Chapter 44
Harry had resolved to not think about Seamus, he'd had an inkling about what he'd felt about Seamus' relationship with Huffman meant and he didn't want to let the inkling form into a proper thought because then there would be no stopping it.
His resolve was broken less than half an hour after it had been formed.
Harry knew that Seamus had been having nightmares since their second year, everyone in the dorm did, but they'd gotten so much worse since Voldemort had returned at the World Cup. Even with everything else he had to worry about, Harry had spent a lot of time, maybe more than was sensible, looking into how to stop the nightmares; but so far he'd only found one solution and that solution wasn't one that was readily available, it would take a lot time, money and help to sort out.
So until he found a proper solution, he'd already asked Sirius for help following up on the only good one he'd found, Harry could only hope they didn't get any worse.
From the next bed, Seamus let out a whimper followed by a shout of fear.
They all knew that Seamus found the nightmares mortifying and often Harry and his dorm mates pretended they didn't know about them; Seamus seemed to believe that the nightmares made him appear weak.
Harry climbed out of bed, crossed the room and hesitated as he reached to pull open the hangings around Seamus' bed, deciding at last that it was better for him to wake Seamus now than to wait until his shouts woke the other boys.
"Seamus, c'mon, mate. You're having another nightmare." Harry closed the hangings behind him as he sat on the edge of Seamus's bed, putting a hand gently on the other boy's shoulder.
Seamus rolled over, his arm flailing in Harry's direction as though to hit him; Harry shifted out of the way and nudged Seamus's shoulder. "Come on, Shay, wake up. It's just a nightmare. I'm here, mate. I've got you, I'm here." Harry whispered soothingly, not wanting to wake up the other boys.
Seamus stilled, and slowly cracked an eye open. "H-Harry?"
"I'm here." Harry told him again, pretending not to notice as Seamus turned his face away to hide his tears. "Was it the Riddles again?" He asked; over the past week, before they'd come back to school, Seamus had dreamt about Voldemort's murder of his Muggle family several times.
Seamus's eyes flicked to Harry's face focusing on his eyes before he glanced up to his scar. "It was your parents." He said exhaling loudly; Harry felt his heart stop for several seconds as they stared at each other in silence. Harry knew that Seamus had seen his parents die through the diary, but they'd not really talked about it, Seamus liked to pretend that none of it had ever happened.
Harry licked his lips and said slowly, his voice hoarse, "Th-the night they died?"
"You look so much like your dad." Seamus whispered, rolling onto his side. "I thought I was dreaming about you when the dream started and then you were your dad and we were in the clearing at the World Cup and it all happened again and you- you..." Seamus let out a huff of frustration and curled his knees against his chest.
"I'm here; I survived," Harry said faintly. "It was just a dream."
"It wasn't 'just' a bloody dream, Harry. They're not 'just' anything, they're Voldemort's memories, they happened. Every night when I go to sleep I have to experience Voldemort murdering innocent people. It's not a dream, it happened. The people I see were really killed, they're dead, and in my dreams I'm the one doing it, the one enjoying it." He curled into a tighter ball, and pressed his face against his pillow so that Harry had to strain his ears to hear what he was saying. "I fucking hate this, why does it have to be me? After everything, the potions and mind healers, I'm not any better; everyone still looks at me with pity, like I'm so weak and afraid; I'm too bloody scared to sleep at night."
Harry put a hand on Seamus's shoulder, trying to find the right words to tell him that that wasn't how everyone saw him. "We know the dreams are terrible. No one thinks you're weak, I care about you and so do Dean, and Ron, and Neville, and Hermione." Harry didn't bother adding Huffman to the list; she hardly cared about Seamus as much as they did. "I'd do anything to stop you having those dreams."
Seamus balled his fist as he took a long shaky breath and said bitterly, "But you can't. There's nothing anyone can do. I'm bloody well stuck like this. It doesn't matter how much you want to help me; I'll always be the one who's afraid of going to bed at night, the one who's been to see more mind healers than he can count and is terrified half to death of most of the Death Eaters. I haven't had a decent night's sleep in almost two years and I'm tired, I'm so fucking tired Harry." Holding his pillow tightly, Seamus said in a voice so quiet Harry had to lean forward to hear what he was saying. "Sometimes I wish the venom from the Basilisk's fang had killed me, I don't want to live the rest of my life like this, I can't, it's too much."
