s all right if you don’t…I’m sorry I…” I began, and she turned away from me and pushed herself out to face the night as I had faced it. I watched her stare at the moon as if to search for advice.

“It’s too soon, Harry. I…there’s still…I don’t know if…Ron…”

And then she stopped talking. And she came at me again, and wrapped her arms around my neck as she brought her lips to mine. And I was back in paradise as I lifted her up into the air and brought her back down again. The music was playing below us, but we didn’t seem to hear it. Life had stopped in that moment. Nothing else mattered.

And then I happened to turn toward the opening of the terrace to see Ron, a bouquet of freshly picked flowers held firmly in his hands, his face ashen.

I cannot begin to describe the falling out between Ron and me. Memories of that day are too painful to recount. I can say that the walls of the Gryffindor dormitory shook that night with such a force that I was surprised none of the stones came out. Hermione threw in her own words before we took it up to our own dormitory, but they had no impact on Ron except to make him angrier. By the time we were both too worn out to carry on, my nose was bleeding and my eye was swelling. I had refused to punch back. I wouldn’t hurt him. He was still, after all, my best friend, and I couldn’t bring myself to do it. But I wasn’t his best friend any longer. The respect and trust between us had evaporated for him on that terrace.

“You told her that you didn’t love her anymore!” I reminded him as he left to sleep out in the common room. “You told her she was a complication!”

“I WAS MISTAKEN!” he hollered back, and then swept down the stairs, leaving behind him a trail of smoking words and his own broken heart. I let him go with the last word, hoping that Hermione had gone to bed already. And I remember changing into my pajamas hurriedly and climbing into bed, my mind focused on one thought.

You’ve lost him forever. You’ve lost him, and you may have lost her. How alone will you be now? And how can life get any more complicated?

But the night had not drawn its curtain yet. As Ron steamed in the common room and I lay in my bed with a black eye and a wrecked friendship, the lock on the girl’s dormitory was raising slowly with a spell cast by a skilled master of darkness. The magical boundaries had disappeared, destroyed before the summer had died. And as the young girl sat staring at the curtains of her four poster, she heard the words “ Muffliato!” and saw the shadow appear by her bedside. His hand went over her mouth, and his grip was like that of stone upon her arm. He drug her to the window, caught a broom in his hand, and took to the sky with her struggling in his grasp.

I didn’t even hear Hermione scream.

I awoke the next morning to an empty dormitory. The light stung my eyes for a moment, causing me to blink, and my black eye gave a nasty throb as I sat up and looked around. Confusion. It was a Saturday morning. No one woke up on a Saturday morning this early. The birds were still chirping outside, a signal of the time. It couldn’t have been past nine o’ clock. Yet there they all were, the empty beds, left unmade and untidy. Something was wrong. Swinging my feet over the side of the bed, I pulled on the jeans lying on the floor. There was a shirt that was slung over my trunk, and I yanked it over my head and made my descent down the stairs.

What I found was the equivalent of chaos. Girls sat against the wall, some holding each other against tears. Ron was sitting on the couch, staring into the fire as though it had a hypnotic power. I spotted Dean in the corner, in deep conversation with Seamus. I passed by them, looking for Hermione. Dean grabbed my shoulder.

“Where’d she go?” he asked me, his voice shaking and terrified. My eyebrows knitted. I had no idea about what he was talking about. I shook my head to tell him so.

“You don’t have any idea?” he begged of me.

“What are you talking about?” I demanded of him, but I heard another voice call out from behind me.

“HARRY!”

I turned, knowing that it was Hermione, standing there to explain it all to me. I was going to apologize to her for last night, to tell her that I had been out of line. Why had I kissed her like that? I’d just come at her, and then to make matters worse, yelled at her for not returning my feelings the way I had. We needed to talk about the argument we had both had with Ron and the kiss. But as my eyes focused on the girl coming towards me, I didn’t see a bush of brown hair. Instead, the hair was red and flaming, and though the eyes were a deep chocolate, they didn’t belong to Hermione.

“Ginny,” I breathed, “what’s going on? Everyone’s acting like Voldemort showed up last night.”

“There’s something I’ve got to show you,” she said, anxiety strung throughout her voice. She gripped my arm tightly and pushed through a group of goggling girls who were shaking and appeared to be petrified. I followed her as best I could up the stairs to the girl’s dormitory.

“How is it I’m getting up here?” I asked, for I remember an attempt by Ron to get inside one time. He had been thrown backward onto the ground.

“Something’s happened to the magical barriers,” she relayed to me, and I found the information to be a bit disturbing. “No one knows how or when, but they seemed to have stopped working.”

“How’d you figure that one out?” I asked.

“Because of what happened last night.”

She opened the door, and my eyes met a sight that I wasn’t prepared for. There was Hermione’s bed, completely and totally empty. But her sheets were twisted, as though there had been a struggle in the night. The window was thrust open, a strong wind blowing into the room. And resting on her pillow and standing out against the deep red of the material was a letter. The ink was black and bold, and I knew what it said before I read it.

My legs were numb, unable to move. I was rooted to where I stood, merely staring at the empty bed. I thought that if I stood and stared hard enough, she would materialize in front of me, telling me that it was all a horrible prank and a misunderstanding. But nothing happened. She didn’t show up. She didn’t come back. It was just me and the envelope and Ginny. No one else. In my mind, I knew that I had to read it. But there was something holding me back from reading it. It wasn’t fear or anger. It wasn’t remorse at the person who had taken her. It was pure guilt, and for something that I didn’t understand. They had taken her because of me. But who were they exactly? I didn’t know. I had an idea, but I didn’t want it to be right. If it was right, it meant she was dead. And that couldn’t be.

“You have to be the one to pick it up, Harry,” Ginny told me from somewhere far away. My eyes snapped onto her. “If you don’t pick it up, it’ll just sit there. Lavender tried to take it this morning, to bring it down to you, and she was thrown into the wall. It’s like a curse has been put on it or something. No one else can touch it but you.”

Nodding, I felt my shaking knees ease toward the letter. My hand shook as I extended it outwards, groping for the piece of paper. It was in between my fingers, and I found myself waiting for something to happen. Nothing. I stepped slowly from the bed, the envelope now vibrating back and forth against my unsteady hand. My fingers fumbled with the seal, and it took me nearly a minute to break it. I wasn’t aware of my feet moving, but I knew that I was moving down the stairs and back into the crowd of people waiting. Some heads turned, including Ron’s. I threw the envelope down at the floor and tore the letter from the inside. Professor McGonagall was standing there now, and she came forward.

“Potter!” I heard her holler at me. “Let me read it, see what it says.”

“Harry’s got to be the one to read it,” Ginny explained to her. “No one else can touch it but him.”

“But are you sure, dear?” she asked her, but I wasn’t listening. My eyes and complete attention were focused on the words that sat on the parchment in my hand. I read it, and it must have been aloud, for the entire crowd that had gathered began to form a circle around me. I felt Neville behind me, and Ginny gripped his hand and came around to have a better look.

Harry, Do hope you enjoyed Slughorn’s little dance. You and Hermione seemed to have a splendid time. We all decided that we couldn’t help but have a little fun as well. Sorry to say that Ms. Granger won’t be joining you for anymore little play dates. If you ever want to see her alive again, you must come to us. There will be no need for backup or a wand. We just want you.

Valil

“Valil?” Ginny asked. “Whose Valil, Harry?”

“The new Slytherin student?” McGonagall asked. “The one who sits on his own?”

“I don’t think he’s a student, Professor,” I felt myself say, though I had no idea how I was able to form words. My mind was focused entirely on the letter and Hermione. This was my fault, all because of me. If I hadn’t acted on stupid emotions, if I hadn’t let my own teenage tendencies get in the way, she would have been here with us right now. I had told them all before, but none of them had listened. I had told them that I had to go it alone, but they had pressed me to include them. And I, being the weak and insecure boy that I still was, let them phase me. I had obeyed them, and for that, Hermione was gone.

“You’re going to go after her, aren’t you, Harry?” Neville asked me. “You’re going to save her?”

“Course I am,” I said, and my voice didn’t sound like my own. “Can’t just leave her to die now, can I? She’s…she’s my…”

But I broke off. I wasn’t sure what she was to me. I wasn’t sure if she was merely my best friend or something more. I knew that the feeling I had in my heart for her wasn’t friendship. It was something stronger, something that I had only known once, and something that had come back stronger than ever. But I had to push it away. I had to let it die inside of me now, because it was putting people in danger. It had put her in harm’s way, and so I had to release myself of the feeling.

“Do you know where to go?” Dean asked me, and the room was bustling now. People were going in separate corners to whisper. Some continued to glance at me, a questioning and frightened look in their eyes. It was only Ginny, Neville, and Dean standing near me, along with Professor McGonagall.

“You’re not going anywhere, Potter,” she said to me strongly. “No, this is a manner for adults. This is a manner that should be taken care of by the Order and, I am sorry to say, the Ministry of Magic.”

“You get those prats on the case, she’ll be dead in hours,” Ginny spat at her.

“You put anyone else on but me, and she’s dead,” I said, staring intently at Professor McGonagall.

“You have only just come of age, Potter,” McGonagall said. “You are not yet capable of fighting Dark Magic completely. And it seems to me that they don’t want you to. They want you to come unarmed and without protection. Do you honestly think that as Headmistress, I’ll let you walk into something like this?”

“Yes, and you must,” I told her, and my mind was now back with Dumbledore. I felt as though I were pulling strength from him. If he had been standing in front of me now, he would not have argued. He may have been uneasy with the idea of my leaving without him, but he would have let me go. Because the truth was, the woman in front of me didn’t know the prophecy. She didn’t know what I had to do. She didn’t know my destiny. But there was no time to convince her. I just had to speak the truth, but quickly.

“It’s me, Professor,” I said, my voice calm. “I’m the one who has to kill Voldemort. All those rumors last year, about me being the Chosen One…they’re all true. Dumbledore knew it, and that’s what all those lessons with him last year were for. That’s the knowledge that we shared, and he knew that he would have to let me go one day. He thought I was ready, and he told me that when the time came, I would know what to do. This might be the time, and then it might not. But whether it is or it isn’t, I’ve got to do this alone. I’m not losing her. She’s not going to die because of me. I’ll see to that.”

McGonagall stared at me, her eyes a pool of fright and concern. And none of it was for herself or the Wizarding World. All of it, in that moment, was for me. And I couldn’t have felt more honored knowing that she cared for me in such a way. But there wasn’t time for any of this. I nodded at her, as if asking for her permission again. She shook her head.

“I can’t let you go,” she told me sternly, “Not by yourself. I’ll send for some Aurors and…”

“It’s an ambush, Harry,” Ginny interrupted, and McGonagall looked at her as though prepared to kill her. “They’re doing this to get to you. Just like…just like you said they would. They don’t want anything with her, they only want you. And God knows what they’ll do to you once they’ve got you. You’re going to need backup. You’re going to need people with you.”

“Not on this one, Ginny,” I said bravely, shaking my head at her. “On this one, I go alone. I’ve got to.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Yes, Neville. Yes, I do.”

I looked at McGonagall, a pleading look in my eye. I took a deep breath.

“I’m going whether you want me to or not, Professor,” I said, “but it would be a whole lot easier if you’d just say it’s all right. So please…just let me go.”

McGonagall’s face fell in complete and utter defeat. She stared at the ceiling as if searching for an answer, and I thought I saw something such as a tear form in the corner of her eye. Then she looked at me, and I knew that she would give me permission. I knew that she would let me find Hermione.

