Chapter Three
When they arrived at 12 Grimmauld Place, Hermione was already waiting for them, drinking tea in the kitchen and yawning as she read the many papers spread out on the table.
"Oh I'm so glad you made tea," Ron said entering the kitchen and making Hermione jump slightly. "I'm dying for a cup."
"Shower," Ginny announced before she turned around, jogging up the stairs.
Harry smiled at Hermione who was looking at him with sympathetic and curious eyes, and then he plopped himself down next to her. "Have you been here long?"
She shook her head. "Half an hour tops. How was it?" She looked at Ron too, who had his hands wrapped around a mug as if it was terribly cold.
"Awful," Ron answered. "I hate going there."
Harry agreed, if he never set foot in Azkaban again he would count himself the luckiest man alive. Unfortunately he knew that wouldn't be the case.
"It was all a big waste of time with the exception of Nott Senior." Harry took Hermione's mug from her and took a sip from her tea.
"Really?" she asked excitedly. "What did he say?"
Ron filled Hermione in on all the details of the interrogations with minimal additions from Harry. By the time they were done, Ginny had returned, freshly showered and wearing a t-shirt and shorts that Harry didn't remember seeing before.
"Where did you get those?" he asked her.
"I guess I never took back all of my stuff. They were in the bottom drawer of your closet." Ginny shrugged and sat down on Hermione's other side. "So, what's the plan?"
They all looked at each other.
"I want to visit Theodore Nott. Junior. I think he might have some answers," Ron said as he ran hand through his hair. It was getting quite long.
"Maybe." Ginny served herself some tea and looked thoughtful. "I never knew his father was so close to Voldemort. Why tell him about the horcruxes and not the others?"
That was a good question, and one that Harry had been asking himself ever since he heard Nott's words. As far as he knew, Voldemort wasn't in the business of telling anyone his secrets, not even to his closest followers. And Harry was certain that Nott wasn't closer to Voldemort than Bellatrix or Lucius Malfoy, and even Dumbledore had told Harry that he was sure none of them knew about the horcruxes.
Harry felt suddenly nauseated. It had been so long since he had given Voldemort this much thought, and the feeling of having to do this all over again was completely sickening.
As if reading his mind, Hermione spoke. "It really doesn't sound like Voldemort to share something so important."
"Perhaps…" Harry trailed off as he tried to put his thoughts into words. "Is it possible that when he realized we knew about the horcruxes he decided to tell one of his followers, just in case?"
"Why, though?" Ron asked and served himself more tea. "It would have made sense if there was another horcrux to keep safe, but Nott said there were only six. And he couldn't lie."
They were all quiet then, too tired and confused to give any answers.
Hermione sighed. "Well, I made almost no progress today. All the research I've done on souls shows that everything we know is highly theoretical, so we might not have another choice but to…open the horcrux and deal with the soul itself. But that means we might have to kill it, or it'll try to possess us, or something else entirely. We don't know."
Harry, Ron, and Ginny all shuddered.
"Who's we?" Harry asked. "Do you think we all need to be there?"
Hermione most likely heard the apprehension in his voice, because she smiled. "No. We is me and Padma. I started working with her since she's an Unspeakable and has some knowledge about these kind of things."
"I think you should do it, then." Ron got unexpectedly to his feet. "If opening it is the only way to know whose soul it is, we need to get it over with."
Hermione nodded. "Alright. I'll tell Padma and we'll do it tomorrow."
Ron looked at Harry and Ginny then. "And we'll go to Nott Mannor first thing in the morning. Can we crash here tonight, Harry?"
Harry rolled his eyes good-naturedly. It was always nice seeing Ron assume the leadership position, but sometimes his friend forgot he didn't need to be so formal. "How can I say no to an Auror?"
Ron's lips jerked upwards. "Shut up."
As soon as they left the kitchen, Ginny threw herself face-down on the nearest sofa.
"There are about five empty bedrooms upstairs," Hermione told her.
