CHAPTER NINETEEN.
Neville shepherded them along through the corridors, and it was a few minutes before Harry realised that he was leading them towards the Room of Requirement. Dimly, he had thought that Neville would again choose to meet in the Owlery, but he recognised that the Room of Requirement could at least be made somewhat more impregnable than the drafty tower.
Hermione was trailing quietly beside him, sniffling, and Harry could see the shock and misery on her face, and knew that his own probably looked no different. He kept seeing Ron’s face, white and blinking, with blood pouring from the cut in his head. Even though he knew that it was only an accident, he felt incredibly guilty that his best friend was now in the hospital wing “ again “ because of him. Again. He hoped that Ron would forgive him, and realise that he hadn’t meant to do it, and that he was now feeling thoroughly ashamed of himself.
He was jolted out of his thoughts when Neville propelled him through a doorway, into what seemed like a replica of the Gryffindor Common Room. Numb, Harry vaguely recalled Neville, round face screwed up in concentration, pacing back and forth beside a long stone wall, repeating under his breath “Somewhere safe, somewhere we can talk, somewhere that no-one else can get into…” For a brief moment, Harry wondered if the Room of Requirement had somehow siphoned them back into Gryffindor Tower, but a closer look around the room showed several differences. The Common Room was much tidier, for one, and there were no staircases leading off to dormitories, and no windows. No way for anyone to get in, Harry realised.
“I hope you’re proud of yourselves,” said Neville unexpectedly. He was beside the fire, sitting on the floor next to a small round table set for tea and fumbling with Harry’s old jumper, and Harry felt a faint jolt of surprise when he saw his secret bottle of Firewhiskey uncovered and set stoutly upon the table. “I expect Ron’s going to spend the night in the hospital wing because of you two.” Hermione made a small unhappy sound, and the two of them reluctantly moved over to sit on either side of Neville.
“It was an accident,” said Harry, feeling as if he had just been winded. “We didn’t mean him to be hurt,” he went on, addressing Neville, and feeling an inexplicable urge to explain. “It’s just… it’s just that there’s so much going on, and we’re all so worried all of the time, and…”
“There are so many secrets,” Hermione added mournfully, and Harry couldn’t stop himself snorting. “I know!” said Hermione shrilly. “I’m just as bad as you. Probably worse! And I know that it would probably be easier if we all knew the same things, but it’s so hard to tell them. There are things I don’t even want to remember, let alone talk about!”
Harry found himself nodding in agreement. The interview with Dumbledore after Sirius had been killed was fresh in his mind, and he would have given anything to be able to wake up one day and not be able to remember it.
“I see,” said Neville carefully, and, unscrewing the bottle, he tipped a small amount of Firewhiskey into one of the mugs laid out on the table. He was looking at them both as he did so, and Harry could see pity and indecision battling on his face. After a few moments, the pity clearly won, and Harry looked away. He wasn’t sure that he wanted to know what Neville was about to do, but he felt too sorry for himself to run away.
“You know, I envy you,” Neville said bluntly, and there was an odd quaver in his voice. “Both of you.” He took a sip of his Firewhiskey and choked a little on it. Harry had the feeling that Neville was trying to work up his courage, but when the other boy looked up, Harry could see that there wasn’t a trace of nervousness in his face, but only a deep and abiding sadness.
“I wish my parents were dead,” said Neville quietly, his expression set.
Hermione looked at him aghast. “You don’t mean that, Neville!”
“I do,” said Neville stoutly. “You don’t know what it’s like! Dragged along to St. Mungo’s every weekend, I was, until I came to Hogwarts. And there was no point to it. They never knew me. Ever. And each week, it was like losing them all over again. You’re lucky. You don’t know it but you are.” He looked up at them, and his face softened slightly. Harry expected that his own face looked as pale and shocked as Hermione’s did. He tried to argue with Neville, to make him take it back, but his throat has closed up and he couldn’t speak.
“You are lucky,” Neville repeated, more kindly this time. “I mean, yes, your parents are dead, and that’s bad. But if you think it couldn’t be worse, then you’re wrong.” He picked up his mug and took a great swallow, emptying it, a grimace on his face. When he could speak again, Neville looked at them both, and this time his tone was determinedly cheerful.