“But do you even know where you’re going?” she asked, as though she had already told me that it was okay. “Do you know where to find her?”

“I do,” said a voice behind me. There was the sound of a chair moving, and then I looked over McGonagall’s shoulder to see Ron standing there, looking at me with mud in his eye.

“You know where they’ve taken her?” I asked him, my mind now whirring into action. How could he possibly know? There wasn’t a soul in the entire dormitory who had an inkling.

“I overheard Valil talking to one of his Slytherin cronies,” he said to me, not looking at me. “He said something about a place called Spinner’s End. Said that that’s where they meet.”

“I didn’t know Valil had cronies,” I said, confused, “thought you said that he kept to himself.”

“For the first couple of weeks,” he snapped back, his voice growing louder and louder. “He got to know people like any other normal person. Ended up with a tiny group of friends.”

“And you just overheard them talking, did you?” I asked, and I wasn’t being mean about it. If he really had heard something, I would be at Spinner’s End as quickly as I could get there. I’d probably Apparate. Couldn’t be sure if there was a fireplace there, could I?

“Yeah, I did,” he replied, “and he definitely said Spinner’s End. I looked it up on the map already and it’s…”

“Somewhere in the country,” McGonagall told us.

“How do you know that, Professor?” Neville asked.

“Because that is where Professor Snape spent summer holiday,” she said strongly.

In two seconds, I was up retrieving my Invisibility Cloak. No one had to say anything more. I tossed my wand at Ginny, who held it in her hands as though she were scared of it.

“Why are you giving this to me?” she asked. “I didn’t think you were actually going to go without it!”

“They said they’d kill her if I showed up armed,” I said strongly. “I’m leaving it with you for safekeeping.”

“Take it,” Neville begged me. “Harry, who knows what they might do. They might kill you both. Just take the wand and hide it. They might never find out.”

I sighed, but took the wand back from Ginny and stuffed it into the inside pocket of my jacket. The portrait was opening for me, and I set one foot outside. I took a backward glance at Ron.

“Thanks for the information, Ron,” I said sincerely.

“Don’t thank me,” he said plainly, and then he was gone from sight as the portrait hole sealed me off to the rest of Gryffindor.

The pressure in my ears threatened to pop my eardrums. I hated the sensation that came along with Apparition, but it was the only way I knew to get to Hermione. I had thought Spinner’s End! with every inch of my brainpower, and as I opened my eyes again, I saw that I had landed in a field. No splinching had occurred, and I breathed a small sigh of relief at that. It was short lived, however. Looking up, I saw a small shack on the corner of a hill. Dark tents, as black and billowing as Dementor’s cloaks, sat sprawled around it. Smoke colored a faint purple swirled from the chimney of the shack, and I saw someone walk on the outside. The pale hair and tall stature made me think of Malfoy. Mustering up the courage that sat in the pit of my stomach, I felt myself running. The wind stung my face, but I didn’t care. Racing, I was getting closer. I wanted to call out her name to let her know I was there, but I refrained myself. Past one tent. Past another. The hill threatened to kill my legs, but I ignored the exhaustion building up within them. And then, I felt my feet go out from underneath me. Tripping, I slid from the top of the hill down, rolling. I stopped somewhere in the middle and leapt to my feet, refusing to draw my wand without seeing Hermione safe. Looking up, I saw the familiar, horrible face of Bellatrix Lestrange. Her eyes were as wide and malicious as ever, but the skin didn’t hang from the bones anymore. She had become more nourished, and the beauty that had disappeared in Azkaban was slowly beginning to ebb back into her being. To me, however, she would always be the ugly, vile woman who had robbed me of my godfather.

“Come looking for your little girlfriend?” she asked me, her deranged cackle filling the stormy air. “We were worried you weren’t coming, little Potter! She screamed all night, and I nearly killed her, she was so annoying.”

I wanted to curse her into oblivion but did not draw my wand. But I couldn’t hold myself back from her. I ran madly at her, tackling her to the ground. Her laugh grew more maleficent, and then I felt the hands on my back. I was drawn off of her, and I felt myself struggle in arms that refused to release me.

“WHERE’S HERMIONE?!” I demanded of my captors, and I recognized them now as Avery and Nott. They didn’t say anything, but merely led me up the hill to the shack. Bellatrix ran in front of them, walking backwards so as to tantalize me.

“She knows how to dance, the little Mudblood,” she told me. “When that Cruciatus Curse hit her, she wriggled so badly you would have thought she was a snake.”

I lunged at her, but the two Death Eaters held me fast. They used my body to open the door, and I let out an involuntary grunt of pain. Throwing me on the floor, my head collided with the wooden planks there. Forcing myself up, I stood on my own feet. Then, I felt myself run to the corner.

Hermione was tied to a chair, the ropes around her a hot and blazing white. Her eyes were closed, as though she were asleep. But she was too pale for slumber. The cuts on her face and neck were too horrible for her to sleep through. I touched her cheek, and then felt myself be thrown back and away from her. Someone came into the room from the stairs, and I looked up to see Draco Malfoy standing in front of me, a small smirk on his ignorant face.

“Nice of you to join us Potter,” he said, and I watched him walk over to Hermione. He put both hands on each of her shoulders as though massaging her. I watched with a jolt of hope as she moved under the pressure of his fingers. “We’ve all been anxiously waiting for you.”

I attempted to get up, to go back toward them, but Malfoy pointed his wand at me and screamed “ INCARCEROUS!“

In a split second, I was bound with ropes. My body collided once again with the floor, and I wriggled there, trying to get free. My eyes never left Hermione. I watched as Malfoy rubbed his cheek against hers, and she moved a bit. He came around to the front of her and his lips locked with hers.

“NO!” I heard myself say, and Malfoy laughed.

“Don’t worry, Potter,” he said, “she can’t kiss me back.”

“She’s not…”

“Oh no. No, she’s not dead. Just unconscious. I dare say those Torture curses wore her out a bit.”

“You let her go, Malfoy!” I demanded. “I let you and Snape live, so you can just get away from her.”

Malfoy chuckled and then said something that sounded like “Snape.”

“Yeah, he certainly was a character, wasn’t he?” he asked me, and I looked at him quizzically. “Good actor, wasn’t he?”

“You just shut up and let her go!” I told him.

“I killed him, Potter,” Malfoy told me, “so there’s no need for you to worry about doing it. He tried to get me to go to your side, you see. Thought that I might change my mind. But I knew who my master was. Not like him. And pretty soon, you’ll know your master. Both you and Hermione. And the entirety of Hogwarts. All of you will know who you REALLY serve!”

I lashed around inside the ropes, fighting against their pressure. Then, without a word, I felt them slacken. They fell from me and then evaporated into the air, swept away by some invisible spell. Malfoy’s mouth opened in what seemed like surprise, and I gave him a smile.

“Shouldn’t underestimate me, should you, Malfoy?” I asked him, and in a second, my wand was out. I threw a curse at the three Death Eaters near the door. Bellatrix was sent flying out of the door, and Avery and Nott collided with the glass in the windows. They fell, Petrified, upon the doormat. Malfoy looked at me as though frightened, fumbling for his own wand. I didn’t give him the opportunity to find it.

“ Petrificus Totalus!” I bellowed, and he fell to the floor, stone still. I could hear voices from outside the shack, coming in to see if they could help. There wasn’t a moment to waste. The ropes binding Hermione had something to do with me not being able to touch her. I didn’t know what to do. Closing my eyes, I tried to picture the ropes falling from her and onto the floor. There was nothing else I could have done. Then, I opened them to see that my vision had been realized. She was free, her head propped against the wall. I rushed to her and took her into my arms, wishing so badly that she would just wake up. But her eyes remained closed as I held her to me, and I saw Valil come into the door.

“POTTER!” I heard him bellow, but I saw that he was smiling and began to grow uneasy. Instantaneously, I gripped Hermione harder in my arms and thought Hogsmeade! Valil and the shack evaporated before my eyes, but not before I saw him laugh.

And then, we were safe. But Hermione didn’t stir as my feet collided with the Earth. She didn’t wake as I brought her to the edge of the village, my breath catching in my chest. It was not until we approached the gate to the school that I saw her eyes flutter open.

“Harry?” she asked, as though confused.

“Yeah!” I said, and I smiled down at her. “Yeah, it’s me! It’s me, and you’re safe! I’ve got you! We’re at Hogwarts.”

She looked around, as though dazed. Then, she let out a horrible, resounding scream. She shook in my arms and tugged at my hands.

“LET ME GO!” she demanded, scrambling to get away. She pounded her fists into my shoulders, and I winced but refused to release her.

“Hermione, it’s me!” I told her. “It’s Harry! It’s Harry, and you’re okay!”

“DON’T TAKE ME INTO THAT SCHOOL!” she bellowed, and she pushed me from her and fell out of my arms onto the ground. She tried to get up and run, but she was too weak. I caught her around the waist and pulled her to the school. Already, a crowd of students was forming. How they saw us, I can never be sure, but I knew that I couldn’t understand what had happened to Hermione. It was almost as if she had lost her mind.

“Hogwarts is your home, Hermione!” I reminded her. “You have…you have friends here! Friends who…l-love you!” It was a hard word to say. “You’re safe!”

“GET AWAY ALL OF YOU!” she shouted as the students began to come closer. “HARRY, DON’T TAKE ME ANY CLOSER!”

“WHY?” I asked her, now shouting over her dulcet tones. “WHY CAN’T I?”

Then, I felt her body go rigid beneath me. She fell to the ground where she began to twitch violently, as though having a fit. My eyes grew wide in complete and total confusion.

“Hermione what…what is it?”

She groped for the corner of my jacket and pulled me down to her. I could barely hear her through the sputtering, and her hands jerked so violently that I thought she might be wanting to hit me.

“I’m infected, Harry. I’m infected, and so are you.”

Hermione lay in my arms, panting uncontrollably. She continued to twist and seize violently in my grasp. I saw the sweat gather at her brow, and her hands were hot in mine. Her face was flushed red, and her eyes rolled back in their sockets as she fainted and grew still. The color drained from my own face as I attempted to revive her. There was a pulse beating in her neck, but it was fast and irregular. I knew that McGonagall was standing over me still, unable to fathom what had happened.

“Potter, what did she say to you?” she asked me, but I wasn’t listening. I was trying desperately to shake Hermione awake, searching for some kind of explanation. Infected? What did she mean by infected? Infected with what? A disease? Or perhaps she meant she was possessed by Voldemort?

“We must move her Potter,” McGonagall said, though her voice was unsure. Neither of us knew how safe it would be to move Hermione in such a condition. The small crowd that had gathered around us seemed to back away slowly, as though transfixed by the small, unconscious figure lying so limply on my lap. I felt a hand on my shoulder, and I recognized the pressure instantly. Ginny was there, hoping to give me strength. But I didn’t need it. I stood up on my own, and Hermione’s head flopped down somewhat. I placed a hand beneath her thick, brown curls, the entirety of my arms focused on cradling her like a child. To anyone else, she would have been dead weight. But to me, she was as light as a feather, as easy to carry as a baby would have been. The strain did not seem to affect me, I was so concentrated on getting her somewhere safe. My mind was numb as Ginny motioned to Neville.

“Let me help you with her, Harry,” he said to me.

“No,” I felt myself say, though the voice did not sound as though it belonged to me. “No, I’ve got her.”

McGonagall was walking in haste beside me, her fingers knotted in worry and anxiety.

“We must send an owl to St. Mungo’s,” she said.