"Don't care," Ginny uttered, her voice muffled by the cushion. "Too tired."
Ron took Regulus' old bedroom while Hermione walked into Harry's even before he did. It wasn't strange to Harry, though, he had shared his room and even bed with Hermione multiple times in the past, mostly after a night of drinking.
But when he really thought about it, he didn't understand why someone as independent as Hermione would even want to share a bed with him when she didn't have to.
"Why do you prefer sleeping here instead of having your own room?" Harry asked and immediately regretted it when he saw the confusion in her eyes. "Not that you can't or anything, but you just don't seem like the type and you know you can have any room that you like here. Even to move in it if you wanted to."
Harry didn't know how he ended up offering Hermione the possibility to move into his house, but there he was. He had thought about asking Ron or Hermione to move in with him when he first arrived at Grimmauld Place because the place was too big, but then they'd gotten their own places and the opportunity passed.
She cocked her head to she side in confusion, but she smiled. "Well, the first few times it was a bit scary, to tell you the truth. The rooms are so big and so far apart here that I felt more safe staying with you. Now is mostly out of habit." She walked up to him and put a hand on his shoulder. "And I know you'd take me in no questions asked if I wanted to, but I appreciate the offer. Maybe I'll take you up on it one day because I'm not too happy with my place."
Harry smiled. The idea of having Hermione living with him didn't sound bad at all, he had been living alone for far too long.
She turned around and pulled out the tie that was holding her hair together. "Also, yours is the only mattress that isn't four hundred years old."
Harry fell asleep fast and peacefully. Too bad that waking up wasn't quite as nice.
.
Ginny was startled by a shout that nearly made her fall off the sofa, and it took her a good ten seconds to realize where she was before she started freaking out.
Ron was jogging down the stairs with a determined look on his face that scared her. "There's another one and a body in the scene, we have to go now!"
Ginny scrambled to her feet, still disoriented and aching all over from the game and from sleeping in an old dusty sofa. "What?"
"Get ready," Ron said before jogging back up the stairs.
She found her way to the bathroom and splashed cold water in her face. It didn't help, but at least she managed to wet her t-shirt and was now forced to change.
In the space of five minutes, Harry, Ron, Hermione, and her were all in the living room and ready to leave, except that Hermione was fumbling with the phone in her hand, to Ron's great annoyance.
"What are you doing? We need to leave now!"
"I'm calling Padma, I want her there too," Hermione said and put the phone to her ear. "You said it was inside the Muggle neighborhood of Whitechapel, but which house exactly?"
Ron opened the front door and they all followed him out. "Tell her to follow the blood."
Ginny thought Ron had been exaggerating for effect, but the way her empty stomach turned over at the sight in front of her told her otherwise. She had never seen so much blood, and that was coming from someone who had used buckets of chicken blood to write on walls.
Ginny shuddered. Better not to go there so early in the morning.
But the reality was hardly better. There was a red trail that started in the middle of a park that was inside the neighborhood and led them to the house, as if the bleeding person had dragged themselves out onto the streets and then suddenly…
"Dissaparated?" Ginny asked Ron. "Can you do that after you've bled so much?"
"It is possible," Hermione said. "Extremely dangerous of course."
The inside of the house wasn't much better and Ginny had to resist the urge to gag several times. But the desire to appear strong in the eyes of Aurors-Only Willsburg was more important.
The body inside the house had been identified as a Muggle, which gave Ginny a horrible foreboding that perhaps this was about him after all.
"The house belongs to the family of the boy," Willsburg told Ron and nodded to the body on the floor, currently being examined by Padma. He couldn't have been more than eighteen. "They're out of town and we already have people covering them in case they decide to come back early."
Ginny couldn't look at the Muggle boy anymore, she had to find something useful to do or she was going to be sick.
Harry stood on the far end of the room, looking at something on a table. Ginny walked up to him and her eyes were immediately drawn to the pocket watch sitting on the table. She could feel the eerie presence coming from it, as if it could watch them and felt… afraid?