“There,” he said. “I wish they were dead. Whatever you’ve got to say, or whatever you haven’t said… it can’t be worse than that, can it?”
Harry just gaped at him, horrified. Next to him, he could hear Hermione breathing in great, gasping sobs, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away from his friend’s face. Neville’s expression was again open and good-natured, and to Harry he looked again like the child he had shared a dorm room with for years, and not the strangely adult version of Neville that seemed to be surfacing more and more often these days. Do I look like that? he thought to himself numbly, as if from a great distance. That… that change. Is that what people see when they look at me?
The silence stretched on for a long time. Eventually it was Neville again who broke it, as Harry has known that he would.
“I can leave, you know,” he said bravely, although Harry could see that the last thing Neville wanted to do was to make the lonely walk back to the Gryffindor Common Room while the two of them stayed behind. “I mean, if you’d rather…”
“No!” said Harry loudly, instinctively, and then cringed at the sound of his own voice. “Stay. Please.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.” Hermione sniffled beside him. “We’re sure.” She still hadn’t spoken, but Harry felt a strange triumph when she shuffled over on her knees to Neville and wrapped her arm around his. She took a few deep breaths, and when she spoke her voice was ragged.
“Give me that,” Hermione said, waving somewhat shakily at the bottle. Silently, Harry held the Firewhiskey out to her, but at the last minute she slapped it away.
“No… no. Wait.” She fumbled clumsily at her robes, unpinning the Prefect’s badge from them and dropping it onto the floor. After a few moments she reached for it, carefully turning it upside down, so that its shiny polished surface was facing away from her. Feeling a faint twinge of amusement, but not daring to show it, Harry handed her the bottle again, and she tipped some into the mug, spilling a little on the floor because her hand was shaking.
With one arm still clinging to Neville, she held the mug tightly in her other hand. Harry could see her knuckles turning white with the pressure of her grip, but when, after a long while, she spoke, her voice was calm.
“I know what it is that keeps the Dementors away,” she said.
Harry leaned forward, and rested his elbows on his knees. “I thought you might,” he said as casually as he could manage, trying not to push her. He had a horrible feeling that she might clam up if he did.
Neville nodded to himself. “You don’t get as many OWLS as you did by being stupid, Hermione,” he said, in obvious reaction to the puzzlement on her face. To Harry’s surprise, Hermione’s face turned briefly red at the praise, before turning white again.
“Clever,” she said dismissively. “D’you know where being clever has got me?” She looked at the floor. “You think you’re so horrible,” she said quietly, unhappily, and it was a few seconds before Harry realised that she was talking to Neville. “But I was more horrible than you,” she went on. “If you knew how awful I was, you wouldn’t want to know me…”
Harry’s heart constricted within him. “There’s nothing that you can have done that’s that awful,” he said. “Neville and me, we’ll stick by you no matter what.”
“No matter what,” Neville echoed grimly.
Hermione nodded, and let out a little sob. “Alright. Thanks.” She took a deep breath. “It’s hard to know when to start. I didn’t know that the Dementors couldn’t hurt me until we were in the Forbidden Forest. You remember, Harry?” He nodded, recalling how they and Lupin had gone to pick mushrooms one night, and how the Dementor had appeared, cutting Lupin and himself off from Hermione.
“I could feel it,” Hermione said, and there was a faint trace of awe in her voice. “But it wasn’t like before. You remember third year, when the Dementors were on the Hogwarts Express? I know what I felt then. I know what they’re supposed to feel like. But it didn’t…” she shook her head, and looked at them in frustration. “I’m not explaining this very well. The best I can understand it is that it’s like a feedback. Having a Dementor near me is the one thing that makes sure I won’t react to them.”
Harry and Neville exchanged looks of sheer puzzlement. Hermione sounded like she did when she was trying to explain a complicated theory to them, and they didn’t understand her now any better than they did when she could be persuaded to help them with their homework.
