Chapter Twenty Two.
Extremely troubled, Harry reluctantly returned to the castle – staring at the spot where Bill disappeared certainly wasn’t going to bring him back any time soon. He dreaded having to break the news to Ginny and Ron, especially as he wasn’t exactly sure what the news was he was supposed to break. He wished that he could talk to Hermione or Neville about how to break it to them, but knew that it was an unfair wish, one borne out of his desire to have someone else take the responsibility for how they were to be told.
Harry determined that he would have to do it himself, and quickly, but he was so unnerved by the whole experience that he couldn’t help taking the long way back to Gryffindor Tower, via Professor Lupin’s office. It was empty, and he felt a slight disappointment in the fact that Hermione and Lupin had apparently finished their talk and wandered off elsewhere. He would have liked to have had some moral support in walking up to Gryffindor Tower, but he knew perfectly well that Hermione couldn’t be expected to read his mind. He also knew that if she and Lupin had still been in deep conversation, it would have been somewhat cowardly of him to wait until they had finished, as a means of putting off carrying out Bill’s requests.
He was surprised, however, to find neither of them in the Common Room. According to Lavender, Hermione wasn’t in the bedroom the girls shared either. He assumed that, by default, she was in the Library, and this was confirmed by a fourth year girl who, hearing that he was looking for her, volunteered a little shyly that Hermione had indeed gone to the Library in the company of Susan Bones, who had turned up a short while before and had waited in the corridor outside the portrait of the Fat Lady until a passing Gryffindor had managed to grab Hermione for her. The two girls had apparently gone off in urgency – probably, Harry thought, Susan had stumbled across a book that neither of them had read yet.
He was fairly certain, however, that Ron wasn’t in the Library, and he couldn’t find him in the Tower. Morosely, he settled down to wait in one of the window-seats, and stared gloomily out of the window, picking idly at the fringe on a nearby cushion. Seeing the familiar looking Quidditch player circling in the distance, the same one that he had seen when accompanying Bill, he realised belatedly that it was Ron – and flying very oddly for Ron, at that. He seemed to be jerking somewhat more than usual, and as Harry watched he flew to the ground, and was lost out of sight. Harry waited for a few moments to see if he would come back into view, but Ron did not reappear, and all Harry could see was small flying objects circling around the place where he assumed Ron was. It was all rather odd, and he raced up to his room to retrieve his own broom, before heading down to the Quidditch pitch to confront his friend.
It was all, Harry thought again, very odd, and the sight that greeted him when he entered the pitch was even odder. As a Keeper, Ron most often practised with Quaffles, which he could charm to whiz close by him at speed while he tried to catch them. This time, however, he seemed to be channelling Fred and George. The Quaffles were nowhere to be seen, and instead Ron, armed with a Beater’s bat, was flailing away at two Bludgers. Standing on the ground, he wasn’t even trying to avoid them, as he could have done on a broomstick, but was planted solidly in the middle of the pitch, belting each one as it came near him. He was grunting with the effort of it, and Harry could hear him spitting swear words under his breath. It was obvious that he was tiring, and even more obvious that he hadn’t been entirely successful – there were bruises on his face, and Harry could see him favouring his right side.
Standing well out of the way of the Bludgers, he called to Ron, trying to get his attention. Ron, however, refused to answer, and just kept swinging angrily. Sighing, Harry laid his Firebolt to one side and picked up the second Beater’s bat, ducking under one of the Bludgers to stand back to back with Ron. With two targets to focus on, they were less likely to keep directing themselves only at Ron, who Harry could plainly see wasn’t going to be able to keep up the pace much longer. At least Harry hoped he wasn’t – being a Seeker, he had never had to practice with the heavy bats before, and the thud when they connected with the Bludgers reverberated up to his shoulders.
Eventually, Ron dropped his bat and dropped down to the ground, wheezing. He refused to look at Harry while he wrestled the Bludgers back into their case.
Eventually, Harry sank down beside him, sucking his knuckles – one of the Bludgers had bashed into them just as he was trying to shut the lid on them. “What’s wrong?” he said, and Ron gestured miserably over to a maroon sweater, lying on the ground at the foot of the stands. Squinting in the twilight, Harry could just make out what looked like a piece of crumpled parchment sticking out from under the wool. “What is it?” he said again, hoping that he wouldn’t have to haul himself up to get it.
