A/N

Woohoooo! Over 200 people following my first fanfic! I'm truly overjoyed. I was never this popular while I was still alive. Thank you all for your support and your lovely comments. They warm my cold, ghostly heart.

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season and I wish you all the best for 2022.

X MoaningMyrtle95

"What the hell, Hermione?!"

Umbridge had reluctantly let her and Harry go after Dumbledore's mysterious disappearance. They had been walking back to the Gryffindor common room, but had barely made it through half a corridor before Harry rounded on her.

"Harry, please. Not here, where anyone could hear us. Let's find a quiet place and I promise I will explain."

In truth, Hermione had no clue what to tell her friend. The truth was she was in closer contact with Harry's Godfather than Harry himself. How on earth could she explain that?

Harry seemed ready to drag her into the nearest classroom and lock the door until he had satisfactory answers. Before he could execute such a plan Hermione voiced her more pressing concern.

"We should warn Sirius first though. He would probably appreciate a heads up before Dumbledore contacts him through the mirror."

"You mean before Dumbledore questions him about you?"

It was not the moment to argue so she remained silent.

"You know, you could tell me what this is all about now, or I'll do as you suggest. I'll contact Sirius, but I want to know either way. So, your choice, Hermione. Who do you want me to hear it from, him or you?"

He held the door open to the empty Charms classroom. Resigned, Hermione stepped inside and put up several wards to ensure their privacy. What else was she to do?

Guilt churned in her stomach. She and Sirius never should have carried on their communications behind Harry's back. Their reasoning for doing so now seemed incredibly feeble. When would she learn that keeping secrets would always come back to bite her?

Yes, Harry deserved a long overdue explanation, and it should be coming from her. However much she dreaded the coming confrontation, she was not as cowardly as to put it all on Sirius and let him deal with Harry. She already felt like she had betrayed his trust the moment she handed over the mirror to Dumbledore.

It had been the right thing to do, or at least so it had seemed to her. Now, Hermione's head was full of doubts. Had she acted rash? Had she played the foolish Gryffindor, wanting to save the day like the boys were prone to?

She'd surely make a terrible spy, blurting out her secrets on a whim like that.

From the corner of her eyes, she could see Harry getting impatient. The tapping of his foot distracted her from trying to figure out how exactly she would explain things to him while she dawdled, adding unnecessary wards to the room. Could she possibly phrase things carefully and prevent him from flying off the handle? Not liking the chance of that, she gathered her courage anyway and turned to face her friend.

"Harry, I know you're angry with me and you have every right to be. We never meant to sneak around behind your back, but we didn't want you to feel excluded.."

"And yet that is exactly what you did: excluding me and sneaking around behind my back!"

This was going very poorly indeed.

"Harry, I know Sirius is the one person you can turn to for anything at all. He is always there for you when you need him and not out of obligation or whatever, but because he loves you Harry. We didn't want to give you the impression that you'd have to compete for his attention just because he spends time with me too."

Great, now she was throwing a pity party.

"Why do you even hang out with me, Hermione, if you actually believe me to be that petty?"

"No, I didn't mean - We just wanted to protect - "

"I DON'T WANT YOU TO PROTECT ME, I WANT THE TRUTH!"

Hermione winced at his volume and was glad to have taken the time to put up the silencing wards.

"So?!"

At her confused expression, Harry went on.

"What is the truth, Hermione? Have the two of you just been discussing me behind my back, or is there something more going on?"

At this, she hesitated. How much should she tell? On the one hand, part of the truth would probably satisfy Harry's curiosity and temper his anger. On the other hand, if she didn't tell him now he would surely find out sometime in the future. He'd know she'd kept it from him, even though now she was clearly given the opportunity to come clean and Hermione wasn't sure he would forgive her that.

If she was honest with herself, she knew she wanted to tell Harry, however hard that might be. She hated keeping secrets from him and it would be such a relief to finally have nothing to hide. But it was exactly this that made her feel selfish. Sure, she'd be relieved, but what about Harry? He would be highly conflicted at the very least, but horrified and disgusted were much more likely scenarios in Hermione's opinion.