“I don’t understand,” said Harry at last. “This… this feedback? D’you know what’s causing it?”
“My parents,” Hermione admitted miserably. “Neville’s right, you know. There is something worse than having them dead.”
“Er… they are dead though, right, Hermione?” said Harry, trying to find a delicate way to put it and failing entirely, he thought.
“Yes,” said Hermione. “Of course they are. But… I didn’t react very well.”
“I don’t know that there is a right way to react,” said Neville quietly, but Harry barely heard him. He couldn’t help but remember Tonks’ description of that night. What was it she had said? That Hermione had seen her parents, and, for a moment, there had been the strangest look on her face… Lupin had dismissed this reaction as probable shock, but Harry had the sudden feeling that it was far more than that.
“Mum had sent me to the shops,” said Hermione in a small voice. “Just to pick up some things… milk, butter, you know. I dropped them when I saw that there were Aurors around the house.” She gazed at Harry miserably. “I just left them there in the street. It was the last thing Mum asked me to do and I left them!”
“It doesn’t matter, Hermione,” he said gently. “It was just milk. It’s not important.”
“Your Mum would have understood,” said Neville, and Hermione nodded, swallowing.
“It’s so hard to remember,” she said. “The last thing I do remember properly was dropping everything, and then… it was like I felt nothing. Nothing. I know I ran to the house, and there were people there. I pushed past them. I think that I knew what had happened, but I didn’t feel it, you know? It was like a dream… like something that didn’t really happen. And then I saw my parents, and it was like I woke up.”
Harry wondered if his own face was as stricken as Neville’s. He badly wanted to know what had happened, but forcing Hermione to relive seeing her parents’ dead bodies was something he had never wanted to do. Foolishly, he supposed, he had tried to make himself believe that it wouldn’t be necessary. Hermione saw their faces and gave them both a wan smile.
“That wasn’t the worst bit,” she said. “It wasn’t that bad, really. There wasn’t any blood or anything. They just looked like they were asleep.”
“That’s Avada Kedavra for you,” said Harry bitterly, unable to help himself.
“Yes. And that’s when it happened…” Hermione trailed off, and both boys could see the misery on her face. She clutched the mug to her tighter. “I don’t want to…” she said.
“Hermione, it’s alright,” said Harry desperately, trying to stay as calm as he possibly could. “You can tell us. We’ll understand. It’s alright.” He inched forward slightly, wanting to reach out but a little afraid to touch her. “Did anyone hurt you?”
She laughed, and if Harry had thought he had spoken in bitterness before, he suddenly had a new understanding of the meaning of the word. He barely stopped himself from recoiling.
“If anyone did the hurting, it was me,” said Hermione, her voice rising. “And I deserved it. They were my parents. They didn’t understand me at all, but they did their best even though I wasn’t normal. I always knew that they would do anything for me. They even stayed, for me, when all they wanted to do was to take me to the other side of the world, away from this bloody war. They were killed because of me. And do you know what I thought, when I saw them for the first time? When I woke up in our living room, do you know what I felt?”
She looked at Harry desperately, eyes locking onto his. “Admiration,” she said flatly. “When I saw the bodies of my murdered parents, I thought of Voldemort. I didn’t think ‘You bastard!’, and I didn’t think ‘How could you!”. I thought ‘Well done. That’s so clever.’ And it was. Between you and me and Ron, I’m the weak link. The only Muggle-born. The one with the least protection. I saw the note on the door “ Voldemort was trying to make me blame you for my parents’ death. He was trying to use me to get to you. And I thought ‘That’s so clever. It’s exactly what I would have done if I were him’.”
“But… but… you were in shock,” Neville broke in weakly. “You didn’t know what you were doing!”
“That’s no excuse,” said Hermione coldly. “It only lasted a few seconds, and then I thought ‘How could you!’, but it wasn’t Voldemort I was thinking about.” She hung her head. “They were my parents, and I treated them as if they were nothing more than chess pieces. I should have been in Ravenclaw,” she whispered under her breath.
“I don’t understand,” said Neville again, hopelessly lost.