"This one doesn't feel like him either," Ginny heard herself whisper, more to herself than anything, but Harry nodded.
She didn't like to remember what Voldemort's horcrux felt like, but it was impossible not to be automatically reminded when being in front of another horcrux.
"The pocket watch is Muggle," a voice told them and Harry and Ginny turned on the spot. It was another Auror that Ginny didn't recognize, but she didn't really care about that right then.
"What? Are you sure?" she asked, feeling a sudden relief wash over her.
"That's impossible!" Hermione called from the other side of the room and started approaching them. The girl had ears like a bat. "Muggle objects can't become horcruxes!"
The Auror backed away from Hermione a little and then his eyes fell on Harry and his mouth dropped. "You're Harry Potter," he whispered, looking suddenly very intimidated.
"Muggle objects aren't strong enough to handle the amount of magic that a horcrux requires," Hermione continued undeterred. "And that's not even mentioning that they need to encase the soul of a most likely powerful witch or wizard."
"Who cares about that, Hermione?" Harry asked, his green eyes suddenly very bright. "This means it isn't really him. He would never make a horcrux with a Muggle object"
Hermione's eyes widened in realization. The Auror took this opportunity to slip away.
"Wait, wait, wait." Ron came striding towards them, looking frazzled. "We can't make such strong assumptions without having all the evidence."
"Harry's right, Ron. There's no way he'd use a Muggle object. What more evidence do we need?" Ginny understood that Ron was just trying to be a good Auror, but that was exactly the kind of behavior that she hated from Law Enforcers.
"We need to take the horcrux to the labs and see what we can find," Hermione interjected. She looked like she wanted to say more, but she was interrupted.
"And who the bloody hell are you to make decisions here?" Willsburg looked furious, but Ron even more so.
He stepped in front of Hermione and facing his boss, which was about one foot shorter than Ron. "She's Hermione Granger and I dare you to find anyone who knows more about horcruxes than her."
Hermione, who had pulled out her wand and looked ready to murder someone, smiled slightly at Ron's words.
"I thought Kingsley made it perfectly clear who's in charge of this task force, and I trust any of these three people to make the decisions they seem fit." Ron pointed to Hermione, Harry, and Ginny.
Ginny beamed out of pride for her brother, but mostly because she enjoyed seeing Willsburg being taken down a few notches. "You got made head of the task force? Why didn't you tell us?"
Ron shrugged one shoulder but continued staring down at Willsburg, who muttered something about favoritism before storming away.
In the silence, Padma got to her feet next to the body, looking more uncomfortable with the situation than with the dead person she had been inspecting. "It was definitely the Avada," she informed them.
Before anyone could even think about what that meant, there was a loud bang and something hit Ginny on the back of the head. They all yelled and threw themselves down on the floor, pieces of glass and metal raining down on them. Ginny looked over her shoulder, expecting to see none other than Voldemort standing behind them, no matter how sure she had been that it wasn't him.
Her relief was short lived when she saw a figure that wasn't him, but what looked like a very opaque ghost of a girl. She opened her mouth and emitted a blood-curdling scream that made every hair on Ginny's body stand on end. The girl was standing on the table, her hands folded over her chest as she doubled over in apparent brutal, indescribable pain. She screamed again and again and each time it felt more terrifying until suddenly, as fast as she came she was gone, dissolving like steam in the air.
In the absence of her screams the silence was blissful and Ginny swore to herself she would appreciate it more.
"Is everyone alright?" Ron asked, his voice shaking slightly.
Other than a few small cuts on Padma's and Harry's arms from the glass and a bump of the back of Ginny's head, they were alright. Ginny wished she could say the same for her mental health, because the image of that literal piece of soul suffering a gruesome death would haunt her forever.
The Auror from before rushed into the living room, looking around wildly. "What happened?" he asked Padma who was closest.