“Letter from Percy,” Ron said, in an extremely clipped tone. “No, don’t bother to get up. You don’t want to see it, trust me.” He was silent for long moments, and then continued in a heavy tone in which Harry could hear the hurt, “How did he get to be such a git? Tell me that, why don’t you! I mean, I know that Fred and George can be a right nuisance, and none of us are perfect, but how did any brother of mine go so damn wrong?”
“What did he say?” asked Harry, not really wanting to know. The last letter that Ron had received from Percy had come the previous year, and had been full of advice to Ron to drop his unstable friend.
Ron shot him a jaundiced glance.
“Oh,” said Harry dismally. “Same old, same old, huh?”
“Prat,” Ron mumbled viciously. “You’d think anyone with half a brain would realise that you’re not some nutter out for what he can get. Even Fudge finally got it through his thick head that You Know Who is back, but Percy… he was supposed to be the smart one, you know?”
“Yeah,” said Harry, remembering. There wasn’t much he could say, but he sat with Ron in silent sympathy as the sky darkened, and eventually Ron spoke again.
“Bugger him,” he said succinctly. “If Percy thinks I’m going to drop my best mate because things are getting a bit hairy, he can bloody well think again.”
“Thanks,” Harry muttered, feeling an unaccountable urge to hug his friend but refusing to listen to it. “It means a lot, that does. I’m just sorry you’re out a brother because of me.”
Ron refused to look at him. “You’re more my brother than he is anyway.” They stared in the same direction for several minutes, both careful not to look at the other, but Harry felt a warm glow inside him nonetheless. Finally Ron hauled him up, rather more roughly than he normally would. “Get up, you lazy sod,” he said, in a more cheerful tone. “If you sit there like a lump for much longer, we’re going to miss dinner.”
“Can’t have that,” said Harry, grinning, and waited while Ron put the gear away and retrieved his sweater. Pulling out the roll of parchment, Ron scowled at it.
“Only one thing for it, really,” he said, and tore it into shreds before chucking it into the air and letting the wind take it away. A small shred wafted past Harry’s face, and on it he saw the phrase …be careful about who your friends are… and it stopped him in his tracks. Abruptly, he remembered another Weasley brother who had not been careful with his friends…
“Ron,” he said, “There’s something you’ve got to know. It’s about Bill…”
Over the next few days, the news about Gringott’s Bank was the talk of the school. It had percolated into Hogwarts, initially through owl posts from students’ families, and copies of magazines such as The Quibbler. Within several days, however, as Dumbledore had predicted, the Ministry of Magic was putting out a replacement newspaper, albeit one that was badly printed, extremely small (it looked more like a newsletter than anything else), and restricted to basics. To fill the gap, many small presses began to put out their own pamphlets, and Hermione subscribed to as many as she possibly could. Looking them over one depressing lunchtime, Harry was surprised to see the scale of anger from many of the writers, which proved to him conclusively that the Prophet was actually less reactionary and less unbalanced than it could have been – and he never thought he would see the day when he would say that.
“It’s because they’re scared, Harry,” Hermione pointed out.
“It’s because they’re horrible, you mean,” said Ron, whose opinions on the goblins were undergoing a steady revolution. “I can’t believe you’re defending those people!”
“I’m not defending them, Ron…” Hermione countered defensively, and the argument continued to circle.
Much of the basics published by the Ministry were to do with the Bank. It appeared that a full-scale assault had been put off for the moment, as no matter how furious much of the wizarding world was, it was blatantly obvious to people like Madame Bones that attacking Gringott’s would benefit no-one but Voldemort. This was not to say that things had returned to normal. The goblins, and the employees who stayed with them, were still locked within the bank and would not come out, and in deference to public opinion (“A sop, more like,” said Hermione), a small group of Aurors was publicly ringed around the bank in Diagon Alley, ostensibly keeping the peace, and pleasing no-one. From the many pamphlets that came into Hogwarts, it seemed that they spent most of their time stopping wizards from throwing stones and, frequently, curses at the Bank, while all the time being harassed by said wizards for not doing anything more than surveillance.
“For the last time,” Kingsley Shacklebolt was heard to shout, “We are not going to be hanging goblins from the walls of the Bank!”
“Not yet, anyway,” came the muttered rejoinder from one of the other Aurors – no-one discovered who, but the altercation was plastered over what was left of the media.