“I do,” said Harry, and his voice was hoarse with horror. “It was something Lupin told me. He said… he said that sometimes Ravenclaws can get so caught up in how clever they are that they forget to think about what the effects of their cleverness might be. He said that it had been Ravenclaws who had developed the Unforgivables. They didn’t mean them to be used; they just wanted to know if they could make them in the first place.”
“You do understand,” said Hermione, wonderingly.
“You’re not like that, though!” said Harry fiercely. “I won’t believe it! Neville’s right, it was shock. You’d never end up like Voldemort! You’d never kill innocent people! You’d never-”
“No, I wouldn’t,” said Hermione unexpectedly, and Harry, caught mid-rant, gaped at her. She smiled at him weakly and, loosing the mug, reached out to stroke his cheek.
“I know it’s hard to understand,” she said. “I didn’t quite understand it myself for a long while. It seemed like a curse, but really, Harry, it’s a blessing. I didn’t know how much until the Dementor came along.”
“A… a blessing?” said Harry weakly. “Now I really don’t understand.”
“I don’t believe,” said Hermione slowly, meditatively, “I don’t believe that anyone is born bad. Or born good, I suppose. I think we all make choices. D’you understand? We can choose to do good things, and we can choose to do bad things. Right?”
“Right,” said Harry, still puzzled, but relieved to be back on ground that he could at least understand.
“I was so afraid,” Hermione admitted. “So afraid… not that I’d end up like Voldemort. I’m not that powerful. But that maybe that I’d end up like Bellatrix LeStrange.” Neville stiffened beside her, and Hermione squeezed his arm. “And then I realised “ she’d never be afraid. She’d never think something that awful and not be able to forgive herself for it. It would never frighten her, what she could do. I might think the same thing that she would, or that one of those Ravenclaws who invented the Unforgivables did, but I’d never actually do it. No matter what “ my choices didn’t have to be the same as theirs.” She shrugged. “And that was how I could beat the Dementor.
“You see, the Dementor makes you relive the worst moments of your life. It drains away all hope. And when we were in the Forbidden Forest, Harry, I realised that in some cases, that’s not enough. When I saw my Mum and Dad, and I thought what I did, that was the worst moment in my life. Nothing comes close to that, nothing. But in a strange way, it was the best as well. For a few seconds, I was no different from Bellatrix or Voldemort or Lucius Malfoy or any of them “ and then I came back to myself. You can’t stop yourself thinking horrible things, but you can stop yourself from acting on them. And when a Dementor comes near me… it tries to make me think that it’s hopeless, and that I’ll end up as horrible as they are. But it can’t make me feel that way without frightening me, and it’s because it frightens me that I know it’s not true.”
“But how come…” Harry licked his lips, a strange excitement going through him. “How come this doesn’t work for everyone?”
“We’re all different, I suppose. What happens to you when you’re near a Dementor?”
“I hear my Mum screaming,” said Harry grimly. “I hear Voldemort killing her.”
“I’m in St. Mungo’s with my parents,” said Neville softly. “And I know that we’ll all be there forever.”
Hermione nodded. “It’s like amplification then, you see. Most people’s worst memories are the ones that happen to them, the ones they can’t change. They take those memories and magnify them so much that it’s impossible to escape “ unless, of course, you’ve got a Patronus. But with me, their presence doesn’t amplify the worst moment of my life, it mitigates it. They can’t touch me.”
“Are you sure about that?” said Harry. “You were pretty bloody quick to turn your back on it in the Forest, as I recall.”
“You and Lupin were there if I was wrong,” said Hermione. “I trusted you. Besides, I could sort of feel it. It didn’t want to come near me “ you saw.”
“It still could have given you the Kiss!” said Harry loudly. “How could you risk yourself like that! On a few moment’s thought! What if you had been wrong!”
“I don’t think it could have Kissed me,” said Hermione, ignoring the rest of his outburst. “You saw. It wouldn’t come near me. You know, I don’t think they can Kiss you if you’re not already weakened by them.”
“You don’t know that!” said Harry angrily.
“Tell me one person who’s been Kissed while they were still normal,” snapped Hermione.