“No!” I answered quickly, and she turned to me as if in awe and confusion.

“Potter, we cannot identify the condition she is in!” she retorted, staring at me as if I were some sort of madman. “Madam Pomfrey may not be able to cure her of whatever this is that she has, and we cannot be sure it is not by Spell Damage that she has succumbed to this kind of state! She has to be sent off to a professional, and she must be taken care of by the physicians at the hospital! Here, she may die within a few short days!”

“She can’t be around people,” I uttered, and part of me didn’t understand why. I had no right to argue whether or not Hermione should be sent to St. Mungo’s. But something in my gut told me that there was storm coming, and I would rather have it concentrated in a small area than raining down over the entire Wizarding community. “She…she told me that…”

“What is it, Potter?” McGonagall asked. “What did she say?”

“She said that…that she was infected,” I finished, though I didn’t bother to tell her that she had said that I too had the disease. I didn’t feel there was a need to mention it. “She didn’t tell me how she knew it or what she had. All she said was that she wanted everyone to stay away from her because she was sick…er…or something along those lines.”

McGonagall looked at me, her face strewn with questions she knew I could not answer. I, after all, did not know what had happened in the cabin at Spinner’s End. All I did know was that Snape, in some way or another, had been good and that Draco had killed him. I knew that Hermione, at some point, had been tortured and abused. And I knew that Bellatrix had to be in on that in some form or other. But I couldn’t understand what Hermione had been talking about before she had passed out. I had never heard of Voldemort using an infectious disease or anything to cause wizards to suffer. But something was going right for them, and I knew it. I remembered the smirk on Valil’s face as I had Disapparated with Hermione in my arms, and I knew that it couldn’t be a good sign. His eerie blue had reflected a gleam of triumph, and it was enough to send me spiraling into that dark abyss known as uneasiness.

“When we were leaving, I saw Valil,” I told her, “and he didn’t seem troubled about letting us go. Instead he acted…well, he seemed happy. Victorious almost. There was this look in his eye…something that just doesn’t seem good. There’s this feeling that I have that…I don’t know…that this is only the beginning of something.”

A sudden wave of dizziness broke over me. The room seemed to spin around, colors swirling together. Hermione’s body teetered in my arms, and I felt McGonagall reach for her as I swiveled forward. For a moment, they both disappeared from view all together, and then slowly began to fade back in. I shut my eyes for a quick moment, as though in a long blink, and then opened them again. The Headmistress was staring at me in nervous curiosity.

“You all right, Potter?” she asked me. I didn’t want to answer, for I would have had to lie. The dizziness was beginning to churn down in my stomach, and it took all of the will power within me to swallow the urge to retch. Then, as soon as it had come, the feeling vanished. I was standing before McGonagall, my palms sweating but my heart rate calming down, as though I had just come back from a long, vigorous run. “Potter? Do you want me to take her?”

“No, I’m fine,” I answered. “I just hit my head back at the shack, and I guess I had a small headache from it or something.”

She didn’t seem to care about that. Instead, she placed both hands on my shoulders and looked me straight in the eye. “You said you thought it was the beginning of something?” she asked.

“Yes. I’m almost positive of it.”

“What is it?”

“I…I’ve really got no idea,” I replied, and then I felt something tug on my shirt. I looked down and found myself looking into the chocolate eyes that I knew so well. Hermione clawed at my shirt again, and I stopped and bent down on the ground, resting her body against my knee.

“What?” I asked her anxiously, stroking her feverish forehead with my hand. “What is it?”

“He knows,” I heard her choke, her throat raw from struggling to breathe. I shook my head, not understanding. She inhaled, wheezing, and then looked at McGonagall. “Ask Ron.” Then, she was out again. And as I stood up, she began to seize. I couldn’t contain myself anymore. I made a run for it, Hermione’s body bouncing as my feet made impact with the ground.

“Harry, wait!” McGonagall called after me, but I wasn’t listening. In that moment, there was no disease or Voldemort. There was no Valil and eerie eyes. There was only an ill Hermione, lying unresponsive and possibly dying in my unhelpful arms. I ran up the stairs, desperately hoping that they would turn quickly into their rightful cases. Then, as if by some spell, I stood in front of the hospital wing and forced the double doors open with my shoulder. Madam Pomfrey, alerted already by some student or a whisper that reverberated through the ghosts at Hogwarts, motioned for me to drop her in a bed. I obeyed, watching as Hermione shook violently in the bed. Her body contorted into twisted shapes, her head jerked from one side to the other. Her eyes opened for a fraction of a second as she looked at me, and then it shut again. McGonagall rushed to her side, and she took my hand as if to squeeze it, but I pulled away. I was rushing away again, down the hall, my mind focused on Hermione’s words. I descended staircase after staircase, waiting, waiting, waiting. I had to stop once, as the room had begun to spin again, and then I stopped and looked at the ceiling. Pushing through the pain, my mind focused only on the sick girl above me, I made my way into the Great Hall. The group that had gathered around Hermione were still there, whispering in a circle to one another. They spotted me, and some backed away as though scared. Others began to tail me, throwing question after question at my back.

“Is she all right, Harry?”

“What happened to her?”

“Is she sick, Harry?”

“What’s she got?”

“Do you know who did this, Harry?”

Harry, Harry, Harry. How cursed my name could be. Like a parasite, echoes of it followed me all the way to the end of the Gryffindor table. Ron sat there, his fingers knotted together, staring at the wood. He knew I was there, but would not turn around to face me. I could see him huff as I stopped walking.

“Talk,” I demanded of him, but he still would not budge. I watched him tap a finger on the table, and then I felt the rage boil up inside of me. The monster that had once roared because of a simple kiss in the hallway was now flying, up into my throat. The fire erupted out of my mouth, and I flung my hands onto the back of Ron’s robes and pulled him around. I slammed his back into the table, out of my skull and my own mind. My actions were not my own anymore…they were being driven by anger, fear, and the pain of not being able to understand what was going on. “TELL ME! SHE SAID YOU KNEW, SO YOU TELL ME NOW! YOU TELL ME WHAT I NEED TO KNOW!”

Ron’s eyes were wide in surprise and fright. There were different hands on my shoulders now, attempting to hold me back. But I couldn’t help myself. I seized the collar of Ron’s robes and pulled him up out of his seat, my own strength overwhelming me. I shook him back and forth violently, his neck bouncing back and forth.

“TELL ME, RON! TELL ME NOW!’

“I don’t know anything!” he squeaked, but the look in his eyes told me differently. He was lying, and somehow I knew it. I could see the answers there in his gaze, and I felt like Voldemort, reading a person’s mind. Legilimency. I was performing it here, on my best friend. But he wasn’t my best friend anymore. He had turned into something else entirely, and I was going to find out what that something else was if it killed me.

In his eyes, something surfaced. It wasn’t as clear as I thought it would have been, and I realized that it was because I wasn’t good at it. I had never mastered Occlumency, so how could I hope to be a good Legilimens? But there was something there, and it was dark and shadowy. I couldn’t make it out though…it was just a simple, black smudge of some kind or other. I threw him from me and back onto the seat as my mind whirred, trying to identify the object. Then, I felt myself sink to the floor, my vision cloudy and foggy. The group of people moved in closer, and I heard from a distance Ginny murmuring, “Back up! He needs air!”

My heart was beating in my ears, and I could feel the blood drain from my own face. Something was happening to me, and it wasn’t anything good. Again, the room began to spin. I could hardly feel Ginny’s hands on my shoulders anymore, and then my knees collided with the stone floor. My face hit the cold marble, but I wasn’t in my body anymore. I was in darkness, and it swirled around me, engulfing me. There was a single light in the center of it all, a harmonious blue in the sea of black. And then, there was a soft, cooing voice inside my head. It told me to grab hold, to hold on and squeeze tighter, and I obeyed it. I didn’t know what I was squeezing, didn’t know what I was doing. My mind had broken, my arms were shaking as I heard sputtering, and then something collided with my ear. I blinked and then fell backwards, having stood up again. And Ginny was up against Neville, her hand clasped around her throat, gasping for air. Neville’s fist was raised, and the entire room was staring at me as if I had just killed someone. Ron was on his feet, his own fists clenched. And the cold sweat washed over me again and I backed myself into a wall.

“What…what did I just…” I felt myself stuttering, but I couldn’t form words. It was like my tongue was dying, numbed from a Killing Curse. My thoughts wouldn’t gather, and I was sinking again, sinking towards the floor. I forced myself to remain standing.

Infected, Hermione’s voice said in the back of my pulsing brain, but I knew this couldn’t have anything to do with an illness. No, it was something all together different. And I didn’t have the answers to either of the problems that I faced. But Ron did. Ron, who stood there staring as though I were a criminal. He held the key to the facts, and I had to unlock the door.

“Harry,” I heard Neville say, “I think you need to…to sit down. Something’s not quite right with you right now. You…you need to go and si…”

“No,” I interrupted, though I wanted badly to obey him. My legs were shaking beneath my own weight, but somehow I remained upright. I focused on Ron, my thoughts clinging onto the real person in front of me. And suddenly, the bout of dizziness, of insanity, began to lift. I was myself again, and the color returning to my cheeks. I had thrown it off casually, almost like a cloak, and now I was able to talk to him the way I wanted to. I pointed at him. “I want answers from you. I don’t care if I have to torture you to get them, either.”

Ron opened his mouth as if to begin to answer, but he never got the chance. At that moment, I heard someone behind me.

“HARRY!”

I turned to see Professor McGonagall, out of breath and leaning against the wall as though she might topple over were it not for its support. She heaved in gulps of air as I approached her, leaving Ron.

“It’s…it’s an attack,” she breathed, and I cocked my head to the side and stared at her. “There…there’s an illness. Hermione and you…you both have it. And we believe that Voldemort created it. It doesn’t seem that we can…we can…”

“What?” I asked her desperately, but she shook her head.

“We can’t do anything!” she replied, and then I heard Neville shriek behind me.

“GINNY!” he shouted, and I whipped around. This couldn’t be happening. She’d only been around Hermione for a few minutes, a few small moments. This…this wasn’t possible. But as I turned, I knew that a nightmare was being realized. Ginny was held up in Neville’s arms, her hand on her chest. Heaving, she began to shake in Neville’s grip.

“NEVILLE, GET AWAY FROM HER NOW!” I screamed, desperate to protect him. But he wouldn’t move. He held onto her as she began to shake like Hermione had, the violence of the fit threatening to send them both falling to the ground. I rushed forward, not realizing what I was doing. Supporting Ginny’s flailing head, I stared back at Ron, whose face was ashen. He took a step forward, and I drew my wand.

“You stay away from all of us!” I ordered him.

“She’s my sister, Harry!” Ron reminded me, but I shook my head.

“I don’t know how or why, Ron,” I said to him, “but you’ve got something to do with this. I can sense it. And I’m not letting you get near any of us! I don’t care who you’re related to, if you take another step towards any of us, I’ll blast you right through that window!”

And I meant it. I didn’t know what Ron was up to, or what he had been doing, but there was something different about him. The fact that he hadn’t been surprised at Hermione’s fit, how he had known where I needed to go…none of it seemed right. And I bent down to Neville again, who lay sobbing over Ginny’s body.

“Professor!” I said to McGonagall, more in desperation and uncertainty than anything. She shook her head at me, signaling that she was at a loss for what to do as much as I was.

“An attack,” I uttered more to myself, “are you sure, Professor?”

“It fits, Harry,” she said anxiously, and I saw fear in her eyes. “You…you left that place! And now…and now Ginny too!”