Harry leant against the post at the end of Seamus's bed ran a hand through his hair, watching him for several long minutes. He knew now why he'd been angry and jealous over Seamus getting a girlfriend. When a friend tells you they'd rather be dead than have nightmares it's hard to hear, when someone you love tells you the same it hurts in an almost physical way.
Harry reflexively went to push his glasses up his nose, not realising until he prodded himself in the face that he wasn't wearing them. He'd seen Seamus in pain, he'd seen him sad, and he'd seen him angry, but he'd never seen him like this. He'd never even wanted to imagine Seamus so tired and broken.
Harry took Seamus's hand and squeezed tightly. "I'm here for you." He said firmly, trying to keep the distress from his voice. "As long as you need me I'll always be here for you, no matter how bad the nightmares get. You're one of the most important people in my life and you can't keep doing this, not when keeping everything to yourself hurts you so much, you can tell me anything."
Seamus laughed hollowly. "That's easier said than done. There're some things I can't tell anyone, things that the people I care about just don't need to hear. The things he's done, Harry, there's a reason people are afraid of him, he's a monster. He takes pleasure in torturing people; more than that, he relishes it and when I have those dreams I do to. It's not just the cruciatus curse either, there are things he's done you'd never think of doing to a person, never even imagine that he'd do but he has and I've seen it, just describing it would be enough to give you nightmares." He shuddered, his knuckles turning white as his hands tightened on his pillow.
"I don't care. If there's anything you want to talk about, you can tell me, even if you think it will hurt me. If I have to have nightmares too it'll be worth it if it makes you feel better. I'd do anything, give anything for you to feel better you- you're my best friend"
Seamus didn't say anything; he just looked at Harry in a way that suggested he didn't quite believe him.
"It doesn't matter now, anyway. Go to sleep, I'll stay here and keep an eye on you." Harry gave Seamus's hand a final squeeze before letting go and resting his head against the post at the end of the bed.
"You need sleep too."
"Not as much as you do. Go to sleep, I promise I won't leave until the morning."
It seemed Seamus was more tired than Harry thought; he didn't even manage to voice his next protests as his head began to droop on his pillow and he fell asleep.
It was fairly obvious, now that Harry thought about it, that he was in love with Seamus. He winced at that thought, it sounded bloody ridiculous really, to even consider that he was in love, he was fourteen for Merlin's sake; it seemed too young to even claim to be in love.
But he couldn't really think of any other word that could describe how he felt. Thinking back on the past year Harry wondered how he hadn't realized sooner.
He'd offered Voldemort his life in exchange for Seamus's, which in itself should have been enough to tip him off. With the amount of time Harry spent worrying about his family, for him to give them up so that Seamus could live was huge and so very selfish but, in the same position, he'd probably do it all over again.
Seamus had been the last person he thought about before dying, he hadn't even thought about his parents, just Seamus.
And when he'd been tortured in the cemetery, again he'd thought about Seamus. If anyone had asked he wouldn't have been able to recall his name, or his parents', but he had remembered a song Seamus had played on his fiddle.
He shook his head in disgust at himself. It wasn't the fact that he'd suddenly decided that he liked blokes, that was strangely easy to accept, the problem was he'd told himself that there were two things he wouldn't do that night. The first was that he wasn't to think about Seamus, and now he was sat in his bed, watching him sleep. The second was that he wouldn't allow his inkling to form into a thought. Unfortunately that inkling had not only formed into a thought; it had begun to run amok in his head, turning over every memory of the past few years and looking for signs that Harry's affection for Seamus ran deeper than he had initially believed, there really was no stopping the bloody thing now.
OOOOO
"You can't honestly be suggesting that we start our duelling practice in here." Ginny said, looking around doubtfully as they stepped through the entrance into the kitchens. "It's been weeks since term started, you've fobbed me off with every excuse that popped into your head about why we can't start and now, when you finally agreed to teach me to fight, you've brought me here."