Padma opened her mouth to answer, but Willsburg walked back inside, breathing fast and holding a phone in his hand. "A girl covered in blood apparated to St Mungos about an hour ago. And she didn't make it."
They all looked at each other for a moment, and Harry was the first one to turn around, his eyes landing on the scorch-mark on the table where the pocket watch used to be.
"It really isn't him," Harry breathed out, and Ginny was scared that the sentence didn't bring her as much joy as she had expected.
.
Ron had a very hard time deciding which was worse; watching the soul of this young girl bursting out of the horcrux, or watching her real body dead on a morgue.
"She looks…" Ginny said faintly and suddenly Ron thought of her eleven-year old sister, just a scared little girl who had no idea what was happening to her. "She looks even less present than the piece of her soul we saw."
That was the worst part. The body looked like it was barely there, just a white shape covered in blankets with her face revealed so they could identify her. There wasn't any sign of agony now, but apparently she had bled to death through a hole in her chest, which Ron was thankful he didn't have to see to believe.
"That's because it was half her soul," Hermione mumbled, looking like she was thinking hard and avoiding seeing the body in front of them.
"What?" Ron asked, failing to see how this was relevant.
"Think about it," Hermione turned to him. "Making a horcrux divides your soul in half, which means you are storing half your soul. That's a very big piece of one's soul. Voldemort made six horcruxes, seven unknowingly, so after the first one, every time he divided his soul again he was left with less and less but his horcruxes also contained a smaller piece of soul. The cup, the locket, the diadem; we were used to horcruxes with a lot less than half a soul."
"But the diary was the first one," Ginny added, looking curiously at Hermione.
Hermione turned to her, her eyes shining with that familiar inspiration that Ron was used to. "Precisely. Now, I never held the diary or saw Voldermort's soul emerging from it, but wouldn't you say that he seemed almost as present as this girl when the horcrux exploded?"
Ginny stared at Hermione for a moment and then she turn her head rapidly to look at Harry, who was sitting in the corner and looking down at his hands. "Harry?"
"Hermione's right," he simply said and looked up after a long sigh.
"I think that's why these horcruxes have seem somehow 'stronger' or more present than the ones we used to handle. Which is partly good because it gives further proof that they're not Voldermort's and that these people aren't making more than one horcrux." Hermione seemed satisfied with her conclusion, but as much as Ron thought she was probably on the right track, he couldn't stop looking at the girl and feeling sick.
"But why would someone like her even make a horcrux? The told us she was half-blood, the parents don't have any criminal records or ever shown signs to support Voldemort in the past. Why did she do this to herself?" He tried to imagine sixteen-year old Tom Riddle looking just as young and innocent but hiding a terrible secret as well.
"I'm more concerned with the 'how' than the 'why' right now." Hermione scrunched up her face in distaste. "No one is supposed to know the process, least of all someone like her."
"Come on, no one? Ginny interjected. "You know. And I'm sure it wasn't easy keeping that information hidden."
Hermione started looking worried, as if trying to think if she had made a mistake that could have resulted in this mess. "Some Unspeakables know. But by the very nature of their job they're unable to speak of such things. The tongue-tying curse is the weakest of the spells used on them."
"Even if someone who's not supposed to know somehow does, is not your fault. It'd be virtually impossible to eliminate every trace of information about it, especially with Death Eaters and their families still around." Ron was sure Hermione was seconds away from calling Kingsley and asking him to revisit all the case files in the horcrux operation they did eight years ago.
Ginny put a hand on Hermione's shoulder. "I will kick your arse if you start blaming yourself."
Hermione tried to smile but it looked more like a grimace.
"What matters now is that there's someone out there with this information and we need to find them," Ron said and finally tore his eyes away from the poor girl's body. "Before something like this happens again."
There was a long silence and then they were startled by a door closing, and when Ron turned around, he realized it was Harry who had left. Both Hermione and Ginny stepped forward, intending to follow him, but Ron stopped them.