Business was going on, but at a crawl – the enormous front doors were closed, and customers had to go in one by one through a side entrance, where a guard of goblins could be seen, and anyone working for the Ministry was strictly refused entrance. Large queues were forming at the door, as worried wizards and witches waited for a chance to get what they could out of their vaults (the goblins had placed a limit on withdrawals, which was not going down well with anyone).
But by far the most upsetting thing was the reaction to the small amount of wizards who had sided with the goblins – all were employees of Gringott’s bank, and all were publicly accused of selling out blood-loyalty for cash. Even in Hogwarts, badly copied newssheets with pictures of these witches and wizards were being circulated, with big headlines screaming “TRAITOR!” over their faces. Harry had seen more than one stuck to the sides of corridors leading up to Gryffindor Tower, and he knew from Ginny and Ron that Mr. and Mrs Weasley were getting Howlers from people accusing them of not raising their children properly.
Harry was furious when he heard about this, and promptly sent off a letter of support to the Weasleys, receiving a jumper, a large fruit cake, and a tear-spattered letter from Mrs. Weasley the next day. He was, however, hopelessly ineffective at putting down the bad reaction from some of the Hogwarts students. For the first few days, he had been under the impression that it was the Slytherins who were sticking up the pictures of Bill all over the place – they were certainly taunting Ron and Ginny mercilessly – but he was dismayed to find that some of the Ravenclaws and even some of his fellow Gryffindors agreed with the Slytherins. They just weren’t as vicious about expressing themselves, as Harry found in a Care of Magical Creatures class. He and Ron were working with Neville and Susan Bones, preparing food for the Bowtruckles the latter pair were working on for their project. Only half listening to Neville telling him the best way to shave the wand wood, Harry was really paying more attention to Draco Malfoy being given detention for the second time in two weeks – he had lost his temper (which seemed to be growing rapidly shorter) again and chucked one of his chunks of wood at a student, whacking him on the head with it. Professor Grubbly-Plank finished her tirade about wasting resources, to which Malfoy endured stonily, but when she turned away one of the other Slytherins hissed “It’s only a bit of old oak, and the bleeding bloody well stopped after a few minutes… I don’t know what all the fuss is about.” He turned and shot a slow, deliberate look at Ron. “It’s not as if he’s turned blood-traitor or anything.”
Harry was so irked by this remark, and by the implication that Malfoy’s status amongst the Slytherins was again so high that they were defending him as a matter of course, that he was about to leap over and pound Malfoy when Susan deliberately dropped a heavy book on his hand, making him yelp. He turned to her angrily, only to see both her and Neville shaking their heads at him. Harry scowled, and returned the book – an extremely heavy brick like thing entitled 1001 Uses for Wand Trees – What to Feed Your Bowtruckle if You Don’t Want to Kill It. He realised that confronting Malfoy would not be helpful to anyone; certainly not to Ron, who was stubbornly silent, as if he hadn’t noticed anything. The redness of his ears convinced Harry otherwise, though, and the refusal of some of the nearby Gryffindors in the class to do anything (despite the fact that the Slytherin’s comment had been clearly audible) seemed to say that they agreed with the comment. Dean Thomas, at least, was scowling heavily, and met Harry’s eye with annoyance. He made a rude gesture at the Slytherin, but Seamus Finnegan was grating his elm wood into dust, deliberately not looking over at them, and Harry felt his heart sink.
“I think that blood-traitor is very brave,” said Susan quietly, and her voice carried to the Gryffindor table next to theirs. Seamus snorted.
“Brave,” he said witheringly. “Brave would be to sabotage the goblins from within the Bank, and let those Aurors in to do what needed to be done.”
“That’s not brave at all,” Harry snapped. “That’s nothing but reckless. Do you want to start another war?”
“Way I see it, it’s already started,” replied Seamus angrily.
And Ron was still silent.
Harry was beginning to be very worried about him, and about Ginny. The youngest Weasleys seemed to withdraw into themselves with the public shaming of their brother, and the ever-present threat of his death at the hands of the Ministry. Harry had expected Ron to be angry, but instead he just became quieter and quieter, and the figure that Bill had given him was never far from him. He was even beginning to avoid Harry and Hermione, as though their sympathy was too much, and seemed to prefer to spend his time with Ginny. The two of them would sit silently in a corner of the Common Room, staring blankly out of the window. Harry and Hermione sat with them, hoping that their presence would be a comfort, but believing it less and less each day.