Harry ran a hand through his hair. "Yeah, sorry about that. I spent most of last week flying and meditating, you know to find out my Animagus animal. We're not actually going to do any duelling now either. It's Hermione's birthday tomorrow so I thought you could help me make a cake?" He winced, anticipating that she would be annoyed at him.
"We're making cake?" Ginny asked, narrowing her eyes. "You can't be serious."
"It's not just about the cake. There's a lot of stuff I've got to get done lately so I thought that I could put the being an Auror thing with making Hermione's cake. You can fly with me too, if you want, Perce did. We thought it'd make sense to be in as good a shape as possible so that we'd at least have some kind of advantage over the Death Eaters. I don't think they really value being physically fit, it's kind of Muggle, really, isn't it? I couldn't imagine a git like Malfoy doing any real exercise." Harry said as he led Ginny to a stove the House Elves had cleared for them.
"So because physical fitness is so important, we're going to make a cake?" Ginny asked, raising an eyebrow.
Harry laughed. "I think we need to get to know each other. If we ever get into a real duel together like- like with Percy, I want us to be able to know exactly how the other will react to it. Me and Perce didn't know each other well enough, it's not enough to just be friends, we have to be able to anticipate each other's actions. Maybe if I'd known him better Crouch wouldn't have killed him, we might have been able to put up a fight or I could have done something." Harry told her as he began pulling out bowls and pans from under one of the work surfaces Ginny opened her mouth as though to argue but Harry continued, not letting her. "You're kind of like me and I don't think there's really any chance of your parents keeping you from fighting, but I'm not going to let what happened to Perce happen again. We have to be ready and that'll take a lot of work."
Ginny nodded and took the wooden spoon Harry had offered her. "I'll do everything I have to. I'm not going to just walk away when things get difficult, teach me to become an Animagus too; I want every advantage I can get."
"I can't teach you the Animagus thing, all I really know at the moment is the inner animal bit which is all just meditation anyway and Sirius probably won't let you learn without your parents' permission, he made me ask Severus and everyone knows how much he hates him. I think that it might actually be as dangerous as everyone is making it out to be." Harry told her apologetically as he rummaged in his bag for the cookery book he brought.
"Fine, but you have to teach me as soon as I come of age." She said, pursing her lips, apparently already accepting that her mother wouldn't let her learn to become an animagus. "But I want to know everything else, all of it. Perce said you learnt about healing too, I'll run laps of the Quidditch Pitch and only eat vegetables if I have to; I want to be able to kill Crouch... what cake are we making?" She asked, changing topics as she leant over to look at the book.
"Chocolate, it's the decorating that's the hard bit. It needs to be as ostentatiously ugly as possible, you know layers, and bright clashing colours and maybe pink butterfly wings or something. And I could barely last ten seconds in a duel with Crouch; at the moment we're way out of our depths."
"So let me get this straight, you want to make her a cake that she'll hate?" Ginny asked.
"I've done it every year since were eight, although the first one was only ugly by accident. She's too polite to actually say she thinks it's horrible, she pulls this face, like she's appalled but also really pleased that you've made the effort. We usually do it at home, just before coming back to school, my Uncle David loves ugly cakes, but obviously we didn't have a chance. The elves don't mind though, they let me use an oven a while back too."
"Right, so what do you want me to do?" Ginny asked, rolling up the sleeves of her robes and reading over the page Harry had opened the recipe book to.
As they set to work making their cake Harry asked Ginny questions about her childhood and began, in turn telling her all about his life with the Dursleys, only really leaving out the part about his and Hermione's bond.
The cake was cooked and Harry was rolling out icing to decorate the upper tier when Ginny suggested that they tell one another their secrets.
"What, like giggling girls at a sleepover?" Harry snorted at the thought, finding the entire idea of sharing their innermost secrets slightly ridiculous, especially since Ginny had suggested it to help them learn to kill Death Eaters.