"You're right, there is more to it. There are several reasons we kept in touch through the mirrors. In the beginning, I was afraid Sirius might get lonely at Grimmauld place with only Kreacher for company. But we mostly met to continue our lessons. See.. over the summer Sirius started tutoring me to become an Animagus. I thought it might be a useful skill later, when -"

"You're an Animagus?" It was clear in Harry's voice that this was not what he had expected.

"Well, no. Not yet. But I've made progress. Not as much as I'd have liked, it's been a bit straining with Occlumency lessons and the DA and everything.. I'm hoping to make the transformation for the first time by the Easter holidays."

"Wow.."

The realisation of what she had been doing for the upcoming war, for him, seemed to hit Harry at that moment.

"You even went and confronted Dumbledore, didn't you?" He looked at her almost in awe. It made Hermione extremely uncomfortable, so she simply nodded.

"And you got him to actually listen to you!" A shocked laugh accompanied this statement.

"I'm such an idiot, Hermione. If there's anything I've learned in the last few years is that I should always listen to you. Even Dumbledore does! For a moment, I thought.. you and Sirius.."

He smiled sheepishly at her, expecting her to join in his laughter at this ridiculous idea. But she knew that when her eyes met his, they told him everything she couldn't say.

The silence that followed was deafening.

"Harry, I -"

"No."

His eyes were boring into hers, as if he was desperately seeking any sign of contradiction in them. But there was none to be found.

"You can't be serious!"

A tear slid down her cheek and Hermione hung her head down so her hair might conceal it. After all she tried to do to help, all her good intentions to protect her friend, it was still her fault that he was hurt and upset.

"Merlin, he's old enough to be your father! He's my dad's age!"

She had always known it would come to this, had feared how people might react. That was the other reason they had been discreet. She had known this was coming, but Harry's words still stung. Mostly because she knew it was true.

"I can't even look at you right now."

She looked up just in time to see him yanking open the door and disappearing into the corridor, slamming it closed behind him in his wake.

Hermione dragged herself up the stairs towards Gryffindor Tower. The past few days had been positively exhausing. Umbridge was doing her utmost to establish her authority as newly appointed Headmistress. As a result, every member of the DA had received detention. With Dumbledore gone, the toad wasn't even trying to hide her use of the blood quills.

After detention, she had retreated down to Snape's laboratory in the dungeons where she had taken another dose of Animalis Interiorem. She had proceeded to help the Potions Professor with his research on antivenin. He had been working on it for some time now and the stack of research papers and articles, the margins of which were full with his scribbles, was growing increasingly higher.

She had gotten through almost a quarter of it tonight, reading his annotations and copying it down in a notebook by subject. His observations and deductions were truly brilliant, but Hermione just couldn't fathom how one so intelligent could be so disorganized. How were you supposed to recognize any patterns if you couldn't see the bigger picture?

Still, it had been her favourite part of the day. Her chats with Sirius were fewer and shorter, with it being harder to time their arrival in the forest. Harry had contacted his godfather through the mirror after he had stormed off to tell him Dumbledore now had Hermione's mirror, but it had only been a short chat and Sirius hadn't heard from Harry since. The whole situation put a lot of strain on their normally effortless relationship.

All in all, she was emotionally exhausted. Harry hadn't spoken to her in days. Hermione wasn't sure if he had confided in Ron, although he probably hadn't. Ron would have been furious with her, she was sure, even though it didn't have much to do with him. Instead, Ron mostly followed Harry's lead in ignoring her. Either that, or he may just have been oblivious to the whole situation.

Hermione gave the Fat Lady the password, Jobberknoll, and entered the common room. Having expected it to be empty, she was surprised Harry was still up and apparently waiting for her.

"Uh.. Hi."

She felt stupid but didn't know what else to say.

"Hey. I wanted to talk to you after detention but you didn't come back here, so I thought I'd wait up."

He didn't ask where she had been, but Hermione felt honesty was the best policy at the moment. He was already angry with her, how much angrier could he get? Still, she cast some privacy charms around them, both because she didn't want to be overheard and because she didn't know how much shouting there was to come.

So, she told Harry where she had been and why. She had expected to be cut off the moment he heard her say 'Snape' as he usually would, but was relieved when he didn't say anything until she had finished talking.