Harry thought that the loss of two brothers – for Percy’s second letter had well and truly burned his boats with Ron, and although he pretended to scoff, Harry could see that the loss of his least favourite brother was felt even more strongly alongside the loss of the brother Ron had always worshipped – was too much for Ron to cope with at once. While he appreciated knowing that Ron thought of him as family, he couldn’t replace the two members that were being pulled away, albeit in very different directions.
It made him reluctant to tell Ron about the Prophecy. Hermione urged him to do it, but Harry couldn’t bear the thought of telling Ron that he was likely to lose yet another brother. Despite his reluctance, Hermione had cornered him one night on his way back from the kitchens, where he had gone to get a pile of delicious treats from Dobby in the hope of tempting his friend, and insisted that Ron be told immediately. “As bad as he feels now, he’ll feel worse later if you don’t.”
Reluctantly, Harry had taken her advice, and pulled Ron away from his silent sister up into the dormitory they shared. It was empty, and he locked the door behind them. Turning, he took a deep breath, and was surprised when Ron asked him not to say anything.
“Not now, Harry,” he said, in a hollow tone. “I just… not now, okay?”
And Harry had been forced to let it be.
Two dreadful weeks of stalemate later, something happened that was able to get through to Ron. He, Ginny and Harry had stayed late in the Great Hall one night, with Harry trying to encourage Ron to do something other than toy with his food. He was on the verge of giving up when Hermione marched in, practically dragging Luna along with her. She brought the Ravenclaw to sit with them – there was hardly anyone left in the Hall, so it barely raised an eyebrow – and Luna slid in beside Ginny. She yanked Harry back into his seat.
“What’s going on, Hermione,” he complained, rubbing at his arm where she had gripped him. “I’ve already had dinner, I don’t want any more.” But Hermione ignored him, and loaded up two plates with the remnants of the puddings still left on the table, and dumping down one each in front of herself and Luna. She then refilled Harry’s plate.
“Eat up,” she said in a steely tone reminiscent of McGonagall.
“Custard gives me nightmares,” said Luna dreamily, looking down at her bowl. “Goody.” She began to eat.
“I’m not hungry,” Harry tried again.
“Pretend,” Hermione hissed. “And don’t you three think about leaving either.”
Ten minutes later, they were the only people still in the Great Hall, and Harry began to picture House Elves waiting impatiently for them to leave so that they could clean up. “Er, Hermione…” he began, and then yelped as her foot connected with his knee under the table.
“We’re not moving,” she said, with gritted teeth, then plastered a fake smile to her face. “Would you like some more treacle tart, Harry?” she added, in an unnecessarily loud voice.
“No, I wouldn’t,” said Harry, feeling his voice rise. Hermione shushed at him, and he took a deep breath, preparing to ask very loudly why she was acting so oddly, when Susan Bones drifted into the room. She nodded at Hermione, who dropped her bowl instantly. “Right,” she said briskly. “Get up, you lot.” Hauling on Ginny’s arm, and leaving Harry to move Ron along, she headed over to Susan, who stood in the mouth of a large corridor. Harry got the distinct impression that she was looking around to see if other students had noticed their strange behaviour, but the Hall was empty.
Susan led them down the wide, low corridor to the kitchens. Harry had been this way before, several times, generally to find Dobby, but he had no idea as to why Susan was taking them this way now. Did she think that the house-elves would let them use the kitchen?
There was a soft clicking noise in the distance, but Harry thought that the corridor seemed strangely deserted, although he could not understand why. The noise grew louder, and turning a corridor he found himself nearly tripping over Hannah Abbott and a group of young Hufflepuffs, who were spread out for a good distance along the floor, playing quiet games of gobstones. Harry suddenly realised why the silence of the corridors had bothered him – he knew that the way to the kitchens led past the Hufflepuff Common Room, and the corridor should have been quite busy of an evening, with students wandering to and fro, off to the library, for instance. Five years of listening to the Fat Lady complain that students were always on the wrong side of the door made him think that the other Houses couldn’t be that different – and yet, there was still the silence. Gobstones was a popular game among younger students, and even in the Gryffindor Common Room is was often accompanied by loud squeals and laughter as students were squirted with the sticky liquid inside the stones. Here, however, they were abnormally calm, and Hannah was looking up at him from the floor, her round blonde face carefully neutral. She seemed to evince no surprise at seeing them there.