“I can’t! But you can’t tell me that it’s never happened, can you?” Harry accused. “I can’t believe you’d do such a stupid thing! And people call ME reckless!”
“That’s enough,” said Neville unexpectedly. “It’s over with. Done. There’s no sense in fighting about it now.”
“Fine,” said Harry resentfully.
“Fine,” snapped Hermione, and she picked up the mug and swigged from it in turn. She choked and spluttered so hard that Harry had to pound her on the back for close to a minute before she could breathe properly again. It improved his temper somewhat. He wasn’t really angry with her, he decided “ more angry that she had put herself in danger. Besides, it was hard to stay upset with her when she was wheezing like Errol after a long flight. Her theory on the Dementors intrigued him, and he wished briefly that Lupin was there to discuss it with them.
He wished it even more when Hermione reached for the bottle again. “Are you sure you want to be drinking any more of that stuff?” he asked her.
Hermione gave him a foul glance, but Harry could see how little her heart was in it and was encouraged. “It’s not for me this time,” she said, measuring out a generous dose and pushing it along the floor towards him. He caught at her hand before she could pull it away.
“I’m sorry,” he said awkwardly, under his breath. He noticed that Neville was suddenly taking a lot of interest in the label on the Firewhiskey bottle “ Harry was sure it wasn’t that interesting, but was oddly grateful that Neville was at least pretending that his interest was elsewhere.
“Me too.” Hermione looked at him pensively. “Harry… what I said about my parents. I know that it wasn’t very nice. You don’t… do you think any less of me for it?”
Harry squeezed her fingers, momentarily surprised at how much smaller they were than his own. “There’s nothing you could ever do to ever make me think that, Hermione,” he said. Her hand was warm within his own, and he was surprised when she didn’t pull away. It made him feel good.
“I’m glad,” she said, picking up the mug with her other hand and dumping it in front of him. “It’s your turn now.”
“Not glad enough to let me off, then?” he said hopefully.
“Not on your life,” Hermione scoffed at him, but her expression had softened. “It’s not so bad, Harry. You’ll feel better afterwards.”
Harry was privately sceptical as to that. He had known, since the summer holidays, that there was something he didn’t want to admit to himself “ a gnawing feeling that settled in the base of his stomach like a block of ice. He had been loath to even think about it, not wanting to admit that it had existed, and had done his best to lock it away in the back of his mind so that Snape could never get at it in his Occlumency lessons. Harry had a horrid suspicion that if he admitted to anyone “ whether his friends or even himself “ just what he believed this feeling to be, then that protection from Snape would be voided.
And it was something that he never wanted the Potions Master to know about. Snape already found it easy enough to manipulate him, and he didn’t want to give him any more ammunition.
Harry knew that he had been quiet for a long time. He also believed that if he chose not to tell his friends about what was bothering him, they would let him leave without recrimination. However, he didn’t want to do that. He felt that it would seem like cheating, or like a betrayal “ but he couldn’t seem to muster up the will power to open his mouth and start.
Instead, he swallowed his own portion of Firewhiskey in one large, burning gulp. Through the roaring in his ears he heard Neville say, in mock indignation, “Doing things a bit backwards there, aren’t you, Harry?”
“Yeah,” Harry wheezed back, unrepentant. He leaned back, coughing. “Look, I’m just going to say this straight out. You won’t agree with it, and you won’t like it, but it’s the truth, and there’s nothing I can do to change it.”
He dragged his sleeve across his mouth. A strange dizziness had come over him, something unrelated to the alcohol. It felt as if he was standing on the brink of a sheer cliff, staring down into nothingness. Harry took a deep breath.
“I don’t trust Dumbledore,” he said.
Hermione gasped, her hands over her mouth. “Harry, that’s… that’s-”
“That’s the truth,” he said shortly. “It’s not that I think he’s not doing his best, or doing what he thinks is best. I’m just not sure that they’re the same thing. He tries so hard to protect me…”
“You can’t blame him for that,” said Neville. “He is the Headmaster, after all.” Harry gazed at him for a few moments, until the expression on Neville’s face made him realise that the expression on his own must have formed into something very close to pity. He suddenly felt very tired. He had spent weeks and weeks refusing to entertain the idea of telling Neville about the prophecy “ who would want to know their part in such a thing, even if that part had gone to someone else? But the more irritated Harry became at being kept in the dark by other people, the less he could justify doing it to someone else.