“I’ll take her to the hospital wing!” Neville bellowed.

“No!” I told him. “No, I’ll do it! I’m already exposed, probably already sick in…in some way!”

I took Ginny into my arms, and then glared back at Ron. His eyes were full of the emotion I had seen when we were twelve and being attacked by spiders. And there was a certain bit of bitterness there too, but I don’t know who it was intended for. I rose up, his sister cradled in my arms just as Hermione had been. And then I heard him cry out.

“NOT YOU!” he shouted, and I turned abruptly around as Ginny’s body finally came out of seizing and grew limp in my arms. I glared at him.

“What did you say?” I asked him, and he rushed forward and took Ginny from my arms.

“I’ll take her,” he snapped, and he pried her away from me. My eyes shot daggers at him.

“Why?”

“Because,” he choked, “you’ll kill her before you get up to the floor. Your…your disease will make you kill her.”

“What?” I asked, not understanding.

“You aren’t sick like they are, Harry,” Ron said, and there was a trace of remorse throughout his cold tone. “He’s done something…different with you.”

“And what is that?” I asked. “And furthermore, how do you know?”

But I never got my answer. Ginny had begun to seize again, and Ron rushed up toward a staircase. My eyes followed him, and he was almost out of sight when he turned. His mouth moved to form words, but they were drowned out by screams. And as I turned, I saw Neville collapse on the floor, his legs buckling underneath him. And I knew that this was it. Voldemort’s great attack. A plague on the castle of Hogwarts, an infection that spread like a lightning bolt, sickening one student after another. And it would only be a matter of time before the entire Great Hall was seizing, retching , and sputtering. And I was one of the sick, Ron had said, but not like the others. What was it that set me apart?

“No, Colin, you’re all right, okay?”

My mouth was dry as I formed the words, holding onto the sweaty hand in my grasp. Weeks had passed, and the hospital wing continued to grow more crowded by the minute. Students began to arrive in droves, assisted by those too stupid to stay away. Seamus Finnigan and Dean Thomas now sat in a bed next to my own, each suffering seizures and spats of fever here and there before falling into uncomfortable slumber. Lavender Brown was tucked into a corner, and had failed to awake for breakfast that morning. And I was standing over Colin Creevey, who appeared to be seeing things that I could not.

“They’re reaching out for me, Harry,” he said, his eyes focused on something entirely invisible. It was beginning to scare me, that blank look. His eyes were glazed, his heart beating feebly in his wrist. I gripped his fingers tighter, praying a silent prayer. This couldn’t be happening, he had only been sick for a few days. But the small body was writhing in the sheets, attempting to fight off a power that was stronger than anything in the castle. I turned about, looking for Madam Pomfrey. I called out and she came running, leaving Hermione’s bedside for a moment to come peek at the boy who appeared to be fading away all too quickly.

“Professor,” Colin uttered, and he seemed to smile.

“No, Colin,” I told him. “No, that’s Madam Pomfrey, that is. She’s gonna take good care of you, you’ll see.”

Colin’s eyes gave a final roll, and then I heard him take one rattling breath. His grasp upon my hand grew limp, and I watched as he stared up at the ceiling.

No. No, it doesn’t kill. It hasn’t killed.

But that had changed. For as Madam Pomfrey bent to feel Colin’s forehead, I continued to watch his face. His hand, though warm, was growing heavy. It was like holding some kind of toy, the way it continued to remain stationary. And as I looked down at him, his lips began to turn paler and paler. I swallowed the stale air that hung over the body and released him, backing up as though I were afraid he may rise and kill me. But those once excited, exhilarated eyes would never open again. The light had left them, the life had expired within them, and they were nothing but a plain, flat line in death.

“Potter,” I heard Madam Pomfrey utter, but I wasn’t listening to her. I left the bedside, wanting nothing more than to leave the wing itself. But I was sick, though I did not yet know how. I had failed to fall victim to a seizure, never lost consciousness. The only time I seemed to exhibit symptoms was when I ran a fever, and that was only once or twice a week. My dreams at night were troubled, it was true, and there were hours in which I did not feel like myself entirely. But I had been employed as a sort of nurse for those too sick to rise from their beds, served potions to those who needed them, and kept those who remained awake company. I ran from the sight of Colin and Death to the sink on the far wall and retched from something that had nothing to do with illness. I thought at first that it was shock that made my stomach sour. But as I continued to look into the depths of the drain, my heart gave a lurch as I realized that it was not shock at all. This, all of this, was because of me. Hermione had spoken of an attack on a public building, had predicted it would be Hogwarts. And the reason for it all? Me. Voldemort sought to weaken me, to allow me to sit back and watch as my friends fell victim to this evil while I remained healthy and somehow sick. My fault…as was everything else. It would be better if I could have changed places with Colin, allowed myself to be taken by the Grim Reaper. His death couldn’t have been real, I thought at first. But now I realized that it was, and that there would only be more.

“Harry,” a voice called out to me, and I knew it all too well. Whirring away from the cold porcelain of the sink, I saw Hermione, sweat on her brow but looking marvelously well otherwise. I gulped away the sickness that threatened to come again and made my way over to her. She was smiling a miniscule, pained smile, but I could see essentially that she wasn’t feeling too horrible. I kneeled down beside her and took her hand in mine, holding it tightly. Her eyes made their way to Colin’s bed, where Madam Pomfrey was drawing a sheet up over his face. A few students around him who were well enough to see what was going on gasped, while others began to cry. Hermione, the strength within her heart reflected in those chocolate oceans of happiness, remained brave and apparently unbothered by him.

“He died, then?” she asked, and I felt myself nod. There was something hot in my own eyes, but I blinked it away. Hermione’s arm shook a bit from what I knew to be chills, but as I looked back at her, she didn’t lay back or show her exhaustion. “He was really sick when they brought him in. And I think he might be the only one, it doesn’t seem like anybody’s…well…”

But I knew she was making that part up, mainly to assure herself that she would be okay. The truth was, none of us knew what to expect. There was only one person who knew how to end the suffering taking place at the castle, and he was somewhere far away from us. The cure he held would have to be forced away from him, and the chances of someone surviving to obtain it were slim to none. No one could leave to get it, and there was only one person whom would be able to carry out the task that it would require. And here I was, already infected and trapped, unable to go out and defeat Voldemort. God only knew when I would finally begin to exhibit the symptoms.

But Ron said you were different. There won’t be symptoms.

But Ron had been wrong, for I wasn’t sick at all.

“I’m going to get you out of this, Hermione,” I promised her, and I felt myself draw her fingers up to my mouth. She closed her eyes, as if to really feel the kiss. I pulled my hand up to brush her feverish cheek, and then I leaned into her gently. She tasted of struggle, of something that I did not yet know, but I wanted so badly to find out so that I could save her. And then, I felt the room spin. At first, I thought that it was from my elation at being close to her again, to knowing her like I wanted to know her and from the small piece of happiness that I gripped in the darkness that had become my life. But then, something changed entirely. My thoughts were not my own anymore, and I had left the hospital wing all together. I was no longer with Hermione, no longer in the same room as anyone.

“Harry,” called a voice in the whiteness. The walls, the grass upon which I stood, everything was a white of some kind. The brightness of the place threatened to blind me, but I kept my eyes open in search of the voice. It was soothing, inviting somehow. I allowed it to envelop me, wrap itself completely and totally around me. I gave myself over to it, hoping that it would tell me to do something. I was a slave to its bidding, to its word. “Take her,” it said, and I longed to understand it. “Take her away from this place. Get her out in the way that you see fit. She doesn’t want this pain. Bring her…bring her away from it all.”

“Who are you?” I asked the voice.

“Whose what?” someone asked me from far away, but they didn’t matter, for I could not see who spoke. The whiteness did not dissipate, and my ears were only sensitive to the questions the voice asked me.

“Listen to me, Harry,” it demanded, and I closed my eyes so as to allow the voice to enter into me without being disturbed by anything…sight or feel or anything. “Take hold of her. Don’t let go. Just take hold of her like you know you want to.”

My fingers enclosed over something, and I heard a relinquishing sound of gasping and moaning. Part of me dreaded the sound, and part of me relished in it. My grip was like stone upon the being in my hands, and then the whiteness was gone. I swirled between reality and the other land, and when my eyes snapped open, I let out a shriek of fear. My hands were gripping Hermione’s throat in a deadly fashion, choking the life from her weak body. Not knowing how or why I was strangling her, the panic began to flood from her into me. I released her instantly, and I heard her gulp for air and cough as I crashed to the floor. She rolled over to the side of the bed and vomited, causing Madam Pomfrey to come running from the corpse she was tending to and reach for Hermione’s shoulder. She steadied her up in bed and wiped her mouth, but Hermione flung her away.

“I’m fine!” she insisted, though her throat was raw. I did not dare get up from the floor, I was shaking so badly. I was beginning to feel the cold sweat on my face and my body, and I realized my robes were drenched in it. My head was spinning still, and I had to blink several times. Each time my eyes closed, they did not meet the usual blackness but rather white, something very bright and unusual. It took all of the will power I possessed not to allow myself to slip back into the land that had invited me to strangle Hermione. And I remembered Ginny as well. Hermione, still being fussed over by Madam Pomfrey, did not seem to be frightened. “I’m all right, but check on Harry, he seems to…to have collapsed.”

Madam Pomfrey came over to take a look at me. I didn’t want to meet her gaze, didn’t want her to look at me for fear I might repeat my actions. I felt her cool hand on the back of my neck, and I welcomed its pressure, though I didn’t want it.

“Potter?” the nurse said, and there was a string of concern in her voice. I didn’t move, but merely continued to stare at the ground. “Are you all right? Do you feel faint?”

“No, Madam Pomfrey,” I answered, but it was a lie. In truth, I didn’t even know if I could stand up. “I’m fine. Like I always am.”

Madam Pomfrey said nothing, but continued to lean down and look at me.

“It’s just…it was Colin,” I said, “and his death. It threw me a little.”

“He confirmed it,” Madam Pomfrey replied, her voice grim. “The fact that this illness is deadly.”

The doors to the hospital wing burst open in that moment. I snapped my head up and peered over the edge of Hermione’s bed. She instinctively groped for my head and grabbed my hair. I pushed myself up to take her hand, resisting the urge to fall down upon the mattress and let my mind sleep. There stood Ron, his face ashen and grim, carrying what appeared at first to be a bundle of robes. But as I looked closer, I could make a face out from under the emerald material gathered in his arms. It was Professor McGonagall, gone rigid after a seizure. Swallowing hard, I released Hermione’s hand and dragged myself over to them. Ron seemed to want to hold her, but I supported her on my shoulder, her weight pressing down on me like an anvil. And I set her down on the mat that Madam Pomfrey had conjured, for there were not enough beds left to accommodate her.

“It started in the common room,” Ron said, and he seemed to be reliving the incident. “She was talking to the ten of us still left there, and then she just started coughing. And the seizure started after that.” I realized that, though there was a small amount of fear in his voice, he seemed rather calm. Just as he always did where the disease was concerned. Like he didn’t underestimate it at all. He looked at me. The hatred in his eyes at my going out with Hermione had not disappeared, but there was something that mimicked desperation there too.

“You’ve got to find the cure, Harry,” he said to me, blatantly. He looked around, as though expecting to be caught in blowing a large secret. “You’re the only one with the power to defeat him and take it. You’ve got to find the solution before it’s too late for all of them.”

“Them?” I asked him, and I felt myself sway as the room gave a spin. “What about you? Whose to say you won’t get sick?”

