Chapter Ten: Morality, part 2
Even deep in the peace of the phoenix, Hermione's mind was skittering and scrambling. Her moral certainty was crumbling within her, her whole self-concept was in question, and before Bentham started singing she'd been in more pain than ever before except for the trial (and that really shouldn't count). So here, at what was obviously a major turning point in her life, why on earth was her stupid brain determined to think about boys? Well, a boy, anyway. She knew all about priorities, for crying out loud - she was always really good at that - but somehow it just didn't work here. She gave a sort of a mental shrug and went with it, thankful to Bentham for making this so much easier than it might have been.
In the abstract, it was obvious that Harry was the only boy for her. She'd been sure almost since she met him that it was him or no one, though the "no one" option still couldn't be ruled out - after all, that had been her apparent fate until she met Harry. She hadn't even been sure she would ever have proper friends, let alone a boyfriend. Now she was suddenly very sure that she wanted Harry as a boyfriend, but that really didn't help - it just meant that instead of worrying about what she really wanted, she was now terrified about what Harry might or might not want. These feelings (and the awkward physical aspects of puberty) were so new to her, and Harry was nearly a year younger than her - was he even physically capable of feeling this way about her? Maybe he wasn't yet, and by saying something now she'd spook him and drive him away and lose her chance for when he did get to that point. Maybe he was, but he just didn't see her that way - maybe to him she was just the sister he never had, and he wanted someone else completely, someone sweet and meek like Hannah Abbott. No, that didn't make sense. But maybe he wanted someone who was older and knew more. Maybe he wanted a warrior noble like Tracey or Daphne, or a girl with mysterious superpowers like Susan, or even a sparkling socialite like Lavender or Parvati. Maybe he didn't want anyone at all and he never would, not like that. Maybe he liked boys. She had no idea, no way of knowing, and yet she needed to know.
Realistically, she knew she had a better chance than anyone else. If he was interested in romance at all yet, and if he liked girls, then she was probably his first choice. But that suddenly didn't seem like a very solid hope. She was suddenly painfully aware of just how much Harry really meant to her, and how much she probably meant to him. The Cloak, for a start - would he really have just handed that over to anyone else? And now the Vow - she knew he only gave it to get concessions from Dumbledore, but the fact remained that he had magically bound himself to her in a way that even married couples weren't bound. She was starting to realise how important Harry was likely to be to the world in general, Wizarding and non-Wizarding, and this could seriously damage that. Forget about her own feelings - what if she drove him away by saying the wrong thing or wanting the wrong thing, and then because of that he couldn't do what he had to do, and so the world suffered? Her stupid hormones could doom the world!
An amused smile flitted across her face, unseen, and she wrenched her thoughts back to the realms of the plausible and commonsensical. Harry might or might not be ready for such things, and he might or might not choose her when he was ready, but the worst she could really do by asking would be to cause a bit of awkwardness that they'd have to deal with. He couldn't decide he didn't even want her as a friend anymore - he was too deeply committed to her for that, even without the Vow. And they could always talk, and sort things out that way - she'd confirmed that to herself after the incident with those idiot Ravenclaw upper-years and their nonsensical ideas about romance. One way or another, it would be alright. She turned resolutely towards Harry to get all this off her chest.
Harry, meanwhile, had conflict enough swirling in his own head. He'd never been much for physical contact, no matter what McGonagall had said in Diagon Alley, but this physical closeness with Hermione felt unexpectedly pleasant and comfortable. As usual when surprised by anything, his first impulse was to update the expectations which had failed to predict this. His second impulse, close on the heels of the first, was to assert priorities and shut down any romantic thoughts: his best-and-possibly-only friend was in the middle of a painful and highly significant moral crisis, and he couldn't let himself be distracted by trivial things. Besides, he wasn't physically old enough to actually be having those sorts of feelings - he must just be imagining them, based on what his reading had led him to expect. With that settled, he turned his attention to the issue at hand.
Harry had studied moral philosophy, at least somewhat. He had, at least in theory, settled on preference utilitarianism - loosely speaking, satisfying the preferences of as many moral agents as possible. Even before he switched to that from his earlier and more naive position of hedonic utilitarianism, which in retrospect bore a worrying resemblance to Grindelwald's "Greater Good", Harry had realised that for practical purposes he really had to have cached rules by which to live his daily life. Now, of course, he was gradually coming to realise the extent to which most of his choices in daily life were actually driven by instinct and emotion rather than those rules anyway, but he knew he wasn't yet ready to deal with that properly. No matter. All of this tumbled through his head, coupled with the horrified realisation of just what Hermione must be going through. What for him had been a process of incremental realisation and refinement over a period of years, for her was being compressed into a single, world-smashing, moral crisis. She had thought a lot about doing the right thing, he knew, and had even recently given some thought to which rules were best, but to his knowledge she had never seriously considered the possibility that a rigid set of rules might not be the best approach to morality. She had even thought that he was going evil, just because he didn't follow her rule-based approach to morality. Admittedly she'd been right about that, but not for the reason she'd thought.