Ginny hit him with a rolling pin, apparently annoyed at his derision. "I'm being serious; you said we have to know each other, that we have to be able to anticipate each other's actions."
Harry looked down at his icing. He did agree with Ginny, if they were supposed to trust each other and know each other so well, they shouldn't have secrets, but he couldn't tell her about the bond. If the wrong person found out about that it could cost Harry or Hermione their lives. He trusted Ginny to keep his secret but not under torture, or the Imperious Curse, he couldn't risk it.
"If you're going to tell me about how you fancy Neville, it's not a secret." Harry said lightly, trying to distract Ginny's attention as he tried to work out what to tell her.
Ginny froze. "What?"
"Well after he saved you from the Chamber it became kind of obvious, really." Harry said slowly. "I mean, me and Hermione noticed it."
Ginny's eyes flickered around the kitchen, looking as though she didn't know whether to deny it or not. "He doesn't know does he?"
Harry ran a hand through his hair, realizing that Ginny didn't find Harry teasing her about her crush as amusing he'd thought she would. "No, he doesn't. I don't think Neville would ever think anyone fancied him, you could be all over him like Hoffman is with Seamus and he'd have no idea." He paused and watched the relief wash over her face. "Was that the secret you were going to tell me?"
"No, there's something else." She tapped her foot and turned her attention back to the cake, not looking at Harry as she spoke. "You need to know really, before we begin. You might hate me for it and decide to call the whole thing off; I wouldn't blame you if you did."
"It can't be that bad." Harry said coaxingly, unable to think of any secret that would be bad enough for him to hate her. It seemed to be that all of the Weasleys were good people so it wasn't as though she'd be admitting to being a Death Eater. "I'll tell you mine first." Sighing, he set down his rolling pin and turned to Ginny. The Weasleys weren't pureblood fanatics but, out of any secret he might have, his feelings for Seamus would be the one most likely to jeopardize his friendship with them.
Delicately Ginny set her rolling pin on the worktop and wiped her hands clean on a dishcloth. She arched an eyebrow and nodded encouragingly. "Go on then."
Harry paused, uncertain of how to start. He hadn't expected her to just let him tell his secret, normally with things like this there would have been one of those pretend courteous arguments, with both insisting they should tell theirs first before one eventually conceding that the other could go first.
"Uh... well." He licked his lips and laughed as a thought struck him. "You know I was annoyed at a friend for not telling me the same... I said he should take a risk and now I'm here, being a hypocrite and not telling anyone."
"Okay?" Ginny said slowly, looking as though she wasn't sure about how to react to Harry's ramblings. "We could do secrets another time if you feel uncomfortable about it. But you did say we need to get to know each other." She added in a sharp tone, reminiscent of her mother's.
"Yeah," He said his voice becoming quieter. It had been easy enough to come to the conclusion himself, in his head, but saying it out loud, that was completely different. He screwed up his face and ran his left hand through his hair, leaving a white stripe of icing sugar across his head. "I fancy blokes, like, y'know, I'm gay. I think I might fancy- well no, maybe, I think... I think I could be in love with Seamus." He whispered hurriedly, his words coming out in a rush as he slowly opened his eyes to peer at Ginny
Ginny stared at him, wide eyed, for several seconds. "Oh, Merlin."
Harry took a weary step backwards. "What?"
"I just... I can't believe I didn't see it. How could you have known how I feel about Neville? I'm not nearly as obvious with it as you are with Seamus; you're obsessed with him. I thought you were just really close, but you're always watching him, like all the time and you always talk about him... Merlin Harry, you died for him!"
"So you don't hate me, then?" Harry asked, watching her carefully.
"Why would I hate you?" She asked.
"I thought it was one of those really common prejudices." Harry told her with a shrug, "I was told it's worse than blood prejudice."
"Well, yeah," She conceded. "If the wizards in your family are all massive bigots. So is it just Seamus you're attracted to?"
"Seamus is the only bloke I really like, but I suppose I find others attractive."
"Like who?" Ginny asked eagerly, sitting down and watching him intently.
Harry smiled and took a seat next to her, grateful that she seemed less bothered secret than by the fact she hadn't worked it out herself. "What's with all the questions?"
