Harry managed to keep Hermione out of his head for the double period of Transfiguration, but only just. He knew she'd want to study together probably every night… He hoped he'd have lots of reasons to evade her.

From Transfiguration, he said goodbye to Hermione and Ron. After watching Ginny talk with Draco for a few minutes, he headed to the Owlery and sent a reply letter to Rita Skeeter. Then, he sent a letter to Andromeda before heading to the third floor to the Arithmancy classroom. It was time to meet Professor Vector for his Defense Against the Dark Arts independent study.

"Hello, Professor Potter," said Professor Vector. She stood when he entered the classroom and her overlong red velvet robes billowed behind her as she strode forward.

"Hello, Professor Vector. Nice to meet you," Harry said. He shook her proffered hand.

"So let's be brief. I know we're both quite busy. Please have a seat," she said quickly. She had a loud, clipped voice that Harry oddly appreciated. He knew she wouldn't mess about just by her tone. Harry sat in the nearest seat and she sat down at the desk in front of him, turning the chair to face him.

"This will be a true independent study." She pulled a paper from her pocket and began unfolding it. "You will come to this classroom only for a final exam during my office hours the week of finals before you sit for N.E.W.T.s. You won't have a midterm exam." She laid the paper down in front of him and Harry looked down at it. There was a date at the end of the school year written down at the top of the page. Other things were written down on the paper too, but he looked back up at her when she continued to speak. "Your final will be practical examination only. I assume you have the text required. Instead of a written midterm and final or any sort of formal classes, after reading each chapter, you shall write thirty-six inches in summary with anecdotal or researched evidence of the efficacy or lack thereof of the spells, enchantments, counter-enchantments et cetera of the chapter. You may owl or deliver each of these in person as you desire, or deliver them all at once once you are finished completely. There will be no time constraint for these. They simply need to be finished by the end of the year. If you need assistance, please come to my office hours which are actually right now for the next two hours once a week. Any questions?"

"Er…," Harry looked down at the paper again and skimmed it. It seemed that everything she just said was written on this paper. Thirty-six inches. There had to be more than twenty chapters in the text, though he hadn't checked for sure. He thought it would probably have been easier to actually take the class instead of independent study. At least this wasn't Neville's tactic. "No. No questions. Not yet anyway."

"Well then, good luck to you this year," she said and stood up once more. She offered her hand again and Harry quickly shook her hand as he stood up from his chair. He took the paper and folded it as he walked out of the classroom.

At least it was quick. He automatically walked back downstairs to the Great Hall where dinner was in full-swing.

"Get the wrong time?" Ron asked as Harry sat down across from him. Hermione sat next to Ron.

"No, she's just very—"

"Smart," Hermione interrupted, picking up her glass of water. "I really appreciate her way of getting to the point."

"She just assigned me all my work for the whole year. I can turn it in whenever I want. I just have to do the final in person and it's a practical exam only."

"Well, that's not so bad, is it?" Ron said, raising his eyebrows.

"Wow, that'll take quite a bit of discipline," Hermione said. Harry glanced around and noticed that Ginny wasn't anywhere to be found at the Gryffindor table. He was worried for a second that maybe she was sick when he finally spotted her.

She was at the Slytherin table. Leaning over and talking to Draco Malfoy. Her back was to Harry but Draco was clearly smiling.

Harry inexplicably felt his blood run cold at the sight of this.

"What's wrong?" Ron said almost at once.

"Hmm?" Hermione asked.

"Are you going to be sick, Harry?" Ron asked, ignoring Hermione.

"No, I'm fine. It's nothing."

"You look as though you've seen a ghost for the first time," Hermione said. Harry looked up and his gaze gravitated to Ginny again. "Oh," Hermione said plainly.

"Oi! Gin! What the bloody hell are you doing over there?" Ron shouted. Hermione tried to shush him but it was no use. Harry was embarrassed but also relieved that Ginny was being called away.

Harry watched as she shook her head at Draco and then turned and walked back to the Gryffindor table. She sat down next to Hermione. "I was just having a chat," Ginny said by way of explanation.

"Of course," Hermione said immediately. It was dead silent between them for a while until Ron spoke again. He was talking to Ginny about Quidditch try-outs. Harry glanced up and saw that Hermione was watching him surreptitiously from over her plate. She had a book open next to her plate.

"What are you reading?" Harry asked her quietly as Ron and Ginny spoke loudly.

"It's just Transfiguration…" She gave a look as though to ask, "Are you alright?"

Harry just huffed out a breath and looked back down at his plate.

The next day after their first quadruple potions class, (Slughorn beamed at Harry, "Good to have you back for one more year, Harry," and offered him some crystallized pineapple three times), Harry was following behind Ron and Hermione as the two held hands on the way to lunch. Juggling his ink, quill and text, which he hadn't gotten stuffed back into his bag yet, he dropped his ink. It shattered spectacularly against the stone floor and all over Harry's shoes and the cuffs of his trousers.

"Shit," Harry said under his breath as Hermione and Ron turned toward the sound.

Hermione immediately drew her wand and Reparoed the broken ink. Harry drew his wand and let the rest of his things fall to the floor.

"You two go on, I'll just clean up."

"Are you sure?" Ron asked. "Hermione's great at that syphoning charm…"

"Mm, I'm sure she is. Really, go, I'll catch up in a minute."

"Alright," Hermione said. Ron took her hand again and they continued down the hall and up from the dungeons to the Great Hall.