"Let me do it," he told them and walked out of the room.
Harry hadn't gone far, it wasn't like him to abandon them when there was still so much to do and solve. He was sitting in the empty waiting room, looking like he was waiting for one of them to come and talk to him because they all knew that they would.
"You alright, mate?" Ron asked and sat next to him.
Harry nodded. "It's just, you know...fucking terrible."
There were a lot of words to describe what was happening, but 'fucking terrible' did a good job of summing it up. This will certainly bring out a lot of past feelings and trauma for the lot of them, but maybe Harry would get the worst of it and Ron had no idea how to fix it.
"I know you'll tell me to piss off, but you know you don't actually have to do this, right?" Ron asked and put a hand on Harry's back. "Nobody would blame you."
Harry huffed a laugh. "I know. And maybe I shouldn't, but we both know I'm still going to do it"
Ron nodded. "The more I think about it, the more I realize we still need to visit Theodore Nott junior," Ron said, trying to form a plan out loud. "The Death Eaters in Azkaban are old and insane, and all the people involved with these new horcruxes are very young. It might not be Voldemort himself, but something is definitely leading us to those people."
"But Nott junior wasn't a Death Eater." Harry pushed up his glasses and straightened up. "As far as I know he didn't participate in the war in any way."
"Yeah but if his father knew so much about Voldemort, maybe he has some information too. And I'm not saying just him; we should pay a visit to Malfoy, Goyle, Parkinson...one of those little shits must know something." Ron couldn't believe he would have to deal with his old school mates again after so long. He might actually be getting too old for this.
Harry nodded. "Alright, let's visit some Slytherins. But could we not go back in there?" Harry's eyes shifted to the door of the room where Hermione and Ginny were still waiting.
"Sure, there's no need. We should get something to eat before we do anything else. And I'm sure Hermione has more interesting theories to share with us meanwhile."
They smiled at each other and Harry clapped Ron on the back. "Thanks. I just need another moment."
Ron nodded and rubbed Harry's back. Harry could have all the moments he wanted to.
.
Hermione decided to go with Harry, Ginny, and Ron to the Nott residence and take a small break from trying to analyze souls. Not that she still wasn't immensely worried about the origins of said souls, but maybe it'd help to get out of the lab and clear her head. Besides, Padma was still working on it.
The mansion was nothing like she had expected. It was still enormous and unnecessarily flashy, but not in an old pureblood way. It had clearly been remodeled not long ago because it looked almost like one of those million-pound Muggle celebrity houses that she had seen on TV.
"This is where Nott lives?" Harry asked when they approached the gate.
Ron looked down at the paper in his hand and nodded. "According to the official record."
Ginny scoffed. "He sure made up being a nobody as a kid by living it big."
Ginny had a point. Hermione knew next to nothing about Theodore Nott, but a pureblood boy with a Death Eater father didn't seem like the type of person who would live like this. There was definitely something fishy going on.
Ron rang the doorbell and they waited for a minute before the massive metal doors began opening, revealing the entrance to a long, tall, and very modern hall with polished wooden floors and colorful abstract paintings on the walls. They all looked at each other for confirmation that they should go on, and Ron took the first step.
There was absolute silence, only their footsteps echoing in the large place. It felt like a mile long, and the more they walked the more weirded out Hermione felt. Most of the stuff around them was definitely Muggle or Muggle-inspired and it didn't make any sense to her. There wasn't even a sign of a house-elf around there.
Finally, they came up to what looked like the doors to a living room or dinning hall and stopped.
"Hello?" Ron called out. When no one answered, he shrugged and pushed open the doors.
"Bloody hell," Ginny exhaled.
The entire placed was trashed beyond any logical reason. There were chairs overthrown, glass on the floor, crooked or broken paintings, and what looked like an unmoving body under the cushions of the sofa.
"Shit shit shit." Ron sprinted to the sofa and Hermione followed him, her heart speeding dangerously with adrenaline.