“It’s for my own good, do you mean?” he said to Neville painfully, eyes locked onto the other boy. “Is that enough?” he continued, and he could hear the note of pleading come into his voice, and was slightly ashamed of himself. If he was going to do this, he should at least take the blame on himself and not shovel some of it off onto Neville, who had done nothing this term but help him. Still, he couldn’t stop himself. “Would that be enough for you? If someone knew something about you “ something important “ but they refused to tell you because they thought it would be better if you didn’t know… Would you want to hear it, Neville? Would you want to be told?”
Neville’s round face looked at him openly, slightly puzzled. “Yes,” he said eventually. “At least I think I would.” He shifted uncomfortably. “I think I would,” he repeated.
“Whatever it was, I’m sure Dumbledore did what he thought was right, Harry,” said Hermione, desperately trying to be reasonable. Harry squeezed her fingers again, and she trailed off unhappily, with worry written all over her face.
“He does,” admitted Harry. “But that doesn’t mean that he is right. It seems like every year he tells me new things “ important things “ but it’s always after the fact. Never mind that knowing earlier might have made me safer! He treats me like I’m a little kid “ a bit of information here, an explanation there. Now I know he thought he was doing it for my own good, but that doesn’t make a difference. If I’ve survived at all up until now it’s mostly been through luck and dumb ignorance. Dumbledore had the power to change that and he didn’t.
“After Sirius…” Harry trailed off briefly. “After Sirius he apologised. Told me everything he said he should have told me earlier. But how do I know? How do I know that he’s not doing what he’s done every year since I came to Hogwarts “ doled out enough information to keep me happy, telling himself that I’m too young to know the rest?”
“Dumbledore wouldn’t lie,” said Hermione positively.
“He’s lied for five years,” said Harry grimly. “At least, he hasn’t told the truth, and that’s the same thing.”
“What… what did he say?” said Hermione.
“He told me what the Prophecy said,” Harry said finally.
“I don’t understand,” said Hermione weakly. “It was broken… how could he have heard it?”
“He didn’t need to hear it. He knew it all along. Said he didn’t tell me because he was trying to protect me.”
And he told them what it was.
Five minutes later, he was half wishing that he hadn’t. Neville was on his knees in a corner, retching, and Harry was helplessly patting him on the back and wishing that the other boy was anywhere else in Hogwarts but there. The thought made him feel guilty, as he knew that Neville was only that upset because of him “ the thought that Voldemort may have gone after Neville himself had been too much “ and the guilt made him stay with the other boy, as he seemed to be in need of help the most.
He would have preferred to comfort Hermione, but his gut instinct to stay with her had been over-ruled by Neville’s more violent reaction. Still, her silence worried him. At least Neville was reacting, albeit in a sloppy, disgusting manner. Harry stepped back suddenly, trying to avoid getting sick spattered on his sneakers as Neville heaved again. He shot a quick glance at Hermione, and was slightly dismayed to see her exactly as he had left her after he had told them both about the prophecy. Her face was very pale, her hands were clutched at her robes, and she was staring into space with a very blank look on her face. Harry was extremely relieved that she wasn’t crying (he had no idea about how he was going to cope if that happened), but a small part of him was a little disappointed that her reaction was so muted. Still, it wasn’t as if he wanted her to start bawling and throw herself into his arms or anything.
“Hermione,” he said worriedly, as Neville sat back, wiping his mouth with his sleeve. “You alright?”
She nodded her head. “Yes,” she said faintly. Harry didn’t believe it, but was happy to see that she had at least partly snapped out it. She was still very white, but her lips were moving silently, as if she was trying to work out a particularly difficult homework problem.
Eventually she spoke again. “Harry, you have to tell someone about this.”
Harry groaned “ he should have known that this was what she would say. “Forget it,” he said flatly, and felt himself deflate slightly. He didn’t know why, but he had expected more from her than this.