Harry gazed blankly at the stone floor in front of his feet, letting himself feel the full torment of Hermione's position as he imagined it.
Finally he felt Hermione move, and he turned to her as she turned to him. He opened his mouth to speak, not even sure what to say, but she spoke first.
"Harry, do you like me?"
This he could deal with. "Hermione, of course I like you. You're the most moral person I know."
She paused for a moment, then ploughed on. "Um... That's... not quite what I meant. Harry... You're my best friend. You're my first friend. I think we're probably going to save the world together, one of these days. I... I just need you to know that... That you're more than a friend to me. Um... I don't know how you feel, I don't even know whether you're old enough to care about that sort of thing, and even if you are I don't know if you're even into girls at all rather than boys, and for all I know you could be in love with Tracey Davis or anyone, and I don't know, and I know I'm making an idiot of myself, and... Well, I had to tell you. Please don't hate me?"
Harry stared at her, mouth hanging open slightly. Long moments passed in awkward, terrified silence. Finally he spoke.
"Um... Hermione. Just warning you up front, I have no idea how to deal with this. I am a very long way out of my depth right now, so please forgive me if any of this comes out wrong. I, um. First, to be clear, I do like you. You're my best friend, my first friend, and quite possibly still my only real friend. No matter what happens, I definitely want you around. I mean, I just swore an Unbreakable Vow binding me to your moral judgement. We're sitting here right now in my brand-new still-under-construction secret hideaway, which is and will remain a complete secret from absolutely everyone who is not currently sitting here. Um... So, yeah, I trust you more than I have ever trusted anyone else. I trust you completely, in a way that I never thought I would trust anyone at all."
Harry paused, but Hermione said nothing. After a few moments, he went on.
"As for the other thing... Hermione, I'm eleven years old. I know you're a bit older than me, and maybe you've gone through some changes that I haven't, but I shouldn't be physically capable of falling in love yet. That being said, if I could right now, I think it would definitely be you. I mean, I know all this stuff about how I couldn't possibly really be feeling these things yet, but I guess I shouldn't underestimate my imagination, because I really do feel like I imagine I would if I actually were old enough, and if I actually were falling in love with you. Um."
There was another silence, since even at only twelve years of age Hermione was smart enough to keep her mouth shut and just let Harry talk himself around - not for nothing was she the brightest witch of her generation. Eventually Harry went on.
"I mean, I don't actually think girls are icky, but then I never really did see the point of that - people are just people, and I try to appreciate the ones who are less stupid than the rest. I still don't see the point of kissing, I honestly don't - it just seems awkward and messy - but I think I've finally realised how good hugs are. Um... I think that might count as me growing up? Maybe? I don't know. I'm definitely in favour of hugs now, though, at least with you. Um... So I don't know what that makes us, but I think there is an 'us'. I don't think anyone would take us seriously as boyfriend and girlfriend anyway, not at our age, so we're probably better off not saying anything about it. But I'm fine with us thinking of ourselves that way, if you like - it's not as if there's anyone else I'm interested in like this.
"Um... Am I making any sense? Am I just getting myself into trouble here? I really hadn't given this any thought, so this is all completely off the top of my head, and I know I don't always do very well with that."
Hermione snuggled into him, secure once more. "I think everything's OK."
Harry let out a breath he hadn't known he was holding, feeling the tension leave his shoulders - Bentham was wonderful, and Harry wasn't at all sure he could have managed this without phoenix calm, but apparently there were limits even there.
After a long and much more comfortable silence, Bentham opened his wings and flew across the cavern. Harry reluctantly disentangled himself from Hermione and stood up, reaching down to help her up before stretching after so long on cold stone.
Hermione, once she'd done her own stretching, turned to Harry. "I think perhaps I should sleep on those moral questions - they're just a bit too much right now. Can we talk about something else now, and talk about this tomorrow instead?"
"Of course we can - I know this isn't easy for you. I had years to work through the stuff that's pretty much all being dumped on you right now, and even for me it wasn't always easy."
Hermione hugged Harry in thanks, reveling in the sheer novelty of the physical contact. "So what now?"