Susan crouched next to her. “Everything alright?” she said softly, and Hannah nodded.
“Go on through,” she said. “We’re alright here. We’ll let you know if anything happens.”
“Thanks,” said Susan, rising from the floor. “It should be fairly quiet though, I think.” Noting the confusion on the faces of Harry, Ron and Ginny (Luna could never be persuaded to look confused about anything) and the excited expression from Hermione, she tilted her head slightly, indicating that they should keep following her. Harry and Ron shot each other puzzled looks, and Ron shrugged his shoulders in confusion. Together they picked their way along through the students, being careful not to knock any of the gobstones out of position and disrupt any of the games. The young Hufflepuffs didn’t even look at them – it was if they were refusing to as much as acknowledge their existence, and it made Harry feel like he had walked into a very strange dream.
Moving around another corner, Susan stopped in front of an old painting of a round, bald little man. He looked at them and raised an eyebrow, removing a pipe from his mouth. “It’s been a long time since this has happened,” he said soberly.
“It has,” said Susan.
“And you’re sure about this?” said the portrait. “It’s no mean thing you’re doing, here.”
“We have all agreed, sir,” answered Susan politely, and the portrait gave her a long, close stare.
“Aye, that’s what the other one said. Very well then.” He turned towards Harry and the others, and a wellspring of good humour appeared as he smiled. Harry could not help but smile back. The portrait sobered a little, and nodded gravely at them.
“Welcome, Gryffindors. Welcome, Ravenclaw. It has been too long since we saw you last.”
And then it swung back, and opened the way into the Hufflepuff Common Room.
Next to Harry, Ron’s mouth had dropped open like a stunned fish. “Harry!” he hissed, trying not to move his lips. “D’you know what this means?”
“Yeah,” said Harry softly, in awe. “I think I might.” Susan had clambered into the portrait hole, and he waved Ginny and Hermione in after her. Ginny went first, bowing to the portrait at she went past. Hermione followed suit, and it beamed at them. Taking a deep breath, Harry went in after them. He had no idea what to expect. It was a tradition, time out of mind, that each House was sacrosanct grounds for its students – no others would be permitted into the private spaces of each House. Harry had never seen anyone other than a Gryffindor in the Gryffindor Common Room – indeed, the Fat Lady would never even have let them in, even if they did have the pass-word. In Harry’s third year, Sirius Black had been able to enter the Gryffindor tower, as he had found Neville’s dropped list of pass-words – but only because he was a Gryffindor and the Fat Lady had recognised him as such. In Harry’s second year, he and Ron had gotten a glimpse of the Slytherin Common Room, but only because they had been polyjuiced to look like Crabbe and Goyle. Malfoy had provided the password. Harry knew that teachers were exempt from this stricture, but he also knew that they would only have presumed to trespass in case of emergency. Even Snape wouldn’t use his power to go into Gryffindor Tower unless he had absolutely no other choice.
And yet the Hufflepuff portrait had let them in, and Harry had no idea why. He didn’t even know how.
And as he clambered out of the portrait hole, he was surprised to find the Common Room was nearly empty. Apart from the group that had come with him, the only other person in the Hufflepuff Common Room was Ernie MacMillan, standing at the fireplace, and he had his back turned to them, and was staring at the fire. Susan went over to him and touched his hand and he squeezed it gently, turning to smile at her. Harry looked away in slight embarrassment, and studied the room in order to have some place else to look.
His first impression was of comfort – a large room in a warm shade of yellow, with plenty of soft chairs and cushions, with a bookcase lining one wall. He could almost feel Hermione’s desire to go and investigate it. He couldn’t help but notice that the room was a little shabby. It wasn’t as if Gryffindor was the tidiest bunch about, as Harry well knew. There were times when their Common Room looked as if it had exploded. But the untidiness was only temporary, as when he came down each morning it was shining and clean, with a smell of polish wafting up from the wooden arms of the chairs. Somehow, the Hufflepuff Common Room, while not dirty (or even that messy), looked more lived in. It was a comfortable feeling, and Harry decided that, while Gryffindor Tower would always be his favourite, the Hufflepuff Common Room was very nice too.