"I've never talked to someone who is gay before- well maybe I have but you wouldn't know since no one in the wizarding world would admit to it." Ginny said.
Harry laughed admiringly, deciding that the Weasley family was probably the best family in the entire wizarding world. "Yeah, I suppose you're right. Well I do think, uh, Cedric is attractive. But I don't fancy him or anything." He said, hoping she'd be happy with his answer.
"Ooh, really?" Ginny asked. "Who else do you find attractive?"
Harry smiled, too amused by her eagerness to be annoyed at her quizzing him. "I don't know, Bill maybe, he was quite good looking?"
"Who?"
"Your brother."
"What? Ugh Harry, you can't be serious, Bill?"
"You asked me, and I don't fancy him or anything, I just think he's good looking." Harry told her indignantly. "Anyway, what's your big secret? I told you mine."
"Seamus is still having nightmares, isn't he?" She asked, suddenly serious.
"I'm working on it. Are you having the same problem?" He asked, examining her face for signs of tiredness. He knew how much the nightmares bothered Seamus and wondered whether, having spent so much time with the diary, she was more damaged by it.
"Yes, well not the same exactly." She said, tapping her fingers on the table and not quite meeting his eyes. "Tom attacked us in different ways. I think with Seamus he wanted to break his mind, with me it was manipulation. He befriended me so that he could use me against you, that's the problem really."
"So you don't get nightmares?" Harry asked. From what he'd seen with Seamus, the diary had messed with his head. He couldn't talk about half of what he'd seen and just being around Severus made him uncomfortable, the nightmares weren't the only damage caused by the chamber, they were just the most obvious.
"Not as often as Seamus, he gets them almost every night doesn't he?" She chewed he lip and looked up at Harry, her eyes shining as though she was about to start crying. "It's what Tom does isn't it; he gets into people's minds? After all this time, even now, when I know who he really is; I still think of him as my friend."
"Who, Voldemort?" Harry asked, uncertain about how he was supposed to react to what she was telling him.
"I was eleven when I got the diary. My brother's were always teasing me; I don't think they really knew how they were supposed to treat me. It's easy when it's all boys together but when they have to spend time with a little girl I don't think they really knew what to do. Bill was alright, but he was in Egypt and I think Tom knew that I felt left out." She picked up a sheet of baking parchment and began shredding it, focusing on that rather than on Harry. "He was my first real friend; I'd only ever really spent time with by brothers before then. He gave me good advice, listened to my problems; he was everything I thought I wanted in a friend."
"I think that's what he does; he makes you want to follow him. Says the right thing to get you to trust him and then shows his true colours, and then you're in too deep and you can't get away from him." Harry said, thinking of Pettigrew and the Malfoys, there was no way any of them would have become a Death Eater if they'd known from the start how Voldemort would treat them. "Dumbledore said the same, Voldemort was attractive and charismatic, people were drawn to him."
Ginny smiled appreciatively at Harry's attempt to understand. "But I miss him, Harry. When something bad happens in class or I've just have a rough day, all I really want to do is go back to my room and tell Tom about it. He said he wanted to protect me. And then, when he appeared at the World Cup all I could think was that he wasn't my Tom." She laughed bitterly. "Because I still think of Voldemort as the boy I met in the diary. I'm such a bloody idiot, even now, I know he manipulated me but I can't see past the lies, he's still my friend."
"You were just eleven." Harry pointed out.
"That's no excuse, when you were eleven you faced him and defeated him. He didn't manage to manipulate you into killing your brother's girlfriend."
"Well, to begin with you didn't kill Penelope, the basilisk did, under Voldemort's command. And when I met Voldemort in my first year he tried to murder Hermione, in front of me, which made any further manipulations a little bit tricky. You being eleven is a fair excuse, he was a- well I don't know how old he is, but he's not young and he manipulates people, he's done it to older and more experienced wizards than you. Also you were actually possessed, he didn't just manipulate you; you had no control over what you were doing." Harry told her, appalled that she'd even think she was responsible for Penelope's death. "Anyway we're still doing secrets, it's my turn. Uh, I'm afraid of cows."
