Hermione quickly understood the insanity behind trying to achieve ten N.E.W.T.s Her first two days of classes passed in such a blur that she barely had a moment to herself. Between monitoring prefects, her separate duties as head girl, and trying to map out a study schedule, her days were packed from dawn to dusk.

She had not spoken to Ron since their confrontation on the train. Not that she had much opportunity since he was refusing to acknowledge her presence. They were still a hot topic amongst the castle, but she didn't have time to think about the eyes and whispers that followed her. When she wasn't in classes she was in the library and in the evenings had taken over a corner table in the common room, books, quills, and parchment scattered around her.

Her first two days had consisted of Arithmancy, History of Magic, and Ancient Runes, and the only students she had encountered were some familiar Ravenclaw's. Today would be different though, for this morning she had double Defense Against the Dark Arts followed by Transfiguration. She was both looking forward to and dreading this. Dreading the prospect of being in the same classroom as Ron and Harry, but also looking forward to seeing him despite the circumstances. She had not seen Harry since the night of the feast and couldn't help the longing that seemed to rise-up in her whenever she thought she caught a glimpse of him. She had locked the Maurader's Map deep in the bottom of her trunk, but late at night when the distractions of school work ceased to exist, her mind would succumb to the haunting memories of summer and each morning she awoke, the void of missing him cutting through her like a fresh wound.

She was also intrigued to meet the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. Professor McGonagall had introduced him before the sorting, but Hermione had been so wrapped up in trading eye contact with Harry that she barely remembered it. But from what she could tell he had made quite an impression. She had even overhead Romilda Vane one evening, now in sixth year, plotting with her girlfriends about slipping the new professor a love potion.

Harry had not returned to the castle since the feast the first night. His classes weren't slated to start until Friday and after his heated exchange with Ron he was not eager to return until he had to. He spent the last few days getting situated and even went down to the Hog's Head to have a butter beer with Aberforth, who was as ill-tempered and unfriendly as ever.

He would be lying to himself if he didn't admit that he was struggling. Going back was a step, but not one he had been confident in taking. That first night in the castle had felt suffocating and he had gravitated towards Hermione almost immediately, even after they had agreed to stay away from one another.

He woke up with a start on Friday morning at half past eight, an hour later than he had intended. Andromeda had given him a magical alarm clock that he had not been able to schedule properly and his first night in the flat it went off at three o'clock in the morning.

He scrambled out of bed, dressing blindly, frantically pulling on his rumpled clothes from Tuesday night. He splashed his face with water, brushed his teeth quickly, and slung his rucksack over his shoulder as he scrambled down the stairs kicking on his shoes one at a time. He was reminded of frantic mornings at Privet Drive chasing after the school bus, as he ran down the wooded path towards the iron gate.

By the time he reached the entrance hall his face was caked in a thin layer of sweat and he had a stitch in his side. He took the stairs two at a time trying to tuck his shirt tails into his pants, pulling his grey sweater vest over his head as he climbed. He arrived at the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom at nine sharp and he collapsed into a wooden bench looking up to realize he had chosen the seat directly next to Hermione.

She looked up from her book, startled to see who had crashed onto the bench next to her. It was Harry, his clothes wrinkled and hair even messier than usual.

"Harry what-"

"Over… slept," Harry explained in between pants and Hermione couldn't help the smile that tugged at the corner of her lips as she watched him.

"Oh shut up," Harry grumbled as he began to remove his books from his bag.

"You look…"

Harry glared at her out of the corner of his eye and she clasped a hand over her mouth to suppress her laugh. She looked up and saw Ron glowering at them from a nearby table where he sat with Ginny and she looked away quickly, cheeks flushed.

A moment later the door at the top of the white marble stairs creaked open and a man emerged. He was incredibly young, with jet black hair, and sharp eyes the color of violet. He was not dressed in normal wizarding robes, and instead wore black jeans that were ripped at the knee, a grey button-down shirt, and a black leather trench coat that fell to his knees. He descended the stairs lazily and as he came into view it was revealed that he was barefoot. He walked past the chair at the front of the room and sat on his desk facing the class scanning the room.

"Nobody brought me an apple?" he said with a wry grin. "The sixth years brought me an apple."

A few students laughed, but many of them seemed caught off guard by not only his general appearance, but his American accent.