There was a muffled squeak beside him, and he looked down to see Ginny’s eyes fill with tears. Stifling a sigh, he patted her on the back, and followed the direction of her gaze. She was staring over in the direction of the fireplace, and the first thing that Harry noticed was an enormous portrait, hanging over the mantle. It looked ancient, and was of a middle aged lady of no particular beauty, but with an open, welcoming expression on her face. Harry surmised at once that it must have been Helga Hufflepuff, but he couldn’t see why that would have made Ginny react the way that she did. Then, for a moment, he forgot all about her in his own reaction – for on one side of the mantlepiece, in a silver frame, obviously in pride of place, was a photograph of Cedric Diggory. He was laughing, and waved to Harry behind the glass. Harry felt his heart stop for a minute, before Cedric gestured to his right, obviously trying to direct attention away from himself. Puzzled, Harry followed the line of the mantlepiece with his eyes, and stifled a gasp of his own. He squeezed Ginny’s arm again, to comfort her, but a quick glance showed, that, while there were still tears in her eyes, she was smiling. And Ron was gazing at it as if it was the only thing holding him upright.
For on the other side of the mantelpiece, balancing the photograph of Cedric Diggory, was another photo. It was obviously a new addition, a familiar blurred copy torn from a badly printed news-sheet, and it was only tacked onto the wall above the mantle. Yet it was still recognisably, obviously, Bill Weasley, and the insulting headline had been ripped off.
Ernie MacMillan came up to him, offered his hand. His Prefect badge shone in the firelight. Harry shook it eagerly, grateful for the impact on his friends. “Ernie,” he said, “what’s going on here?”
“I’ll hold off on that until everyone gets here, if you don’t mind,” said Ernie. “It’ll just be easier explaining it all once.” He gave Harry a quick smile. “Don’t worry, it shouldn’t be long.”
And only a few minutes later, the portrait hole opened again, admitting Justin Finch-Fletchley, who was leading Neville Longbottom, and a seventh year Hufflepuff Prefect, that Harry only knew by sight, accompanying Remus Lupin. The Prefect ushered the Professor in, and then disappeared out of the portrait again. A short time later, he returned with Dobby, who was clearly confused, and extremely uncomfortable. His face cleared a little as he saw Harry, who greeted him warmly. This didn’t seem to reassure the little elf very much, however, and he slunk to a corner of the room, obviously trying to keep out of the way and not disturb anyone. Harry noticed him eyeing the bookcase disapprovingly, and running one long, bony finger along it, as if checking for dust. Beside him, Harry heard Ernie sigh in exasperation.
“We’ve told you before,” he said firmly, but in a kind tone. “We don’t need you coming to clean up after us. In fact, we’d prefer you didn’t.” Hermione’s head swivelled around alarmingly fast, and beamed at Ernie. Ron, noticing her reaction, rolled his eyes, and Harry stifled a grin.
“If Dobby could just…” whined the house-elf.
“No,” said Ernie.
“Dobby, you haven’t been brought here to clean,” said Hermione, in a cheerful tone. She leaned towards Ernie. “Do you really not let them do it?” she said.
“We prefer to do it ourselves,” said Ernie, shrugging. “Of course, it’s not up to the same standard as the house-elves could achieve, but we prefer it this way.”
Hermione beamed at him again, and reached over to nudge Ron. “You know,” she started, “we could-”
“Forget it,” said Ron. He was about to add more, when the fireplace burst into flame, and Fred and George stepped into the room. They looked around with amazement, and then stopped abruptly as Fred tapped George’s arm, and silently motioned George in the direction of Bill’s photograph.
“Well,” Ernie said suddenly, in a louder voice. “That’s it then. I’m sorry we couldn’t get Hagrid,” he said, turning to Harry, “but, well, we don’t actually know where he is at the moment.” He looked around at the others. “I expect you’re wondering what you’re all doing here.”
“I know that I am,” said Harry. “Why here, Ernie? And why us?”
Ernie shot him a surprised look. “Aren’t these the people you said you trusted?”
Hermione interrupted suddenly, “It was my fault, Harry,” she said. “I was asking Susan if she knew of a place where people could talk – a private place. We couldn’t use the Gryffindor Common Room, because Luna wouldn’t be able to come, and well… frankly, I wasn’t sure people could be trusted to keep their mouths shut and let us be. And we couldn’t use the Room of Requirement, as Malfoy knows about that now, which means the other Slytherins do too, and that means that, well… I don’t know if they’d be able to get in or not, but they’d certainly be aware of what was happening if we all started disappearing on a regular basis, and the Room of Requirement is the first place that they’d look. We were lucky to get away with it earlier,” she said, and Harry knew that she referred to the evening that she, Harry and Neville had spent there. He repressed a shudder – Neville had asked for someplace that was safe, where they wouldn’t be interrupted, but Harry didn’t relish the thought of anyone knowing that they were there. The last year had proved to him how unsafe that room could be, and he was a bit embarrassed that he hadn’t considered it earlier. Of course, the three of them had all been upset at the time, but that wasn’t a good enough excuse. He couldn’t count on being lucky forever. He tuned back into Hermione. “And Susan said…”
“I said,” Susan broke in, “that if push came to shove I thought you could come here. And then I went to talk to Ernie and Hannah, and the other Prefects.”