Ron grabbed the cushion covering the face of Theodore Nott and threw it over his shoulder. Harry and Ginny were at Hermione's sides now, breathing fast. Nott was white with dark bags under his eyes, but his face was otherwise normal. The problem was that Hermione wasn't worried about his face exactly, and Ron seemed to think along the same lines when he hesitated for a moment before removing the cushion covering Nott's chest. Hermione held her breath.
Nothing. There wasn't a hint of blood or an injury, just a pale and very skinny chest.
"Shit," Ron breathed out in relief.
"What do you think is wrong with him?" Harry asked.
Nott opened his eyes.
Everybody in the room screamed and their shouts echoed in the tall walls and high ceilings. Nott scrambled to sit, pulling more cushions to his body and looking up at all the faces with terror.
"What the fuck?"
Hermione, who had nearly jumped into Harry when she saw that their ex-classmate wasn't dead, spoke first. "Are you okay?"
Nott frowned as if she was crazy. "Of course I'm not fucking okay! What the fuck are all of you doing in my house?" He continued to cover himself with cushions as if they couldn't already tell he was just in his underpants.
"We came to talk to you!" Ron exclaimed, still looking uneasy. "Why the fuck did the door open if you were asleep?"
Nott seemed to consider this question and then squinted as if it physically hurt him to do so. "Shit. I forgot to lock it after the party."
Party? Hermione took a moment to look around again and was shocked at how much she didn't see before. She was so wrapped up in her mind about the awful things that had happened in the previous days that she didn't notice the many empty bottles and glasses, poker cards all over the table, and even clothes thrown carelessly around.
There were nods of understanding all around. Nott wasn't in danger, he was just heavily hungover.
"Well, sorry for the inconvenience then," Ron said diplomatically. "But since we're already here, could we please ask you some questions?"
Nott didn't look at all happy or up to any kind of interrogation, but he nodded anyway. "Let me just…" He grabbed something that was hanging on the back of the sofa, which turned out to be a bathrobe, and Harry, Ron, Ginny and Hermione stepped away so Nott could stand up.
He winced and rubbed his temples for a moment before sighing. "Make yourselves comfortable. I need to find my wand."
They awkwardly made their way to the table because it looked like the only semi-appropriate place to sit. Nott started checking under coats, cushions, and even inside firewhiskey bottles.
"Have you tried 'accio'?" Hermione offered in an attempt to break the ice, and because he really did look like he needed help.
"I'm in no mood to be coddled, Granger. But no, I have not." He extended his arm out and his bathrobe opened in the front. "Accio wand."
It took a second for the wand to make its way into the room from who knows where, but as soon as Nott had it in his hand, he waved it again. "Accio hungover elixir." The small vial flew into Nott's hand and he uncorked it and downed it immediately.
"Okay. Now I might actually manage to look at your faces without the urge to vomit," he said as he walked over to the table.
"How charming," Ginny mocked with a roll of her eyes.
Nott sat himself on the other side of the table, facing the rest of them. "Is not every day that I get a visit from Potter, Granger, and no less than two Weasleys. I must have done something really bad or really good." He managed a smile that was definitely forced.
Hermione realized that if she were to run into the man in front of her on the street, she wouldn't recognize him at all. She barely remembered what he looked like in school, and he was also very different from the photographs she had seen of his father. Nott junior was tall, lean, and pale, but with very dark wavy hair that almost reached his shoulders. His eyes were equally as dark and he had a hint of boyish charm that was scaled down thanks to him passing out drunk on his sofa.
"We just need to ask you some questions about your father," Ron explained, folding his hands on the table.
If it was possible, Nott paled even more. "Shit. What did he do now? Did he escape?"
He seemed terrified of that prospect and they all caught on that detail because the four of them shook their heads.
"No, no," Ron assured him. "But we talked to him the other day and we were wondering if you know something about what he told us."