"You've been working together a lot then, what with Occlumency lessons and this.."

As he shifted in his armchair Hermione heard the crinkle of parchment. Huh. Perhaps Harry hadn't been surprised because he'd already known where she'd been. How unexpectedly Slytherin of him.

"I suppose.. It's not just me though. Sirius has been doing a lot of things for Professor Snape. And for Flitwick and McGonagall as well I believe. It keeps him occupied, you know."

Harry nodded absently. Maybe bringing up Sirius hadn't been the best idea.. Or was this her window of opportunity to clear the air between them?

"Harry.. I'm so sorry. I never meant for this to happen. I tried to shut it off, this feeling, and to not talk to him anymore." Although her voice broke at these words, she carried on anyway. "But it just wouldn't go away. I felt like I couldn't breathe.."

Her mind wandered briefly to those miserable few days before the Christmas holidays. She had promised herself she wouldn't cry anymore, at least not outside the confines of her fourposter, yet now her eyes were overflowing once more.

".. but I can't lose you over this, Harry. I can probably manage the last part of the Animagus process by myself, and then we can go back to how it was before. I'll find a way to shut it off somehow. Maybe Occlumency will help. I won't lose you over this."

Her heart broke as she said this, because it was perfectly true. However close she and Sirius had become, her loyalty and first priority was still Harry. And the same was true for Sirius, she knew. He was what connected them in the first place. If he wasn't okay with this, how could she carry on?

The consolation that it wouldn't be her choice this time that hurt the man she had grown to care so much for strangely lessened the ache in her chest a little. Or perhaps she was just numbed with the realisation that this was coming to an end, even though it had barely begun.

"I remember."

"What?"

"I remember that. It was a few weeks before Christmas, wasn't it? You hardly ate a bite for days. At first I thought you were boycotting food again for SPEW or something like you did last year, but you never mentioned anything about that. I wondered what was going on, but then.. you seemed better."

He paused, before he added as an afterthought, "And I forgot about it."

"Yes, well.. I didn't handle it very well. Before I knew it I was making up excuses to contact him anyway.." she admitted shamefully.

"But that won't happen this time, Harry, I swear!"

"No, it won't." He sighed. "Hermione, I don't want to be the reason you're unhappy."

"But I don't want to make you unhappy either! And you're clearly not okay with this, Harry. I get that."

"You're right, I'm not. But I will be. Or at least, I want to be. Just.. give me some time, okay? It will take some getting used to. But we're alright. It'll be alright."

Hermione couldn't believe what she was hearing. Did her ears deceive her or had Harry just said everything was going to be alright? Before she knew it Hermione had flung her arms around his neck and was practically in his lap.

"Oh, Harry!"

Harry, who had probably thought things would only go uphill from that point of the conversation, sat frozen for a moment as all the emotional upheaval from the past week came pouring out of his friend. Then, he brushed her frizzy curls that tickled his nose from his face, brought his arms around her and held her tight.

As she quieted down, Harry spoke.

"Uhm.. Hermione? Would this be a good time to bring up what I actually wanted to ask you after detention?"

She laughed and Harry was glad to see her tears were subsiding. Her response to this whole thing showed him just how much she cared, and it was for this that Harry wanted to be okay with it.

"Do you think we could continue our Occlumency sessions?" He asked. "I promised Dumbledore I'd make it my top priority and I really want to know more about the prophecy. We won't go and get it until I get better, so.."

"Of course, Harry. Tomorrow, 6 pm. Let's meet in the Room of Requirement."

As Harry watched her make her way up the staircase to the girls dormitory shortly afterwards, his heart felt lighter for the first time that week.

Hey y'all,

I took a really long time to write this. Confrontations of all sorts, even if they are for the best, apparently make me uncomfortable and I generally try to avoid them. Evasive behaviour, I know, but the same thing happened with this chapter until I just had to sit down and write the unavoidable.

And it wasn't too bad, was it? I couldn't even handle them not making up before the end of this chapter, so there you have it.

Next chapter will be a lot happier, promise!

Toiletsplash - MoaningMyrtle95