“I don’t understand,” said Harry.
Behind him, Lupin let out a long breath. “I think I do,” he said softly.
“Please,” said Ernie, a trifle pompously, gesturing at the chairs, “feel free to take a seat.” As the others rearranged themselves amongst the armchairs (Dobby had to be practically ordered by Harry to do so), he remained standing. He looked around at them all, a trifle awkwardly. “I know that people think we’re a bunch of duffers,” he said.
“Oh, they don’t,” said Ginny immediately, and Ernie and Susan snickered. The seventh-year Prefect was standing silently beside the portrait hole, out of earshot and almost, Harry thought, as if he were standing guard.
“Yes they do,” said Ernie. “We hear it every year on the train, coming to Hogwarts. Even the first years, who haven’t been sorted yet, are hoping for some other House than this.”
“Well, nearly all of them are,” said Susan, with a small, secret smile. Ron was sitting in the armchair next to hers, and Harry saw his face redden in the firelight. He had a sudden recollection of his own first year journey to Hogwarts, sitting on the train with a small red-headed boy who was desperately hoping that Hufflepuff wouldn’t be his House.
“They just don’t know any better,” said Harry uncomfortably, for want of something to say. The truth was, as much as he had admired Cedric; Harry did tend to think of Hufflepuff as the least interesting of the Houses.
Ernie drew himself up impressively. “I feel bad having to ask this of you, but I have responsibilities to my House,” he said. “Before I go any further, I would like your word that what I say here tonight goes no further. You can discuss it here as long as you like, but please don’t tell anyone else, or talk about it together outside of this room. It’s terribly important to us, you see, and it will wreck everything if it gets out.”
“I promise,” said Harry, puzzled, and heard everyone else echo him. Even Fred and George were unusually sober.
“How do you think we’re sorted into Hufflepuff?” Ernie asked, and beside him Harry heard Lupin give a small, self-satisfied grunt. From the look on his face, Harry realised that Lupin had come to understand where this line of reasoning was going. He ought to, he thought, he used it on me over the holidays.
“I don’t mean to be rude,” said Susan, her eyes sparkling with humour, “but I imagine that if you thought about it at all, you thought that Hufflepuff took whatever was left over. The brave were sorted into Gryffindor, the clever into Ravenclaw, the-”
“Evil gits into Slytherin,” Fred interrupted, smirking.
“Not quite what I was going to say, but you get my point,” said Susan. “And Hufflepuff gets whatever’s left over, and they slap a pretty name on it to say that we’re the hard workers, or some such.”
There was an uncomfortable silence.
“Not true, that,” said Ernie. “Su here, she might not be as clever as your Hermione, but she’s certainly clever enough to have been in Ravenclaw, had she wanted to be. And Cedric…”
“No-one can say he wasn’t brave,” said Harry, remembering. “He would have made a wonderful Gryffindor.”
“If he had chosen to be?” said Lupin, and Ernie grinned.
“Exactly my point. The Sorting Hat doesn’t sort the leftovers of the other Houses into Hufflepuff – the only students who are sorted into Hufflepuff are the students who ask to be put there. If you don’t ask, you get sorted into one of the other Houses.”
Ron shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Look,” he said, “I don’t mean to be rude or anything-”
“He’s going to be rude,” said George.
Ron glared at him. “It’s just that… er… why…”
“Why would we want to be in Hufflepuff so much?” said Ernie. “D’you think it might possible that we really do value fair play and decency and hard work over everything else? That it’s important enough to us that we don’t care if we’re in the House that no-one else wants to be in? We know how much a student wants to be in this House, because when they get to Hogwarts they’ve got no idea which House they’ll be in, and no idea that if they put on the Sorting Hat and pray for Hufflepuff that Hufflepuff is what they’ll get. They only find that out after they’ve joined. The fact that they didn’t know beforehand makes them have to really want to be in Hufflepuff because they believe in our values, not because they know people in here or because they don’t want to go into the other Houses. I know it probably sounds strange that the Sorting Hat will actually listen to what a student wants, but-”
“It doesn’t sound strange to me,” said Harry. “But I don’t understand why you would let us in here – or how you could persuade the portrait to,” he finished, trying to ignore the very smug look on Lupin’s face.