Ginny smiled appreciatively at Harry's change of topic, looking somewhat confused by Harry's secret. "Cows? You're the Boy-Who-Lived and you're afraid of cows?"
"How does being the Boy-Who-Lived make me immune to a fear of cows? It's not like a boggart would turn into a cow or anything, but they are really dangerous, they can trample you to death- there're tonnes of stories about it in Muggle newspapers, I don't like horses all that much either. Hippogriffs aren't so bad, but they're clever enough to not trample you to death for no reason and they have wings- you can't be afraid of animals that have wings."
"Yeah, but cows, Harry? And have you seen a dragon? There're plenty of reasons to be afraid of animals with wings."
"Yep, cows. And when I finally find my animal form I want wings, I bet dragons aren't so bad, just ask your brother, anyway your turn." Harry said as he stood up, indicating that he and Ginny should go back to icing the cake.
"I think his burns might tell a different story. My turn? Hmm, okay, this isn't great but it still makes me laugh, when I was seven I woke up early one morning and kicked a mirror because I thought my reflection was someone was trying to attack me; Ron got the blame, and Fred still teases him about his reflection coming to get him."
Harry laughed. "I still pretend to be Father Christmas when I have bubble baths, you know with the bubble beard."
Ginny blushed and said quietly. "I used to pretend to be a bubble bath Dumbledore; I did the hair and everything. When I was little though." She added the last part hurriedly, shooting an accusatory look towards a house elf as though he was about to go tell Dumbledore everything she'd said.
"When we were eight, Hermione convinced me that these Muggle sweets called Smarties actually made you cleverer. I don't think Hermione knows, but I still eat a tube of them before exams."
"And do they make you smarter?" Ginny asked.
"Nah, they're just regular Muggle chocolate, but it's a habit now I'd feel weird doing an exam without eating them."
"I've always been terrified that I'll be alone forever and never have any real friends." Ginny said in a rush, looking away from Harry.
Harry paused in his icing and glanced up at Ginny. "What?"
"I'd never had any friends before starting Hogwarts and my first year's kind of ruined it for me now. Who's going to want to be friends with a girl who, for an entire year, considered Voldemort to be her closest friend? And I can forget about ever having a boyfriend, no one wants a girlfriend as messed up as me."
"You've got me, and Hermione and Neville and Dean and Seamus." Harry pointed out.
"You're all my brother's friends, I'm not sure it counts when your only friends are actually your older brother's." She said with a sigh.
"I think it does, we're friends with you for you, not because you're Ron's little sister. And what about your dorm mates?" Harry asked.
"How can you really be friends with someone if they don't know anything about you? They're nice enough but I can't tell them about Tom, or the Chamber, they wouldn't understand."
Harry nodded, he understood what she meant. According to almost everyone, when you have a soul bond it's almost impossible to maintain a non-romantic relationship with your bond mate.
The idea of them being in a romantic relationship had never been a concern for Harry and Hermione, they were more like siblings; their concern had been about forming romantic relationships with other people. Even if they disregarded the sharing of emotions part of the bond, they'd both agreed that if they were to ever be in serious relationships they would have to tell their partners about the bond. This was an issue as Harry or Hermione would need to have been in a relationship long enough to be able to trust their partners with the secret, but by that stage in a relationship it would be unlikely that it would be able to withstand such a revelation.
"Bugger it." Harry said, setting down his rolling pin again and turning to Ginny. "Me and Hermione have a soul bond."
OOOOO
Several hours later, Harry clambered through the portrait hole and collapsed onto a sofa next to Hermione. Flicking off his shoes and bringing his knees up to his chest in one fast movement. He closed his eyes, rested his head on Hermione's shoulder and sighed.
"I've done something terrible." Harry said already wincing at the thought. "I told Ginny about the bond." He'd already told himself that he couldn't tell her, it'd put them in too much danger, but what she'd said had got to him and he'd just wanted to let her know that she wasn't the only one feeling that way.
Through the bond he felt Hermione tense as she tried to make sense of what Harry had said. "Could you say that again? I think I might have misheard you, because I know you're not that stupid."