Ron said nothing, but took a chance glance at Ginny. She was sitting up in bed with her feet dangling over the side, talking to Neville who lay beside her. I felt a pang enter into my stomach, and for some reason found myself wishing to be the boy next to her. But I was with Hermione now, and that was enough for me.

“It’s not safe for you to be around them, Harry,” Ron said. “And it’s true, you’re getting sick too. But sick in your mind, not your body.”

I cocked my head and glared at him. What did he mean by that? And how did he know?

“What?”

“The Dark Lord has infected you in your thoughts and mind,” Ron said. “He has set it so that by the time you’re able to battle him, you won’t have the sanity to do it properly. You’ll be dead before you can muster up the brainpower to utter a single curse or jinx. And if you stay here and don’t search for that cure, the time you have runs short. The time you have to help them,” he gestured out to the invalids lying on the beds, “and yourself. And my sister and…and Hermione.”

I didn’t understand what he was saying at all. Me? Insane? Two words I knew very well, but I didn’t want to think about. It had happened only once before, the thought that I might very well be going out of my mind. Fifth year. It had been a nightmare. But now…was I truly losing my mind? The look in Ron’s eyes told me yes. And it also told me that I needed to leave…to leave and attempt to find the cure before it was too late for me or the others.

“How do you know these things, Ron?”

“It doesn’t matter how I know them,” Ron said. “It just matters that I know they’re true. So if you want to play the hero again, I’d say now’s the time to do it.”

Nodding, I took a look at Hermione. She coughed a bit and shot a glance in my direction. Her chocolate eyes invited me to swim, but I looked away in fear. I didn’t want to be pulled into that land of whiteness again, didn’t want to endanger her. With a final nod at Ron, I sauntered over to where she lay. His gaze followed me, and I thought I saw a scowl appear on his face before he swept from the room all together.

“Listen to me, Hermione,” I said to her. “I’ve got to go somewhere. I’ve got to leave and find a way to stop all of this.”

“But I just saw you a moment ago,” she replied. “There’s something wrong with you, Harry. You’re infected, don’t you forget that! You can’t just go off and think that you’ll be okay.”

“It’s our only chance,” I said. “If I don’t leave now, I’ll never be able to…to do what must be done to save us.”

“I don’t trust him anymore, Harry,” Hermione said, and she gestured towards the empty doorway. She took a labored breath in, as though she were attempting to fight some fit off. I brushed the sweat laced hair from her face. “He’s changed…it’s almost like he’s tainted. With what, I don’t know, but he’s not Ron anymore. At least, not in the sense we know.”

“I know that,” I murmured, and I didn’t want to tell her my theories. The way he had called Voldemort The Dark Lord stuck fast in my mind. “But his is the only word we have. If I die, I die. But I’m going to do it knowing that I was trying my best to save all of you. To save us.”

She opened her mouth to retort, but never got the chance. Her chest heaved, and she gave into a fit of coughing. She looked away to cough into the sheets, and then I swallowed the impulse to gag as I saw what lay on the material. A spot of red…blood. That’s how it had started with Colin. And I couldn’t sit there anymore. Pushing myself from the mattress, I kissed her briskly on the cheek.

“Wait,” I heard her choke, but I didn’t turn around. I was rushing out the door, turning corners and rushing up staircases. I entered the Gryffindor common room, grabbed my pack, my Cloak, my wand, and a few clothes, and swept from the dormitory. No one would have even known I was there, save for one red headed boy tucked out of my sight in a corner. There was a grimace on his face, and a breath of hope in his heart. I didn’t see him, didn’t hear him, but he said something that I thought I could feel as I stepped out of the portrait hole.

“Good luck, Harry.”

The night air pierced through him like a blunt knife, threatening to puncture but never getting the chance to. He stared at his lily white hands, as if to be sure they were still there. His identity was unknown even to him. In his heart was a sense of purpose, yet he did not know the reason for it. Was he meant to do something? The chill that had settled over his aching spine was like diving into a frozen lake, it numbed him so severely. How long had he been at it? Seconds? Centuries? He could no longer identify with time. It had abandoned him, as had conscious thought. And he felt his knees graze against rocks as he fell, like a marionette released from its strings, upon the ground. And as he breathed in the scent of the grass and the aroma brought on by the clean Earth that lay beneath his nostrils, he realized where he was, why he was there and, most importantly, who he himself was.

And as I lay there, my own thoughts muddled by something I could not identify, I felt myself give a dry cough. A heave, moreover, and a severe one. I put my hand up to my mouth and felt something wet dripping down from my lips. There was blood on my fingers, and I felt myself give a maniacal laugh that was not my own. I rolled on the floor, now hysterical, my sides threatening to burst as I continued to howl in mysterious happiness. My strength was draining, and I was slipping, slipping down to the bottom of some mysterious hallucination. I couldn’t tell, but my face was no longer on land. Indeed, it had slipped through into water, and I was falling down, down towards the bottom of the murky lake. My body hit the bottom of the water, and as I looked up at the top, I could see a person hovering above me. The face I knew. The face I feared.

“Give it up, Harry,” Voldemort demanded, and he grinned a grin wrought by the fires of Hell itself. His red eyes blazed with triumph as he looked down upon my drowning body. “You will not escape me. Not this time. I am inside your mind, and love will not save you. I will destroy you.”

I kicked my legs, but they were filled with something like lead. I moved my arms, but the bottom half of me weighed me down and I could not move. I knew that this lake existed only in my broken mind, but I could not help but feel fear. The knowledge that I had, the instincts that lived inside of me, told me that if I did not surface soon, I would be lost to the depths of my own insanity for eternity. And so, I tried again. I imagined myself on my broomstick, simply giving a kick in order to get up into the air. And I felt my face break the surface of the water, my breath coming back to me, and I was pushing myself off of the forest floor and back up onto my feet. I took heavy breaths in, and the wetness of my hair was due to sweat, not lake water. The blood was still sticky on my fingers, but my thoughts were my own again. I had escaped the attack unscathed, even if I was a bit shaky on my legs.

“Geroff my land or I swear to you, I’ll curse your sorry buttocks from here to Kingdom Come!” came a voice from the trees, and for a moment, I thought I had slipped into another hallucination. But the light that was coming towards me was one that belonged to a lantern, and an actual lantern at that. Instantly, I felt something warm fill me up from inside. I wasn’t anywhere near Hogwarts, I was in some forest in the far country, but I knew that voice. It was Hagrid’s. Hagrid had followed me. He’d come after me, had come to help me in some way, had…

But wait a minute, Harry. Hagrid was in his cabin when you left. He was beginning to fall ill. This can’t be Hagrid. Instantly, I fumbled into my robes and drew out my wand.

“Who are you?” I called out to the swinging lantern. The human being behind it had not surfaced from the shadows, and I could not see their face. But as they continued toward me, I could dictate from the footsteps that they were rather large. I gripped my wand tighter. “Come any closer, and I’ll curse you! I swear, I’ll do it!”

“Won’t have time, sonny,” said another voice, and I could tell that this one belonged to a woman. “You’ve got two wands pointed at you, and if I were you, I would lower mine and do exactly as we tell you to!”

I didn’t obey her, mainly because I knew she couldn’t see me. But with the knowledge that two wands were pointed in my direction, I was not about to strike out directly.

“Who are you?” I repeated.

“We’d like to ask you the same question,” said the man, and the woman took a breath and uttered “Lumos!”

Light rained down on me, slamming into my retinas. It illuminated my face and my surroundings. They were close enough to see my scar, and they would know who I was in moments. But as my own eyes adjusted to the newfound brightness, I was only beginning to make out the faces of the two beings in front of me. One was extraordinarily tall, and I could not make out his features. The woman, on the other hand, was eye-level with me. Her brown hair was pulled back in a braid, and she wore robes of violet purple. Recognition dawned within her grey eyes, which seemed to be the waters of the sea calming after a sudden storm. She placed a hand to her heart and then smiled, praising something up in the sky.

“Thank heavens you’re all right!” she stammered, and I felt her seize me around the shoulders. I let out a groan of confusion, as did the tall man to her left. But the woman was in tears, and she hit her husband. “We’ve got to get him inside the house, Angus! He’s probably exhausted!”

It was no lie, my feet did feel as though they were about to give out on me. And I would have given anything for a bed and a hot meal. But I was conscientious of entering a stranger’s house, especially in times so dark and terrible.

“Who is it, Persephone?” the man named Angus asked, but the woman called Persephone just stood beaming. She placed her hands on her hips and tapped her foot impatiently.

“Harry Potter, of course!” she said, and she seized my hand. “Oh, you’re so cold, dear! Come on, follow us, we’ll lead you to the house!”

“Harry Potter!” Angus exclaimed. “Are you certain that it’s…we received word from Minerva that he was still…”

“McGonagall?” I blurted out, and I felt a knot in my stomach loosen slightly. If they knew McGonagall, if they had been in contact with her before she had fallen ill, then they were my allies. But could I trust them completely? I was all too familiar with betrayal. “You’ve spoken to McGonagall?”

“She sent us a message a few weeks ago,” Angus said. “Said that something like a disease had come to Hogwarts. That Harry Potter might be coming our way. But we haven’t heard from her for at least four days now, and she had promised to send word when you had left.”

“She’s sick,” I told him. “She fell ill just before I left, I watched her get brought in. But I don’t understand…how could she have known that I was leaving? And who are you, exactly?”

“There’s no time to explain, dear,” Persephone said to me, and I felt a hand on my back. It was large, and I knew it had to belong to Angus. He took me in the crook of his arm and forced me to walk forward. I attempted to resist once, but his grip was like iron. Was he a giant? I didn’t know, and I didn’t know if I wanted to or not. Giving in finally, I bade him and his wife to lead me where they saw fit. And the massive tree a few feet away began to materialize into a house before my eyes. I watched the branches spread into a roof, the leaves flatten against the trunk and become windows. The gaping hole in the center dropped down and formed a door. My mouth fell open, but I did not know why. Nothing, after seven years in the Wizarding World, should have surprised me. But magic was impressive, and I allowed myself to be mystified as I entered into the cozy cottage and was hit with yet another illusion. The ceiling, seeming so low from the outside, rose up to the height the tree had been, and as Persephone and I entered, I turned to see the door raise up in order to accommodate Angus. And it took all of my will power not to grimace as he came through the door. Where Persephone had been somewhat pretty, with her youthful face and smiling eyes, Angus was anything but. His face was covered in warts, giving him the look of a spattergroit victim. His nose was extraordinarily large, and a snaggletooth hung out of his mouth. He was dressed in Muggle clothes hit several times with an Enlargement Charm, and as he waddled into the house, I noticed that his massive feet were uncovered and dirty.

“Welcome to our home, Harry,” Persephone said, and she gestured to a couch. It took me a moment to look away from Angus, but when my gaze fell upon the warm seat next to a crackling fire, I couldn’t help but charge at it. I slumped down onto the welcoming pillows, laid my head back against the back of the sofa. But I could not sleep. I did not know the people who had taken me in, and therefore could not trust them enough to allow myself to sleep while at their mercy. And then, there was the fact that I would fall back into my maniacal dreams. I found that the longer I stayed awake, the more sanity I held onto. But it came at a price, and I was beginning to wonder when my body would have to give up and force my mind to rest. I couldn’t think of it now, though. My focus was on the present, and I looked from the sweet Persephone to the ugly Angus, a labyrinth of questions unto myself.