“We took a vote,” said Ernie bluntly. “Got the whole House together and Susan explained the situation. We knew if you needed a place where you were absolutely certain no-one could find you, then it had to be important. So some of us suggested that you could come here, and we took a vote.”
“And that was all it took?” said Harry. “Didn’t the portrait object?”
“Everyone agreed,” said Ernie, looking proud. “No exceptions. It’s our House – we don’t need anything more.”
“Just like that?”
“Yes,” said Ernie. “You can use it as long as you like – we’ll all clear out of the way for you. No Hufflepuff will come in or out until we say they can – there are still some in the dormitories,” he said, looking at Fred and George “but they don’t have any of your Extendable Ears, and they’ve given their word that they won’t listen in. In fact, as far as Hufflepuff is concerned, you were never here.”
Harry remembered the somewhat vacant expression of the students in the corridor, and how they had refused to look at him or acknowledge his presence. “Hannah…” he said.
“She’s just making sure no one tries to be nosy,” supplied Ernie. “Not that we don’t trust our own House-mates, of course, but we’re not the only ones here. I hope you noticed that Slytherin has their weekly Quidditch practice tonight, so their attention is directed elsewhere at the moment. Helpful if you need to come again – we can give you the use of this room on the same night, every week, if you need it.”
Harry was overwhelmed. “Why?” he asked simply.
“Some of us felt bad,” Justin interrupted. “After what happened in second year.” He looked embarrassed. “We shouldn’t have listened when people said you were the Heir of Slytherin. This seemed like a way to make it up.”
“They’re gullible,” Lupin whispered, just loud enough for Harry to hear him. “But they don’t stay gullible forever.”
Justin looked at Harry sheepishly. “We want to help,” he said. “There’s not much that we can do, with the war and all, but we could do this. It seemed like the decent thing.”
But Harry barely heard him – he had focussed on Lupin’s words, the words that his teacher had spoken to him earlier that summer, about the characters of the different Houses. He had indeed said that the Hufflepuffs were gullible, that they would give fair hearing to people who didn’t deserve it – but that they didn’t stay gullible forever. He had also said other things…
Once they trust you, they tend to trust you forever…. you told me that no witch or wizard had turned bad that wasn’t from Slytherin. That is an unfounded legend. We ourselves know an exception to that case, and believe me, Harry they do exist in all the Houses, excepting, strangely enough, Hufflepuff…
And Harry remembered Cedric, who had thrown away glory for fair play, and who had prized decency above all else. He remembered the disaster of fifth year, where no-one had believed him when he said that Voldemort had returned – or almost no-one. He remembered a girl with radish earrings publicly embarrassing him with her show of support, and feeling that embarrassment fade when a boy from Hufflepuff stood by both him and Dumbledore and made the laughing stop.
He looked up at the picture over the fire, of the woman who had said “I’ll teach the lot, and treat them just the same,” and he remembered that this was the only House that had never betrayed their world to Voldemort.
He looked around the shabby Common Room, the Room that wasn’t cleaned by house elves, that had the picture of the traitor Bill Weasley over the mantle, and that only had students who ignored ridicule to choose to be there.
He realised that he was probably standing in the best place in Hogwarts, in the heart of decency, and the embodiment of what he had to fight for against Voldemort.
And then he made his decision.
“Can you get Hannah in here, please?” he asked the seventh year Prefect by the door, who promptly volunteered to take her place in the guard outside. While the Prefect scrambled through the portrait hole, Harry indicated to Ernie, Justin, and Susan that they should take a seat. They were quite willing to leave him to his privacy, he realised, which convinced him all the more that they should stay. Then he made a beeline for Ron.
“You’re going to have to hear it with everyone else,” he said. “I’m sorry, I really am. I tried to tell you earlier, but…”
Hannah clambered through the portrait hole, her blonde plaits swinging. She shut it carefully behind her.
“Right,” said Harry. “About this Prophecy…”