"My name is Alexander Light. You're supposed to call me Professor, but I don't really care if you do either way. The elephant in the room is that I'm American and I don't like shoes. Glad we got that out of the way." He jumped up from his sitting position and onto the table in one graceful movement as gasps escaped from the mouths of curious students. "I'm here to teach you Defense Against the Dark Arts," he began as he paced back and forth across his desk, his arms clasped behind his back, "but I hear that this group already knows quite a bit."

"We sure do!" Ernie MacMillan interrupted eagerly.

Professor Light's eyes flitted to him curiously and a small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. "My understanding is that you've been in the thick of it, that many if not all of you have been through a war, that some of you… have faced down magic so dark, that it would make people's skin crawl." His eyes paused momentarily on Harry who was watching him with a blank expression.

He hopped off the table gracefully, landing in a cat like crouch. "I did not come here to teach you spells, and assign reading. I came here to strengthen the skills you already possess. This class will be practical. I don't want to read your essays any more than you want to write them."

Seamus elbowed Dean in the ribs as Professor Light began to move between the aisles. "I want to talk about the mind. Hexes, jinxes, and protective spells are all valuable, but nothing, and I mean nothing is as powerful as your mind."

The class craned their heads to follow him as he stood at the back of the room. "You can be as poor as dirt, you might not have shoes," he motioned to his own feet, "but your mind is a palace. You can open it, close it, remember, forget, think… the possibilities are… endless, which makes your mind the most vulnerable entity there is."

"For example," he turned to Ernie, "you, Mr. MacMillan should stop thinking of ways to impress me."

Ernie sat with his mouth hanging open in complete shock and Professor Light padded back towards the front of the room. "Don't fret Mr. MacMillan. You might ask how I know this." He turned abruptly eyes scanning the faces that stared up at him, "I am a legilimens."

Harry had been watching Professor Light with measured interest, but at the mention of legilimency his heart began to hammer in his chest.

"Who can tell me what legilimency is?"

Hermione raised her hand tentatively and without turning around Professor Light remarked, "Ms. Granger?"

"Legilimency is the act of magically navigating the layers of one's mind and correctly interpreting the findings."

"And occlumency?"

"Occlumency is the act of closing one's mind against legilimency."

Professor Light smiled, "ten points to Gryffindor. Now, has anybody here had experience with either legilimency or occlumency?"

Harry did not raise his hand. For the past minute he had been staring at the desk in front of him, his wand gripped tightly in his hand beneath the table, repeating the mantra silently to himself, close it, close it, close it. Ron and Ginny had both turned their heads in Harry's direction and even Hermione had looked at him out of the corner of her eye, feeling the change in his demeanor. Professor Light noticed and his sharp eyes fell to Harry.

"Mr. Potter," he came to rest in front of his desk, "yes, of course you have had experience with this… Lord Voldemort was a very skilled legilimens, was he not?"

At the sound of Voldemort's name Harry couldn't help but raise his gaze to meet Professor Light's his green eyes blazing with revulsion. He was instantly captured by the violet stare that bore down on him and before he could blink an image of Lily Potter begging for his life swept across his mind as vivid as the day it had happened. In an instant Professor Light had been blasted across the room by a golden lightning bolt and he flew backwards, crashing into the marble staircase behind his desk. Students gasped and Harry stood his arm outstretched, teeth clenched as his head throbbed.

Professor Light righted himself quickly and stood, "W-was that your protego spell?" He didn't sound angry, but impressed.

Harry ignored his question and blinked rapidly his fingers clenched tightly around his wand. "You stay out of my head," he snarled in a low voice.

"You see," Professor Light glided forward hopping onto the top of his desk in erratic excitement, "Harry's first mistake, was allowing me to provoke him. He knew that the first step to legilimency is eye contact. So, when I mentioned something that called forth anger, it broke him from his focus of occlumency or in this case evading eye contact. It was only when Mr. Potter met my eyes that I was then able to make the connection to invade his mind and see-"

"I SAID STAY OUT OF MY HEAD," Harry thundered and the room fell into a deafening silence. He glared menacingly at Professor Light who was watching him impassively. He needed to leave, he needed the quiet. Pulling his rucksack quickly onto his shoulder, his mind swimming with images of his mother engulfed in sickening green light, he quickly turned on his heal and exited the classroom. Every time he closed his eyes images of war clouded his vision. Sirius floating into the archway, Hermione screaming as Bellatrix carved into her skin with a knife, Dumbledore falling from the astronomy tower. He thrashed his head violently and dashed up the stairs desperate for relief.