“I’m sorry for…er…having to ask you again,” I stammered. “But I’ve never heard of an Angus or a Persephone. McGonagall never mentioned you and quite frankly, I’m not geared to staying in a place if I don’t know who I’m staying with.”’

“Well, I wouldn’t imagine you would know about us,” Persephone said. “A lot of people like…well, like us are kind of shoved away from society. But I was a witch who attended Hogwarts at one time. And I was one of McGonagall’s most prestigious students. She told me that I had a lot of promise in Transfiguration and would probably grow up to be a fine Auror. We formed a strong bond, Minerva and I. She was like my second mother, and she was supervising my Auror training until I met Angus here.”

“And she stopped supervising you because…”

“Well, because I got married and quit my training, that’s why!” Persephone huffed. Angus shuffled uncomfortably beside her. “Anyways, I had no idea I would be shunned for marrying a half-ogre but…”

“Wait,” I said, and I regretted speaking directly after the words had left my mouth. Still, it was out already. “A what?”

“You’ve heard of half-giants, right?” Angus asked me. I nodded, failing to mention that one of them happened to be a good friend to me. “Well, it’s like the same thing except I’m…well, I’m half ogre instead.”

I’d only heard of ogres in my Care of Magical Creatures class. Still, it was apparent that Angus was half of something that wasn’t human, and I nodded my head and accepted it. He seemed a bit taken back by it, but I just shrugged.

“That’s…neat,” I felt myself say foolishly. But Persephone had already begun to talk again.

“I’ve corresponded with Minerva over the years, and lately, she’s been telling me about the goings-on at Hogwarts,” she said. “Asking for me to help. I told her that I was content with staying out of the conflict all together, but she was persistent. And then, like we told you, we get this letter a couple of weeks ago requesting that, if Harry Potter shows up in our forest, we help him.”

“But that makes no sense. How would McGonagall know that I would be coming this way if I hadn’t even thought about it myself?”

“She must have known you would leave,” Angus answered, before Persephone could utter another word. “What did you leave for anyway?”

“I’m trying to find a cure for the epidemic,” I said. Persephone shook her head quickly, as though in confusion.

“What is this epidemic, exactly?”

I explained to them about the illness that had befallen Hogwarts. I told them of Hermione’s capture, of her seizures and the infection of the other students, and the death of Colin. I left out Ron’s involvement intentionally, mainly more for myself than them. Why would it matter who Ron was at all?

“Merlin’s beard,” Persephone exclaimed. “Does He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named know that you have left? Does he know you’re coming after the cure?”

To this question, I could not give an answer. And my scar seared in a sudden moment of pain, and I doubled over in pain. Persephone stepped forward, but I did not see her. My mind and thoughts were encompassed by a sea of red, and then I heard the words in the back of my head.

Yes, Harry. I know.

“I don’t think he knows, no,” I uttered, and I came back to the house.

“Are you all right, dear?” Persephone asked.

“Perhaps we ought to let him rest, Persephone,” Angus uttered. “We’re here to help make him healthy, give him some sustenance, and let him be on his way, aren’t we? Let’s do our jobs right, then.”

“Right then,” Persephone said. “We’ll let you sleep, Harry dear. You’re not infected, are you? Minerva told us to sleep outside if you were. But you look healthy. Feeling flushed or anything?”

“No, no,” I assured them, though I had wanted to say yes. But I wasn’t controlling my own words anymore. They were under the command of the disease. “I’m fine. You go on to bed and let me take a rest. Thank…thank you for the shelter.”

“Get some rest, young man,” Angus commanded. “Where you’re going, you’re going to need it.”

“Right,” I uttered, and I wanted them both to leave the room. The whiteness was beginning to circle over my eyelids, and I wanted to dive into it. “Thanks again.”

And they were gone. I heard them close the door and then let out a gasp for air or something like it. I fell, shaking, down upon the pillows, and the room was gone again. My eyes were shut in pain as I landed once again onto white grass. The agony that was my legs, my arms, my being began to recede, and I opened my eyes and felt at peace. The whirring whiteness of my cage was my solitude, and I relished in it. And I waited for that heavenly voice, the voice that commanded me. The voice that I loved. And it came to me like a mother to a son, like a vampire to its victim.

“You have tried to escape me,” it said.

“No,” I answered. “No, I…”

“Do not attempt it again, Harry. You are mine now. Do you understand?

“Yes,” I answered. “Yes, of course.”

“The power rests within you, Harry,” it cooed in my ear. “You must use it to rid the world of what it cannot have.” I did not ask what the voice meant. I did not have to. It would reveal the task to me before long. All I had to do was wait. “You did not do as I asked you before. You did not keep hold of the girl.”

“I love her.”

The voice shrieked, as though burnt or singed by a deadly flame. I heard it scream out, the echoes of it causing my ears to bleed. I fell to my knees, my hands over my ears. Then, as quickly as it had come, the shouts and cries of pain began to ebb away.

“Do what must be done tonight,” it commanded me. A wand materialized in my hand. I grasped it and laughed in terrific joy. The warmth from the wood flooded through my arm and into my heart. The fantastic insanity of it all threatened to overcome me, I was so enthralled with it. “Take this wand and fulfill what I bid you do, Harry Potter. Use this to follow my word.”

“How?”

“Rise up. Rise up and complete the task.”

I was up. My hands were gripping onto something in my hand as I walked through the living room, not seeing. Blind. I charged into another room that I could not see, and then I felt the words on my tongue. And I said them without saying them, did it without doing it. And when the whiteness had released me, it was in time to see the green light hit Persephone’s slumbering body. Angus, in complete and total shock, looked from her to me. The connection to the murdered and the murderer. It was so close. And in his grief, his confusion, and his fury, he rose up and slammed me away from the room. My body flew into the island of the kitchen, and stars bounced in front of my eyes. I was crying, tears streaming down my face. I had not killed the woman, could not have killed her. It was not in me to kill. No. It had not been me.

“YOU’VE KILLED MY WIFE!” Angus roared, and I could not stop him as he came forward and put his hand to my throat. My feet left the ground as I sputtered, choking for air. “WE TRUSTED YOU AND YOU KILLED HER!”

“It…wasn’t…me,” I choked, and he threw me from him again. I couldn’t see, my vision was going fuzzy. But I heard him draw something out of a drawer, and the swish of the blade on his clothing told me that it was a knife. I tried to move my legs, but didn’t want to. I wanted Death to swallow me, to take me with it. I had killed, and I deserved to die. The remorse in my heart was offering me up to the arms of the Grim Reaper himself. I felt his hand on my shoulder, heard him shouting, and felt the dizzying sensation as he took me into the other world with him. My half-conscious body collided with a rough surface, and I knew that I was behind the veil now, preparing to open my eyes and see my parents, Sirius, Dumbledore. But as the feeling returned to my extremities, I realized that I was not dead, but alive. Alive and trembling.

“I’M SORRY!” I called out to the night, and I pounded the earth in anger and frustration. I had not killed a woman, and yet I had. And in my fury, I longed to die. I cursed whoever delivered me from Angus and his wrath. I reached for my wand, but found that it was gone. And standing myself up, I whirled around to find the person who did have it, standing up against a tree and holding it between his fingers. His face was grim, a cut running the length of his cheek. I was weak, and yet strength returned to my remorseful soul as I looked at him.

“Ron,” I cried, hating the tears in my eyes but allowing them to fall. They were for my murdered innocence more than anything else. And Persephone. All for Persephone. “What’re you…”

“She’s dead,” Ron said. And a coldness as I had never felt before or since washed over me as I heard his voice break. “Ginny. She’s gone.”

Ron’s eyes welled with tears as he stared at me, his hands shaking in what appeared to be anger. My breath was catching on some mysterious item in my chest, and I collided with the forest floor. It was there that I let another sob escape me, this time for Ginny. Persephone was tucked somewhere in the far corners of my mind, where I knew she would haunt me for the rest of my life. But this…this was more than Persephone. This was Ginny, the girl that I had loved before Hermione, the one that I had allowed to get away. Never again would I see that smiling face. Never again would that red hair whip in the wind as she laughed at a clever joke made by her brothers. She was dead, gone forever. Dead. Died. And it was because of me again. Everyone I loved, everyone I cared about…they always ended up buried somewhere in the ground, their lives snuffed out because of their relationship with me.

“Why did you come?” I asked Ron when I could speak. Another cough rose up within my chest, and I heaved. I tasted the blood in my mouth and forced myself to swallow, like the disease was swallowing me. From up above, Ron sniffed and wiped his sleeve.

“They promised me, Harry,” he told me, “that they would keep them safe. Me, Ginny, my entire family. They promised that if I joined up, they wouldn’t let the disease touch me and that I could…could take whatever revenge I wanted to.”

My brow furrowed in confusion. Wiping my mouth, I took a breath and forced myself up. My knees wanted to buckle, my mind threatened to slip back into the white world of madness as I steadied myself on my feet. I fought it with all of the power I had left and stared at him, shaking my head.

“What are you talking about, Ron?” I asked him, and I saw that there was grief swirling in his eyes. And something else was there too, something I couldn’t recognize at first. But then I felt the connection, for it was an emotion I knew all too well myself. Self-remorse. He looked away from me and up at the trees, listening to the wind blow through them. He walked away for a moment, and I felt my eyes slide back into my head. A voice was speaking there, and I wanted desperately to listen to it.

Traitor, it said. We kill traitors, Harry.

I had to ward it off, had to fight it for now. There was nothing more important than keeping my wits about me, if for nothing more than to protect Ron from my murderous hand. What was it that had made the voice scream? What was it that kept it away? Instantly, I let my mind wander to the kiss on the terrace, the way Hermione had felt in my arms. I took a deep breath, picturing her face as the wind swirled around her and tossed her hair, and the voice gave a shriek and shrank back into the shadows. I opened my eyes again and turned to see Ron leaning against a tree, the tears now pouring down his cheeks.

“I’m sorry, Harry,” he said to me. “Sorry that I ever did it. I thought that if I did, you would just…just let me have her back. Hermione, I mean. I thought that by joining them and helping the disease spread, I could just make both of you sick and then find the cure. And then I would be able to take the credit for saving her and she would see that she loved me still. But then, I got in too deep. And they told me that they were set to kill and I was going to help them do it. And then he said that he would make sure that you were too weak to fetch the cure and that you…you would be the only one with the ability to do it. And when I asked him about Hermione, he said that she would probably die. And I couldn’t show emotion, but I asked if he would spare my family. And he promised that he would but…but…”

I felt a cold wave sweep over my body as he spoke. I barely felt myself move as I wandered over to where he stood. I seized his left arm viciously and he let out a sob as I heaved the hem of his robes up. The Dark Mark burned there on his skin, as black as I had ever seen it. And I recoiled and backed away, my face contorted in disgust and disbelief. Part of me had known, but I hadn’t wanted to admit it. Part of me had guessed, but I hadn’t wanted to be correct. And here I stood now, in the presence of a Death Eater and at his mercy.

“You have to understand Harry that I was angry,” Ron began. “I didn’t know where else to turn and I…I’m w-weak! I’m not like you; I’m not as resilient! You-Know-Who he…he made me promises that I couldn’t refuse!”