He glanced at his watch, and grinned. "We have quite a bit of time up our sleeves - actually, our earlier selves are on the other side of that wall right now. Anyway, we've got about an hour before we have to go back. Do you want to work on this place? It's going to take a while, but I want it to be a comfortable place to live long-term if necessary. I also want it to be as secure as we can make it. I'm already planning another hideout that we'll make in the future, one that'll be much more secure even than this, but this one's important for now, plus it'll teach us everything we need to know for the longer-term one. And, y'know, it can't hurt to have a spare."
"You mean this place is a practice piece?"
Harry grinned. "Among other things, yes. So, Miss Brightest-Witch-Of-Her-Generation, tell me what it needs and how we're going to make it all happen."
Hermione was caught flat-footed for a moment, but only a moment, before her all-conquering brain kicked into gear - if Harry wanted her to design him a hideout, then she'd design him a hideout. And what's more, she'd design a hideout that she wouldn't mind living in for a long time herself - maybe it was Harry's pessimism-as-a-virtue finally affecting her, but she suspected she'd be spending a lot of time here.
"Well, for a start we'll need a permanent Air-Freshening charm. We're safe for now, it takes a long time to use up all the air in a space this big, but in the end we'd suffocate and die. We'll need a better light, too - my Lumos Maxima won't last forever, and we'll want to be able to turn the light on and off anyway. We're wasting a lot of space with this ridiculously high ceiling, so we'll probably want to split it into two levels, or maybe even three. Can you do that with the same trick you used to pull out the chunks of stone in the first place? If you just isolate the layer of stone under our feet, and get Bentham's help to lift it up and anchor it about halfway up... That transfiguration will do that, won't it? Oh, and we'll need to strengthen the stone when we do that, or it might break. Um... We'll want water, and we don't want to have to keep using Aguamenti - I think we can do that with runes, but I'll have to look it up. I'll have to look up a lot of things. Um... We'll also want a toilet, if we're going to spend much time here. Aguamenti runes and vanishing runes should work for that. Actually I don't know why Hogwarts doesn't do it like that - according to Hogwarts: A History, the toilets flush into the Lake!"
Harry, well aware of modern sanitation and its importance, looked appropriately horrified. Hermione went on.
"But honestly, Harry, we're going to have to plan this properly - we can't just dive in and start building it, and expect to end up with anything like what we actually wanted. We can't make what we want until we figure out what that is. We need pen and paper and time to brainstorm together."
Harry looked slightly embarrassed. "To be fair, we did need to get as far as having a private place to plan the rest."
Hermione nodded, and went on.
"So I'll think up ideas for this, but then we need to make a proper plan before we actually do anything. Are we clear?"
Harry nodded, eyes somewhat wild. "Agreed."
"Good. Now, we'll need internal walls of some sort - we can probably just use stone for those. That might even make the ceiling safe without magic, though we'd strengthen it anyway."
Harry nodded again, not quite daring to speak. Hermione continued, warming to her theme.
"The whole cube is what, eight metres? Ten? I say we put all our living spaces on the bottom level, and two metres is plenty of height for that. Leave the rest as a big space for training or whatever - we can add things later if we want to."
Hermione became aware that Harry was staring at her in something akin to awe.
"Hermione," he said, "did I ever tell you you're amazing? I was expecting a few clever ideas that I could then use in the plan that I was going to make for this place, but you actually know what you're talking about! Um... Sorry, I didn't mean it like that. But I'll help you plan this, not the other way around. I knew you were brilliant, I knew about your ridiculously good memory, and I knew you'd had perfect marks in basically everything you've ever studied, but how on Earth do you know so much about engineering and architecture?"
Hermione smiled beatifically. "I didn't always live in the house that you visited, you know. Mum and Dad built that house, or at least they designed it with an architect and had it built. I was six, and much too cute for anyone to tell me I couldn't listen to all the planning. I ended up talking quite a lot to the architect and the engineer, and also some of the builders. I also went and read some books, because I was curious."
Harry shook his head slowly. "You read some books. You read some books. I am so glad you're on my side."
Harry pulled pens and a sheaf of paper from his mokeskin pouch - God he loved that pouch! - and he and Hermione settled down to scribble plans together. It'd all have to stay in the cube, of course - people would obviously be suspicious if they saw any of this - but this way they could hash out their ideas much more clearly and easily than trying to express everything in spoken words.
By the time Harry's watch jangled to remind them to go, they were both sprawled on the floor surrounded by loose sheets of paper covered with assorted half-formed scribbles - they were mostly just passing ideas back and forth, so anyone else looking at those papers would have struggled to understand much.
Just before they left, however, Hermione turned to Harry with a sad but determined look on her face. "I think you're right. I think we have to kill Professor Quirrell."
Harry nodded and put a reassuring hand on her shoulder, and Bentham flamed the pair of them to the Great Hall for dinner.