It only took Harry a couple of minutes to clean the ink from his shoes and trousers. He stuffed his belongings into his bag and stood up.

As he started down the hall toward the stairs, he passed an intersecting hall. He almost missed the whispers because of the sound of his own quiet footsteps as he walked. If he hadn't recognized his own name in the familiar voice that was speaking, he probably wouldn't have heard her.

He stopped on the bottom stair and turned back around to the intersection of the halls and glanced down to the left and right, hiding mostly behind the wall.

Down the hall to the right, he saw Ginny as he knew he would. But what was she doing so close to the entrance of the Slytherin Common Room?

She was leaning back on a stone arch in the hall, one knee bent so the ball of her foot rested back against the wall too. She was smiling.

Harry inched a little further out and saw who she was talking to. It was Draco Malfoy. Harry was angry that he was standing there watching her talk to him. Why did she have to smile at him? Why did she make him stand there, hearing her say his name in a soft whisper to Draco Malfoy? What was she doing there anyway?

Harry couldn't help it. He was staring at them. Draco leaned down toward her as though to tell her a secret, but of course they thought no one else could hear them anyway, so why lean so close? He smiled at her and she laughed and arched her shoulders forward as though trying not to double over from how funny he was.

Harry felt himself scowl. He hated himself and hated Draco Malfoy more than he ever had. And that was saying something.

And dare he allow himself to realize it? He felt a little pang of hatred for Ginny then too. Hadn't only been yesterday that she tried to sleep with him in the Defense classroom? Was she trying to make him jealous? If she was, it was definitely working.

But she thought she was alone with Draco, so of course she wasn't trying to make him jealous. She was being secretive. Perhaps even trying to… what? Two time? Get over Harry?

Maybe, said a small voice in Harry's head that sounded a little like Hermione, they are just bonding over being Occlumency partners and she's just being nice and this doesn't mean anything…

But then they both turned away from Harry toward the entrance of the Slytherin Common Room and Harry saw plainly that Draco guided Ginny with his palm on the small of her back. She went into the Slytherin Common Room with him.

The door shut behind them before Harry fully comprehended what he'd just witnessed. He wanted to go after them but he wouldn't be able to get in as he didn't know the password. Also, he would have had to admit he'd been spying on them.

Harry turned and walked slowly to the Great Hall. Why hadn't he just slept with her yesterday when he'd had the opportunity? Had he thought she'd appreciate some stupid act of nobility? What had he been trying to prove?

He probably only embarrassed her, he realized now. She was getting back at him the easiest way she had available to her. Draco was a free agent… Ginny was a pureblood after all, even if Draco did have a history of calling her whole family traitors… they now called themselves traitors too, didn't they?

This, Harry thought, was a poor way for Draco to repay him for his freedom. He should have let the Malfoys rot with the rest of Voldemort's followers. A family of ferrets, the lot of them.

"Right, ready?" he asked. She and Draco had decided to take twenty minutes every day before lunch to practice Occlumency together rather than trying to do it in large chunks of time since they'd have so much other work to do for N.E.W.T.s.

Ginny didn't respond. Instead, she silently cast the Legilimency spell. She was immediately inside Draco's mind.

She saw Snape over top of him, gently singing some sort of charm… the pain was easing…

She saw Hermione punch him square in the face. He tasted blood…

He was a ferret, bouncing up and down, the cackles of students' laughter surrounding him.

"Enough!" he shouted. He'd thrown the spell off using Occlumency. "Are you trying to find the most embarrassing things that have ever happened to me or does it just happen naturally for you?"

"You can try to find memories?"

"Of course you can." Draco cast the spell and flicked through her mind, memory after memory flew to the forefront of her mind until he found one that interested him. It was a memory of this morning. Ginny was showering in the Gryffindor girls' bathroom…

Ginny pushed his spell away faster than she ever had.

"Please don't go looking for memories of me while I'm naked," Ginny said, crossing her arms over her chest.

"Then don't look for embarrassing ones in my head."

"I didn't mean to!"

"Right, I don't believe you," he said between his teeth.

She cast the spell on him again. This time, she tried to look for a happy memory. It worked. She found one: he was riding a toy broom around the empty halls of Malfoy Manor. A buxom woman was laughing and trailing after him.

Ginny lifted the spell before he had a chance to fight it.

"Who was that woman?"

"My governess, Mrs. Kirkson."

"You had a governess?" she said, stifling a laugh.

"Of course I did. You don't realize how much-"

She cast the spell on him once more.

This time she tried to look for another happy memory. She saw Narcissa making sparkling silver fireworks from her wand. They were in an English Garden on the grounds of Malfoy Manor. It was dusk but it was warm… the middle of summer.

Draco fought off the spell with Occlumency.

"How are you able to look at one memory for so long?" Draco asked.

"I don't know. How are you able to flip through memories so fast like that?" Ginny asked, shrugging.

"I don't know. I don't do it on purpose."

He cast the spell on her. This time, he happened to catch the kiss that she and Harry shared before Ron came barging in-the one before he left to hunt for Horcuxes. He quickly switched away from it and found Quidditch. She was riding on a broom around the Burrow. It wasn't her broom…

She fought the spell off once more.

"Sorry, didn't mean to get another personal memory in there. It must be a subconscious thing I'm doing."

"It's because you think I'm pretty, don't lie," Ginny said jokingly.

Draco didn't say anything to this but only raised his eyebrows.