“Lies, Ron!” I spat at him, and the fury was beginning to spark the white world again. “It’s always lies with him! Everything he told you, he told you because he knew you wanted to hear it! He needed you to get to me! And he used you…but he knew that once that disease spread, it was going to go to anyone, including your sister! Did you think that you were protecting her?! You should have known!! You’ve been around his schemes for years! You should have known that he would…”

“I HATED YOU FOR WHAT YOU DID TO ME!” Ron screamed. “I WANTED TO GET BACK AT YOU FOR TAKING HER FROM ME! AND YOU…YOU…”

He broke like a string dangling a bowling ball. He threw himself down at my feet and began convulsing in sobs. I simply stood, staring at him, my own fury mixed with that of another’s. And when I spoke, it was not my own words coming out of my mouth, but a message from someone else, a message from master to servant.

“You’ve sealed your own coffin, Ronald Weasley,” my own voice said, and I felt myself twitch as the message took me over. “You have betrayed me, and so you will die.”

Ron stopped his sobbing as the voice entered into his ears. He brought his face out from behind his hands and looked up at me. But I was not me anymore, not right then. I was something else, something horrible and blind that could not see because of the good residing in the body, but who could hear and speak just fine. And I could feel the…the Weasley boy staring me defiantly in the face, though I did not see his eyes.

“You bastard!” he shrieked, and I cackled a cackle that did not belong to me. “You killed her! And you mark my words, I’m going to see that he makes it through this! I’m going to save him, I’m going to bring him to you, and he’s going to kill you! And when he does, I will be standing there, laughing as you fall!”

I laughed again, and then felt him touch me. My eyes rolled, my knees fell out from beneath me and I was in hysterics now, my sides aching fit to burst as I howled in laughter.

“Harry!” Ron called, but I was no longer Harry. At least, part of me wasn’t. But there was something inside my head, talking faintly. I couldn’t make out the words at first, and I coughed and shook in a convulsion of sorts. But then its voice grew stronger, and as a hand collided with my face, I heard the voice scream out.

“Hold on, mate,” it said consolingly, and it was my voice, the one that belonged to me. “Hold onto yourself.”

“Harry!” Ron shouted again, and my eyes snapped open. I was back, back and in control of my own mind again. I pushed Ron off of me and rolled over onto my side to retch. I heaved in gasps of air, the blood still burning my lips as I rolled back over onto my back and shook. Ron looked down at me, the grief still scorching his eyes.

“You all right?” he asked me as he offered me his hand. I took it, using it to steady myself. I stumbled to a tree and leaned against it, mustering my will power.

“What the Hell was that?” I asked him. He shrugged.

“He said that he was going to try and…and play around with you,” he said. “See if he could get inside your head a bit.”

“You call that “a bit”?”

“We’ve gotta get to that cure, Harry, and fast.”

“Who said you were coming. You’re a Death Eater, remember? Signed a little contract saying that you would always be loyal to Volde…”

“Shh!”

“What? Still afraid of saying your bloody master’s name?”

Ron’s cheeks burned red with color. He said nothing, merely choosing to stare out into space for a moment. I took the time to push myself away from the tree and collect my wand from the ground. I was going to walk away, leave him there by himself while I continued on. Then, I heard him call out behind me just as I was beginning to lose him in the darkness.

“She’s dying,” he called after me. I froze in my tracks. I knew he was talking about Hermione, and I knew that he was right. I was even surprised that she hadn’t died already, though the thought of her cold and lifeless was enough to send me to Hell and back again. She had been the first to fall ill, and yet two had died before her. At least two, that is. I didn’t know the exact number. Ron called out again. “She’s dying and she can’t hold on much longer. I saw her before I left and she talked to me. And do you know what she said?”

“What?” I asked him. “What did she say? What could she have said to you that you think I would care about?”

“She said that she missed you,” he said, “that she wanted to see you again. And then she said that she missed us, all three of us. The way we used to be, before we knew about all of this…this mess. She wanted it to be that way again, she said. And I promised her that it would be, one day. I promised her that.”

“What does it matter, your promises?” I asked. “You promised Voldemort you would be his man, forever.”

“Only to protect the people I love.”

“AND IT LANDED YOU WITH A DEAD SISTER!”

Ron looked down at the ground, wounded by my words. I was breathing heavily, my breath showing in the cold night air. He looked at me again.

“You’re the only one who can save her, Harry,” Ron said. “Hermione, I mean. And I know how much you love her. You don’t want her to die, any more than I wanted Ginny to. So I’m going to keep my promise to her. I’m going to try my best to make things the way they were. But if you go this alone, you will be dead before you even get a chance to reach that cure. He’ll kill you, and then he’ll let the rest of them die the way he’s set it up for them to. So you let me come with you. I’ll snap you out of the episodes that you experience. I’ll keep you under a watchful eye. I’ll let you get the sleep you need and make sure you’ve got the…the strength to get you where you need to go.”

“Thanks but no thanks,” I uttered, and I turned my back on him. I covered my mouth to cough, blood rising again. Ron had said that I wouldn’t be infected like the rest of them. Yet here I was, coughing up my lungs just like all of them were. I was weakening, and I knew it better than anyone. Without help, there was a chance I might not even make it to Voldemort. I knew that he wouldn’t let me die on my own, not without killing me. But if he found me already half-dead, he would shoot the spell at me and then it would be done. And Hermione would die too, her chance for a normal life snuffed out like a candle. She would never grow to have children, never open another book again. Those beautiful chocolate eyes of hers would fill up with death, and it would be my fault, my burden to bear even if I were dead. I stopped walking and closed my eyes, meeting the whiteness again. Opening them quickly so as to prevent it from consuming me, I pivoted slowly and turned around again.

“I could kill you,” I said to him. Again, he lifted his shoulders in a shrug.

“Can’t say I don’t deserve it,” he said. “But I won’t let it happen. I know exactly what he’s doing to you, Harry, and almost everything that he intends to do. I’ll try my hardest to snap you out of it. And you’re not exactly a weakling. You’ll be able to do just fine, with my help. Alone, you’d never manage. But with me…”

“The odds are still against me.”

“But slightly higher in your favor.”

I sighed and it hurt. My chest felt as though it were being butchered from inside, put through a meat grinder and shredded. I wheezed, looked away for a moment, and then looked back.

“Can I trust you?” I asked him, even though a flame of hope was burning somewhere in my heart. The friendship would never be as it had been before, not after such a betrayal. But if Ron was on my side again, then he was right. The game had changed a bit, and though I was still the underdog, my chances were a bit better. “Do I have your loyalty?”

“Always,” he said, and he seized my hand and shook it. “Now, what do you say we make camp? You look like you’re fixing to die or something.”

“That’s funny,” I said. “You almost made me laugh.”

I wanted to pitch the tent, but Ron insisted on doing it. I didn’t know if it was because of guilt or pity that he offered, but I didn’t argue with him that much. My head was throbbing, and I wasn’t sure if I would have had the energy to erect one. It took him merely twenty seconds to get it all set up, and then he went about casting Shield Charms and other protective spells.

”It’s what Hermione would do!” he said cheerfully, though the sadness still overpowered anything in his voice. I nodded as I sat against a tree, fighting the urge to fall asleep. I knew that if I gave in, I might not wake up as the same person. I had to suffer in order to keep my wits about myself, so I slapped myself gently across the face and shook my head, keeping my eyes open.

”Let me just go inside really quickly and I’ll make sure everything’s set,” he said, and he disappeared underneath the flap like an anxious housewife. I leaned my head back against the tree’s trunk, sighing. I felt something tap me on the shoulder. Thinking it was a bug, I attempted to shoo it away. But it tapped me again, and I looked over. My heart swelled as my eyes befell upon the most beautiful sight I had ever seen. There, standing by my side and looking as healthy as the first day I had met her, was Hermione. She smiled at me, extended her hand, and brushed my cheek. Her scent was strong, stronger than it had ever been. I leaned forward, desperate to touch her lips against mine and feel her body beneath my fingers. She put a hand on my shoulders to stop me.

“You’re too tired for this right now,” she said to me. I shook my head and pushed a strand of hair back from her face.

“No, I’m fine,” I assured her, though my eyelids were heavy. All I wanted was her and nothing more. I wanted to hold her, to kiss her, to be with her. But she resisted me as I made to move forward again. “Really, I’m okay. I just want to be with you.”

“Sleep, Harry,” she told me. “I’ll be waiting for you when I wake up. But right now, you just need to close your eyes. Close your eyes and I’ll see you in your dreams. I’ll see you there, and then I promise, I’ll let you kiss me. I’ll let myself be with you.”

I suddenly felt the weight of exhaustion bearing down on me like an anvil. Lights danced in front of me like ballerinas as I felt her soft lips graze mine and I was falling through white clouds, through white air. There was beautiful laughter ringing softly in my ears, and I could have listened to it forever. And she was standing there, in the midst of the snowfield, her white robes glorious and flowing down her body with grace. I started to run to her, but my body wouldn’t let me go anywhere. I reached out, wanting her hand to touch mine, but I couldn’t reach her.

“You haven’t done it yet, Harry,” a voice called out, and I fell to my knees as a pain seared in my scar. I cried out, reached out to Hermione and begged her to help me. But she wasn’t Hermione anymore. She was a little girl now, with glowing red eyes. And she was talking to me, her voice icy. “Kill him, Harry. He betrayed you. Kill him. Kill him now.”

“Wake up, mate!” Ron’s voice sounded as though it was coming from the surface of a black pond. “Come on Harry, time to come back. None of it’s real. Come back.”

I made a grab for something, my hand quivering, and then I felt my face break through to free air again. I heaved in gasps of breath, weakened but alive, and Ron was in front of me, his hands steadying him on the ground.

“Some grip you got there,” he told me. “Took me forever to get you to let go.”

He was rubbing his throat, and I could see, though my eyesight was foggy, that it was red and irritated. Looking at my own hands, I realized that they were cupped into a position mirroring his neck. I moved my fingers out of the position and sat shaking, not looking at anything, allowing my vision to blur. She had been there, so real, so concrete. And now I was alone again, and she was an illusion. And I had tried to kill someone again. What was I turning into? Some kind of monster infected with a disease that made me do my enemy’s bidding? Had I become my own worst nightmare after all?

“I can’t do this, Ron,” I said. “I…you can’t be with me. I’m dangerous.”

Ron said nothing for a moment, merely popping his lips. Then, he looked up at the stars.

“You know when Ginny was first born, I didn’t like her at all,” he said, a dry chuckle rising out of his mouth. I cocked an eyebrow. “I didn’t want her taking my place as the youngest, and I thought because she was a girl she would be…I don’t know, loved more or something like that. But as the years went by, I realized that she was everything a brother could have ever wanted. She was more than just a playmate…she was like a best friend too. And now, she’s gone. I can’t have her back. And it’s my fault.”

“So what are you saying?”

“That I’m going to put things right, Harry. I’m staying with you, no matter how bad things get. Because I owe it, to her and to you. I loved her and I killed her. And I’m going to rectify that mistake. I’m going to stay with you, snap you out of whatever you need snapped out of, and then we’ll see what we get out of that. I’m not going to let another best friend die…not you or Hermione. It’s too late for Ginny, but I promise you that I won’t leave you…not until you’ve done what you need to do. And if I have to die getting you there, I’ll do it.”

I coughed, but the blood did not come up. Using the tree as a support, I pushed myself off of the ground and made toward the tent. Ron was already standing, and he watched me go in. I turned to look at him.

“Was Hermione…how bad was she?” I asked earnestly. My fear had been heightened by the vision. Was it just Voldemort’s images torturing me? Or had it been Hermione’s soul, visiting me from the dead?

“She’s strong, Harry,” he assured me. “She’ll make it through this. She’s waiting for you, mate. And she’ll keep waiting.”