“It’s important-”
“I don’t care!” said Harry, his voice rising. “Not everything can be solved by running off to the teachers, Hermione!”
Neville staggered to his feet, breaking the tension between them. “I think I need to lie down,” he said weakly.
“Are you sure?” said Harry shortly, and then felt bad for seeming not to care. “I mean, you still look a bit green and everything…”
“I just need to be by myself for a while,” said Neville. “And to be honest, Harry, I don’t think I’m up to mediating right now.” He waved a hand at Hermione.
“We’re not going to fight, Neville,” she said quietly, in a firm tone.
“We are absolutely not going to fight, Neville,” repeated Harry, with clenched teeth. Neville looked at him with a jaundiced eye, and lurched towards the door. “I should never have drunk that stuff,” he said mournfully.
“Stay for a few more minutes,” said Hermione. “You really do look ill. Just a few more minutes won’t hurt.”
“It will,” said Neville angrily. He turned at the door, looking lost. “Look, I’m sorry. But I really need some time to figure this out, and… and I think that you two need some time by yourselves as well.” He shuffled out of the Room of Requirement, leaving Harry feeling restless and resentful. He realised that he had been depending upon Neville to act as a buffer between them, and the thought that he would now have to do it himself left him exhausted. He moved over to Hermione and, slumping down beside her, tried very hard to smile for her.
“I really don’t want to fight, you know,” he said. Hermione’s face crumpled for a brief moment, and she clung to his hand, resting against his side as she had earlier done with Neville. The warm weight of her against him felt nice, Harry thought tiredly. Restful, even.
“I never said you should tell the teachers,” said Hermione quietly, and nudged up against him when he opened his mouth. “Let me finish, Harry. It’s too much. You can’t do it by yourself. And if Dumbledore really is keeping things from you…”
“You don’t believe that,” said Harry softly.
“No. I don’t. But Harry… that doesn’t matter. You don’t trust him. Whether he’s telling the truth or not, you don’t trust him. But you need to trust someone, Harry. You can’t do it on your own. This isn’t going to be solved by you and Ron and me working in the Library by ourselves. We need help.” Harry’s heart gave a painful thump in his chest at the “we”.
“Lupin knows,” he offered. “I got Dumbledore to tell him over the holidays.” He saw Hermione’s eyes narrow slightly. “I’m sorry,” he said defensively, “but I had to tell someone, and I wasn’t going to tell you about it, after what had just happened to your parents.”
“Did you tell Ron?” said Hermione, a trifle shrilly, a tone which subsided when Harry shook his head. “You’re going to have to, you know. He’d be so upset it you didn’t.”
“I know,” said Harry gloomily. “I will.”
“So that’s four,” Hermione mused after awhile. “Me, Ron, Neville, and Professor Lupin.” She twisted her neck around to look up at him, and Harry was pleased to see the colour returning to her face. “Who else, Harry? Who else would you trust?”
“Depends. D’you mean trust like I’d trust you and Ron, or like I’d trust Mr. and Mrs. Weasley? I mean, I know that they’d do anything for me, but if push came to shove they’d go over my head to Dumbledore. I know they would.”
“Who would you trust for you, then?” said Hermione, in a practical tone. “To stand by you no matter what? Apart from us four, that is.”
Harry was silent a long while. “I don’t know, really,” he said. “Fred and George, I suppose. Hagrid. After what happened in the Ministry of Magic, I’d trust Ginny and Luna. And Dobby.”
“And how much do you trust me, Harry?” said Hermione, and this time her voice was much softer, and a little wistful. She had twisted her head around towards his again, and her face was only a few inches away from his own. He wanted to lean in towards her, but felt awkward and too clumsy. His face was hot.
“I trust you more than anyone,” he said hoarsely, and for a brief second he could see Hermione look a bit teary before she pressed her cheek against his own.
“Good,” she said, and her voice vibrated against his ear. Her weight was warm against his shoulder, and he cradled her there, feeling strangely comforted. “Because I think I’m beginning to have a bit of an idea…”