Harry opened an eye. "You heard me."
"Why exactly would you tell Ginny about the bond?" Hermione hissed, making sure to keep her voice low.
"It's a long story." He said tiredly, the cake had taken a lot longer than Harry had expected to make, and after that Ginny had insisted that he go over the Shield Charm with her; he didn't want to get into an argument now.
"I have time."
"Ugh, fine," He sat up and leant against the opposite arm of the chair. "We were sharing our secrets, we decided that we needed to get to know each other if we're going to duel together, I can't have what happened with Perce happen again. Ginny started talking about Voldemort, and how she didn't think she'd ever make any real friends because she cared so much about him when he was talking to her in the diary, and she couldn't tell anyone else about it. It got me thinking about the bond."
"So you've kept Ginny's secret, what, five minutes?" She ran a hand through her hair, in a gesture that had seeped through the bond from Harry and narrowed her eyes crossing her arms to keep herself from imitating any more of Harry's actions, once she'd even tried to push her nonexistent glasses up back her nose. "For a Secret-Keeper you're not that good at keeping secrets."
Harry rolled his eyes. "Ginny said she understands if I talk to you about it, she was actually pretty understanding about the whole thing. She did quiz me about it for at least an hour."
"You did stress how important it is that she doesn't tell anyone, didn't you?" Hermione asked, still narrowing her eyes at him.
"She's not going to tell anyone... I told her my other secret too." Harry said after a pause.
Hermione raised an eyebrow. "And which secret might that be?"
"How I feel about Seamus." Harry said flatly.
"So we're talking about that now?" She asked with a small smile.
"I knew you knew!" Harry said triumphantly. "How did you know? Why didn't you say something?"
"Even without the bond I think you're passive aggressive reaction towards Seamus and Abigail's relationship is evidence enough and I was hardly going to start talking about something as important as that before I knew you were ready to." Hermione told him, putting an arm around Harry's shoulder and leaning closer to him. "I'm pleased that you told me though."
"Speaking of, where are Seamus and Yoko?"
Hermione sighed in annoyance. "You have to stop calling her that."
"Dean does it too." Harry said defensively.
"I've told him not to too. It's not nice, Harry."
"She doesn't even know what we mean. She's pureblood; she doesn't even know who the Beatles are." Harry protested.
"I just think you both should stop making the fact that you don't like her so obvious. If you care so much about Seamus you should support him, you wouldn't do the same if anyone else got a girlfriend." She pointed out sternly, in an attempt to make him feel bad.
"I would if I didn't like their girlfriend, Dean doesn't like her either, and Neville and Ron agree that he shouldn't be with her, they're just too polite to say anything... Ron rolls his eyes every time he sees her."
"Yes, Harry, Dean, Neville, and Ron might not like her, but I don't think you'd be happy with Seamus going out with anyone." She told him with a sigh. "Just try to be nicer to her, Harry."
"Yeah whatever," Harry said, both of them knowing that nothing Hermione could say would make him like her. "Have you seen them, I want to show him your birthday cake."
A pained expression crossed Hermione's face. "What's it like this year, then?"
Harry grinned gleefully, already anticipating Hermione's response upon seeing it. "It's fantastic; I really think I've outdone myself. I've already sent Hedwig home with a picture of it; your dad will love it, it's so ugly."
She sighed in mock resignation and rested her head on his shoulder. "Sometimes I worry about your sanity."
Harry ran a hand through Hermione's hair. "Aw, I love you too, Hermione... That's why I had to tell Ginny you know? She needs to know that there's someone in a similar position to her, we can't let anyone really know us, just like she can't. We're kind of the same, only she doesn't have someone there like we do."
"Despite it all, the secrets and the lack of trust, I wouldn't change it for anything. At least I know I'll never be lonely, that's something most people can't say."
Leaning over to kiss Hermione's temple, Harry didn't notice as Seamus appeared through the portrait hole. He looked around the common room searchingly and, catching sight of Harry and Hermione, glowered in their direction before tuning on his heels and disappearing back through the entrance.