“Why wait when you can have her now?” asked a cold voice from behind a tree. I shook my head, staring as the Shield Charms began to break around us. And a figure began to emerge out of the darkness, carrying something in his arms. And as he approached, the cloaked man threw something down at my feet. I backed away instinctively, and then rushed forward. Hermione’s eyes were closed, and blood was matted in her unkempt hair.

“Thought I’d bring you a gift,” Draco Malfoy sneered as he pointed his wand at my face.

I coughed, sputtered, and my head spun uncontrollably as I gazed confusedly from Hermione to Malfoy. My heart was in my throat as I stared at the girl on the ground, and my hands wound tightly around the hem of her robes. I was sure she was dead, sure she was gone from my world forever, until I saw the slightest movement of her chest rising. Her breaths were shallow, I could see, but they existed and that was the main thing. Malfoy cackled as I sat there stooped, my shoulders doubled over in weakness and worry. I thought for a few moments that I would surely die, cursed by him as I tried to stand. But then I remembered that Ron was there, and I saw him advance on Malfoy with a speed I had never known in him. Malfoy turned away from Hermione and me, his wand still raised, and shook his head at Ron.

“Tsk, tsk, Weasley,” Malfoy sneered, “I told them not to trust you. I told them you would go back to your friends, but did they listen to me? No, they had to believe that you had turned completely. But you’re weak, aren’t you? You both are. Weakness stays with weakness, that’s all there is to it. Bet you love being back with him, don’t you Weasley? I have to say, the relationship you two share is a bit unnatural, isn’t it? But then that’s right…you left because the Mudblood loved him more than she loved you. After all the time you spent dawdling over her and loving her, she turned her back and fell in love with him…your best mate. And I’ve got news for you right now…it doesn’t matter what you do. She’s never going to love you.”

“You go to Hell, Malfoy!” Ron said, and Malfoy laughed again.

“I don’t think you’re in a position to be saying anything, Weasley,” he said. “Look at your hero.” He gestured towards me. “He’s dying. He’s dying, and both of you know it. It’s only a matter of time before he can’t walk anymore, can’t go anywhere. And do you know what’s going to happen then? He’s going to come for him. He’s going to come, kill you, and then fulfill the prophecy like it was meant to be fulfilled.”

“Nobody’s dying here, Malfoy,” Ron said. “Nobody.”

“Look again.”

He turned back toward me, his grey eyes flashing dangerously in the moonlight. Smirking, he gave a swift kick to Hermione’s back. She groaned, her eyes stirred, and then they snapped open, searching for something or someone. They found me but didn’t seem to recognize who I was. I released a cry of anguish and gripped her hand in my own, squeezing and trying to make her see. But they were rolling, unfocused, and she coughed again. Blood gathered on her lips, and I could see it then. I could see it as clearly as I could see her before me. The flower of death was blooming on her ashen, sunken face. From a distant land, the chill of mortality was coming to claim its next victim.

“NO!” I cried out as her eyes snapped shut again, and I summoned the strength in my body and stood up quickly. Ignoring the dull pain in my knees, I trudged towards Malfoy, my fevered hands gripped about the wand in my robe pocket. I spat in his face, and he wiped it away with ease and just stood there, the mirror image of the devil, a pleased and triumphant smile spread wide across his face.

“I’ll kill you,” I said to him, and my voice did not shake. “YOU TELL ME HOW TO SAVE HER, OR I’LL KILL YOU!”

“Watch your temper, Potter,” Malfoy ordered. “You wouldn’t want to create a crack in your mind for the Dark Lord, now, would you?”

And as he said it, the world began to swirl and turn white. Ron, who had been standing behind Malfoy only moments before, vanished, and now it was merely us and the musical, melodious voice standing there in the shining wood. Hermione’s body lay upon the ground, unmoving and still. And Malfoy seemed to freeze as the voice spoke out to me and me alone, as pure and refreshing as water.

“I can save her, Harry. I can save her and allow her to live a long and graceful life. All you need do is surrender, and she will be cured. All you need do is give yourself over, and her pain will end.”
I felt my eyes rolling into the back of my head, and my feet swayed. The voice spat me back out into reality, and as I withheld the sight of the forest once more, I saw Malfoy standing there with his hand out, as if offering to shake. Ron, his face confused, cocked his head in my direction.

“Harry, what did you see?” he asked me, and he seemed to be speaking from very far away. I answered him sluggishly, half of my mind still back in the realm of white.

“He told me to surrender,” I said. “He told me that he’d save her if I joined him.”

“But you’re not actually going to listen, are you?” Ron asked fearfully. “No, Harry! Don’t give into him! You told me, remember? It’s all lies with him, Harry!! All of it!! I promise you, once we move past this idiot, we can get her someplace safe! We’ll patch you both up and we’ll be able to…”

“I don’t have anything left, Ron,” I told him, subdued. My head bowed down. “The energy’s gone. And how do you expect to nurse us both back to health?”

“That’s right, Potter,” Malfoy cackled. “Do the right thing for her. Save her life…give us yours.”

“I have to do this, Ron,” I explained to him, and my gaze fell back to the unconscious girl lying upon the ground. God, how I loved her. I would do anything to make sure that she was okay. “It’s the only way to make sure she survives.”

“NO!” Ron shouted, and in an instant, his wand exploded with green light. Malfoy’s face fell as the curse hit him in the back, and I watched as his body dropped first to his knees and then directly to the ground. The fog of death drifted over his eyes, and he flopped to the earth like a marionette cut from its strings. Ron looked at his wand as though in disbelief, and he might have shouted a curse word. But I wouldn’t have known. For in the seconds that it took Malfoy to fall, I had slipped back out of the world yet again. I was standing now on the edge of a great cliff, looking down upon white shores and a white ocean.

“You were right when you said you have nothing left,” the voice said, and I hated it then. I could feel the emotions of the real me, stirring there in my heart. I wanted to defeat the speaker, to cast a Killing Curse so powerful as to wipe it clean away from space and time. But it continued to speak consolingly to me, and I couldn’t escape from its spell. “You can’t expect to save her in the direction that you’re going. But if you give your mind and your actions over to me, I will restore the strength in her. She will be the same girl that you knew, the same girl that you loved. All you have to do is say yes. Say yes to me, and her pain ends.”

“Harry!” a voice broke through the whiteness, and the voice growled. But it needn’t have worried. I had made my decision.

“Yes.”

Something laughed. The world grumbled and shrieked, and the whiteness blinked. The light became too powerful for my eyes, and I tried to turn away. But my actions were no longer my own, and so I stood with my arms stretched out as a beam of white light passed through my body. I felt it enter my chest, felt my mind cave in on itself, and then my feet were swept from the ground. I was suspended in air, and Ron was yelling from somewhere below me.

“NO! HARRY! GOD, NO!!!”

“Ron?” I tried to say, but I didn’t know if the word had left my mouth or not.

“NO! NO! YOU’RE NOT TAKING HIM OVER, YOU BASTARD!”

Though there was no hand anywhere in the air, I felt something gripping my left shoulder. There was pressure there; a desperate pressure, and then I felt a warm, sweet breath on the left of my cheek. I was still floating, still a prisoner in the world of white, the world that belonged to Voldemort, but he was losing his grip on me. The voice sighed, but it did not tense in anger. It was merely disappointed at having to submit to something, and then I felt myself falling. The air did not support my body anymore, and I was hurtling towards the ground, sure to make impact and die. I closed my eyes, shielded my face against impact and then…I breathed in a deep breath as the forest floor cradled me. There was sweat pouring down my face, gluing my hair to my forehead, and there was someone gripping my forearm in angst. Blinking, I tried to focus on something, anything…and I found myself swimming in chocolate eyes that smiled weakly at me. And there she was, standing before me and looking as beautiful as I had ever seen her look. I breathed out in relief and flung my hands around her neck, holding her to me.

“I thought that you’d…”

“So did I,” Hermione said, and her voice was clear, no longer tainted with disease.

“But how are you…”

Her eyes lowered in pain. “Harry, what did you promise him?” she asked me. I shook my head, unable to understand what she was asking me. There were tears forming in her eyes. I stroked her face gently.

“What?” I asked her anxiously. “What is it?”

“What did you agree to give to him?” she asked me anxiously, and she took both of my arms in her hands and looked at me. I swallowed and then answered her.

“I gave him me,” I told her. “I told him to take me if it meant that you would live. And he tried but…but you waking up beat him off, Hermione! I’m okay now, don’t you see that?”

She shook her head in anguish, and then looked to Ron. “No!” she shouted, and she pounded on my chest. “No, Harry! God, why would you do that?!”

“I couldn’t lose you!”

“You will anyway!” she shouted. “Don’t you see what he’s done?! He’s in control of you now, Harry! He holds you in his hands like a weapon…you’re health, your thoughts, all of them are his! He can kill you just by telling you to die! Don’t you understand?! By surrendering to him, you surrendered the world!”

“But I…but I came back because…”

“For now, Harry! He can’t fight this love right now! But as soon as you sleep, or as soon as your heart calms down from my being alive you’ll…you’ll slip back under his power! And now you’ve either got to defeat him in your mind or suffer under his rule! And when you go to face him, he’ll kill you on both fronts! He’ll make you wish you were dead, he’ll do everything he can to break you! And you will break, Harry…you’re strong, I know, but you’re not that strong! Oh…oh, Harry!”

She collapsed into me, and I held her there in my hands, allowing the scent of her to fill me up. And she was right. I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand the severity of what I had done. But I held her there as she cried, and there was a rustling from behind us. Ron, his feet crunching against the dead leaves that lay like corpses on the ground, brought himself around and placed an unsure hand down upon her back. She looked up at him, and then her face fell again.

“This is all my fault,” she said. “If I hadn’t…”

“No,” Ron said. “It’s my fault. I let jealousy get in the way. And I should have waited to see how happy you…you both were together. If I had known that you meant so much to each other, than I…I would have been able to let it all go. It was my fault that the epidemic was able to spread the way it was. And it’s my fault that you’re both sitting here like this and not someplace warm, friendly, and safe. But I’ll tell you something now, Harry…I think you can do this. I think you can fight him, and I think that you can win. And you’ve got both of us to help you now…just like it was before.”

“Well, I don’t exactly plan on dying,” I told them both, and Hermione pushed herself off of my chest to see me better. I gave a small cough, though it didn’t hurt as much now as it had before. “When have you ever known me to back down from a fight?”

Ron smirked, and Hermione gave an amused sniffle. I brushed my hand across her cheek and made to kiss her softly. When I let her go, she took a quick, pained look at Ron, but he merely shrugged his shoulders.

“I’m not going to tell you that it doesn’t hurt, because it does,” he said. “But I can’t make you come back to something that you don’t want.”

She hugged him gently around the neck, and then looked back at me.

“We need to get moving,” she said softly, "The longer we sit here, the more we risk. Voldemort can find you easier now, what with this new power and all. And there's a better chance of him taking you over the longer we sit." She stood up. Offering me her hand, she helped to pull me to my feet and I stood, feeling more like myself than ever before. I leaned in to kiss her, and she tasted like freedom. Her hands curled in my hair, and she stood on her tiptoes so as to hold me closer. Ron cleared his throat, and only then did we break apart.

"Sorry to break up the reunion," he remarked, "but it is getting dark. And everything Hermione just said is right. We need to move, and now."

"All right," I breathed, and I let Hermione go. "This should be fun."

“Oh, we’re heading into certain death, with a possibility of possession in your case, and the fate of the entire Wizarding World resting on our shoulders,” Ron said, and he gave a sarcastic shrug. “Sounds like a party to me.”