"It's not like his life will be in any more danger than it would have been already." Hermione bristled, her mouth opening
-Potter cut her off, "What makes you think I care one whit whether he lives or dies?"
"Harry," Hermione's brown eyes stared at him steadily. "I've known you for how long, now? Seven years? You're angry at him - and Harry? You don't get angry with people you don't care about!"
Harry Potter stiffened, his feet starting to pace before he really thought about it. Hermione was right. She was always right, but she was really right about this. Harry, however, refused to acknowledge that she was right. "You didn't trust me!" he snapped instead.
"It wasn't a matter of trust" Hermione Granger said calmly, lying with the truth - as always. "He would have been a distraction, that's all."
"A Distraction?! From what?" Harry yelled, the words echoing around the sound-proofed room.
"From figuring out whether you could trust Draco Malfoy. They weren't working together, you know."
"How, exactly, do you know that?" Potter snapped.
"Snape tried to hex us - unprompted." Granger said with a tightening of the lips that was a concealed smile.
"What, exactly, did you do to cause that?!" It was almost unthinkable to see Snape lose control - though often irate, he was nearly always content to use words. Even with Sirius Black - and Potter had thought Snape liked Draco...
"Me? I did nothing - you should know me better than that!" Hermione giggled, something that made Harry Potter want to throw something at her for not taking any of this seriously.
"Malfoy, on the other hand - well, what would you do if you were teleported to a strange location, and then frozen for G-d knows how long?"
"Wait... Malfoy was behind ... the kidnappings..." Potter said, feeling a headache stalking him behind all his anger. "No wonder everyone's been appearing..." Potter took another pace away from Hermione, and then whirled back, "Wait, that's why he wanted you to stay, isn't it?" Hermione gave a small nod.
"You can see why 'decide if you can trust him' was an important issue." Granger said, and Potter nodded reluctantly.
"Were you ever going to tell me what Snape said?"
"How do - how in hell did you know about that?" Granger said, starting - papers flying everywhere, as she quieted with a startled look on her face. "He didn't- You didn't-"
[a/n: ahh, the powers of Gryffindors to take any conversation and have it at full volume - and nigh incomprehensibly. Promise after we're done with this short conversation, the Slytherins will be back.
Read and review folks!]