"Why would I know?" Nott frowned, but he had regained some of his color.
"Because he's your father?" Ginny supplied in that sarcastic tone of hers. "He might have told you."
There was a brief silence in which Nott took turns looking at each of their faces, as if searching something that Hermione didn't understand, and the he burst out laughing.
They were all so taken aback that Harry actually jumped at the sound and then they looked at each other in beliwelderement. Nott laughed with his eyes closed tight for what felt like a full minute before he settled down enough to speak.
"That's hilarious." He dried the corners of his eyes with the sleeve of his bathrobe. "You really believe that my father would share something with me?"
"Why is that so far-fetched?" Hermione asked, slightly lost. She knew the man must have been a terrible father, but so was Lucius Malfoy and he still cared about his son.
"Because my father hates me," Nott said as if it was the most normal thing in the world. "Which is understandable once you realize I'm gay, not a bigot, and give a shit about my life which is his complete opposite. Also I celebrated his imprisonment by remodeling his old disgusting house and turning it into a modern Muggle haven."
Hermione had no idea what to say to any of that, and apparently neither did the others because the silence was awkward and heavy.
"So to answer your question; no. My father didn't share any kind of information with me, even less if it was something important."
"You must have heard something, though. Living with a Death Eater and all," Ron tried again, and Hermione could tell he was trying hard not to say the word 'horcrux' because they had agreed to refrain from using it in case Nott really didn't know anything. "Some acts involving dark magic have occurred and we need to find out who's doing them."
Nott grimaced. "I genuinely thought I would never be involved in this kind of shit again. I don't know what to tell you, I know nothing about dark magic and even less about my father's doings. You can search my entire house if you'd like, but you'll see that I've thrown away most of the stuff that was here for centuries. The only thing I kept were the books because I was told they were priceless."
Hermione gasped. "Yes!" she exclaimed in excitement and everybody turned to look at her. "The books!"
She couldn't believe she hadn't thought of that, not eight years ago and not before his moment.
At the questioning look from her friends, and even from Nott, she knew she had to explain without revealing too much. "I realized now that back then we searched all public libraries, but we never searched private ones. That's how they know."
She watched the understanding dawning on their faces, everyone except Nott. "Who's they? What do they know?"
"Sorry, we can't tell you," Ron said, still looking at Hermione. "But none of them have been pureblood and they're the ones that would have those kind of books."
"Ooh, none-purebloods causing trouble? Who are they? What kind of books?" Nott asked again.
"We can't tell you," Hermione repeated. "But maybe a pureblood is behind it."
"I agree with Granger, a pureblood is definitely behind it."
They all stared at Nott with different levels of exasperation, but Hermione almost felt like laughing and Harry actually hid his smile behind his hand.
"You said you didn't know anything," Ginny told him.
He shrugged. "I don't, but it makes sense, no?"
Ron stood up. "Right, we should go."
"Seriously? Just when it's getting interesting?" Nott threw up his hands in the air and then slammed them down on the table. "Typical Gryffindors. You don't even want to stay and search my library?"
This time Hermione laughed and so did the others, but they got up anyway and started heading for the door. "We do, but there's things we should do first," Ron told him.
Nott rose as well and walked them over to the front door, not caring that his open robes still left him mostly exposed. Hermione wanted to ask him about some of the paintings and weird decorations that were found on every wall, but her mind was preoccupied going through a list of all the books they needed to be on the lookout for.
"Thank you, Nott. We'll be in touch." Ron extended out his hand and Nott shook it as he rolled his eyes.
"I guess if I want you to loosen your tongues I should invite you to the next party and be done with it," Nott said and then yawned. "But not for a couple of days. I'm too tired."
Hermione smiled. "Goodbye."
Nott closed the door and they started walking away quietly, all probably going through the strange events in their own heads.
When they reached a point for apparition, Harry, who had been extremely quiet the entire evening, spoke. "I liked him."
Hermione looked at him curiously and nodded. "Me too."