She looked so different: her hair was far too short for being as thick as it was, she could have even passed for a boy, an ugly boy, and she looked very worn. She was so much thinner than Harry remembered her, and she seemed defeated, lost, and broken. Neville appeared to be talking to her, but she was gazing up at the Enchanted Ceiling above: she almost seemed to Harry to be praying, begging.
When she looked away from the ceiling, her eyes glanced past where he was sitting and he waved vigorously to her, trying in any way to attract her attention. She didn't see him, or if she did, she was ignoring him.
"Who are you waving at, Harry?!" came an accusing voice from his right side.
"Oh, I was- waving at Neville," Harry stammered dismissively.
Her face was brewing up into a nice shade of red rage and he knew instantaneously that she didn't believe him in the least.
"No, I was just wanting to talk to him about Quidditch: he was telling me something about a new strategy."
He was amazed how fluidly the lie slipped off his tongue and was relieved to see her face soften somewhat, though not entirely. She made him so uncomfortable.
"What is with you lately? Ever since your birthday you've been acting weird. I just don't get you anymore. It's almost like you were pretending to be sick last night," she said in such a way that told him that she did not approve of the way he was carrying on.
He didn't know what to say just then but thankfully Ron chose that moment to snort. Alice rolled her eyes and gave up on talking to Harry further and turned to watch the Sorting.
"Granger's hair! Look at Granger's hair!" he said through fits of muffled laughter.
"Yeah?" Harry said, unsure of what Ron was getting at.
"You are a genius. Completely brilliant. Putting a Cementing Solution in her shampoo like that. I bet she cried when she got home and she found out she was going to have to cut it all off. It does seem to have grown out a bit though. I still say it would have been funny if she came to school bald."
Harry sat in his seat astounded. Why would he have done something so cruel to Hermione? And why would Ron delight in it so? Ron's voice reminded him eerily of Draco Malfoy; he could envision Draco Malfoy's utter and complete glee at seeing Hermione with a head of hair so short one would have trouble gripping it between pinched fingers. He glanced over towards the Slytherin table but didn't see Malfoy there.
"Well, uh yeah. I guess so," Harry said weakly.
All too soon the Start of Year Feast got underway, and he buried himself in his food to avoid talking to Ron or even just talking at all. Alice tried to provoke him into conversation a few times and was beginning to anger over his lack of words, but he didn't really care at the moment.
Putting a Cementing Solution in someone's hair? A girl's hair? That was beyond a practical joke. It was even beyond cruelty, for he knew how sacred hair was to girls. When he remembered Alice as Ginny, she had spent hours arranging it in thousands of ways in front of the mirror at the Burrow.
He was very much troubled by the Harry of this world now. Before on the train he had been bothered by his parents' thinking that he didn't love them, and now he was disturbed by the way everyone expected him to act. Alice wanted him to be a complete exhibitionist and practically make love to her in public, and Ron wanted a Harry who loved to play viciously mean jokes. Jokes on a person who had once been one of their best friends, someone he had always sworn that Ron had fancied. He wondered if his father had ever done anything so heartless in his stay at Hogwarts, and Harry suddenly remembered the incident with Snape. Had Harry become his father? Was that even something to be ashamed of?
He went to bed with a heavy heart that night. Things were different, far different than he could have ever imagined, but tomorrow would be a new day. He could make things right. He should at least try.
He woke early and went quickly down to the Great Hall for breakfast. Once he arrived there, he saw Hermione sitting at the end of the table. Cautiously, he approached her and was about to sit down next to her when she jumped up and looked at him wide-eyed as though he were a demented serial killer. Then her look of fear turned to anger and he could feel the wrath of yet another girl about to bear down on him.
"What do you want?!" she snapped.
"I just-" he began, uncertain of what to say.
"You just want to ruin my hair again?! You just wanted to put spider eggs in my book bag again?! You just wanted to stamp 'I love Harry Potter' logos all over my robes again?! Don't think I don't know it was you, Potter!" she fumed.
"I'm-" he tried to get an apology out, but was again feeling even worse than he had last night.
He threw his hands up as though to call a temporary physical truce and backed away and went to sit at the other end of the table. He noticed that it was only after he had sat down when she did as well, cautiously, like an animal at a watering hole.
In a way he realized that he had turned into his father, and that was a double-edged sword. He had often thought he would be proud to be compared to James, but he would have preferred to skip the parts with cruel pranks.
After breakfast he and Ron went to their first class, but only after Alice and seen fit to practically feel him up in front of everyone. There were a couple of catcalls, and he tried to gently shove her away but the more he pushed her off the more she clung to him and the more erotic the action got. Kissing her the night before had been horrible enough, but this was a million times worse. Here he was, with her tongue down his throat, in front of people, at school. It was almost bad enough to make him feel like crying. Crying would probably be a bad idea. The punishment for crying after kissing her would most likely be severe.
He finally managed to free his tongue from hers, feeling as though he had just committed a despicable incest. Glancing down at his new schedule, he sighed, and he and Ron traipsed up to McGonagall's class for Transfiguration.
He watched Hermione at a distance. She seemed to squirm at the idea of having to be pent up in a room with Harry and Ron for so long. Ron had even started to throw wadded up bits of paper at her before Harry told him to lay off it. Ron seemed surprised by his lack of wanting to open fire on such an easy target, but he did what Harry said, grumbling as he did so.
He was wondering why she hadn't tried to find a way to grow her hair back. He was sure that there must be hair-lengthening charms or something along those lines. The old Hermione he knew would have most likely knew a charm or potion right off the top of her head to fix it, but perhaps she was more altered than she appeared on the outside.
After class instead of going to lunch, he went straight to the library. He had Madame Pince looking all over the library along with him, and just before the bell rang to signal the end of lunch, he came across exactly what he was looking for. After checking out the book, he thanked Madame Pince endlessly and she scoffed at him and returned back to whatever it was she had been doing.
He nearly arrived for Defense Against the Dark Arts late. He was overjoyed to be in the classroom for once. Last year he had been ready to strangle Umbridge every time they met for class, but he knew Lupin was just not that way. He needed a sound mind to talk to anyway. He saw a seat next to Ron at the back and was happy that Hermione was sitting on the same row, though quite a few spots away so as to avoid being in their line of fire.
He dropped the book off on her desk with a note stuck to the front simply saying, "Page 194." She didn't look back at him, but to Harry's delight she did open the book and she seemed to stiffen. Through the rest of the lesson, she deliberately avoided looking at all in his direction, though he spent much of it trying to catch her attention. After class she practically ran from the room, and Harry hoped for the best. But meanwhile, he needed to talk to Lupin.
He approached his desk and Lupin seemed to be more than glad to see Harry.
"Hey, sorry I couldn't stop by this summer or wish you a happy birthday, but I was away on business," Lupin said slowly and discreetly as possible.
Harry didn't know exactly what he was talking about, but he was at least confident it was about the Order. It was his last class of the day and dinner would not be for a few hours. If anyone might understand, Lupin would.
"Can I talk to you?" Harry said uncertainly.
"Yeah, what about?" Lupin asked genuinely.
"It's going to sound ignorant, but, well, everything."