A wave of concern flooded Hermione and she let out a shaky breath as she spun around to face Professor Light who was watching the doorway where Harry had been with a slight furrow to his brow.

"Professor," she breathed out, "can I…?"

He watched her with mild curiosity and nodded once, "You may. But tell Mr. Potter he has detention with me tomorrow at dawn."

Hermione couldn't help but narrow her eyes at him and she was about to speak when he raised his eyebrows and smirked at her as if to say, would you like to join him? She immediately closed her mouth, and scrambled out of the classroom.

Harry had snuck past Madam Pince and collapsed into a far corner of the library behind the rows of books. He pressed his forehead hard into the bookshelf, his mind spinning madly as he tried to rid it of the horrors that consumed it. He tried desperately to remember what Andromeda had told him about clearing his mind.

"It takes ten times as long to put yourself back together as it does to fall apart. Start with what you know dear boy. Repeat it to yourself like a story."

Harry breathed out a sharp breath and began to whisper to himself his palms pressed into his eyes as if the pressure would keep him from slipping away.

"My name is Harry Potter, I'm eighteen-years old, I have a god son, his name is Teddy, I'm at Hogwarts, I'm in the library. My name is Harry Potter…"

Hermione checked both bathrooms on the third floor, the empty classroom down the hall, and even a broom closet. She decided to work her way up towards Gryffindor Tower where she could eventually retrieve the Maurader's Map if she was unable to find Harry. He couldn't have gone far and she quietly walked into the library on the fourth floor waving at Madam Pince who looked up from underneath her spectacles with a brief nod. She scanned the tables quickly, checked the study rooms, and was about to continue her search elsewhere when she heard a murmur from behind a row of bookshelves in the back of the library. She approached slowly and rounded the corner to find Harry, his palms pressed hard against his eyes, mumbling into the corner of the bookshelf his back facing her.

"Harry," she called out to him softly, her voice strained, and she reached out tentatively placing a hand on his shoulder.

He spun around to face her lowering his hands. His eyes were wild and he blinked rapidly as he moved his hands to his hair. "Talk to me," he pleaded in a frantic whisper, "my mind, its, its all jumbled. Tell me what's real."

She hesitated unsure of what to do, but as his eyes swam with frenetic panic, she grabbed both of his hands and looked directly at him. "You are safe. You're at Hogwarts. We are in the library. You're not crazy. You're Harry Potter. I'm Hermione Granger." She pulled one of his hands to her chest and placed it over her heart. "This is real. Feel my heartbeat. This is real. We are safe. We are in the library."

They stared at each other as Harry's breathing began to slow and his eyes became more focused. Hermione rubbed his chest in slow circles and he closed his eyes and lolled his head against the book shelf letting out a tremulous exhale.

"Are you okay?" she asked and he nodded slowly savoring the feeling of her hand pressed against his chest.

"Its never been that bad," he exclaimed as he slid down the bookshelf into a crouch and pressed his hands to his head.

"What has?" Hermione gently urged him and she joined him on the floor.

"The… the things I see. It was really bad when it first ended, but it was mostly in dreams, never in real time. I would wake up in the middle of the night trapped inside my own body. But… never… like it was just now. I'm usually able to right myself, to decipher between the past and present, real and not real, but… today… I tried to tell you… I'm all fucked up in the head."

"Harry," she knelt in front of him, "Look at me. You're not mad. You just had your mind permeated by magic. That's why its worse than usual. You're not mad." She instinctively placed her hands in his hair and began to massage his scalp and he visibly relaxed into his knees. It was by far the most intimate contact they had shared in weeks. Hermione was reminded of mornings on the Gold Coast when he would bury his head on her bare stomach and she would lose herself to sleep as she combed through his tangled mess of hair.

"Why haven't you told me about this before?"

"Because it didn't happen when I was with you."

She pulled back abruptly and Harry let out an audible sigh as her fingers unthread from his hair.

"Do you need me to take you to the hospital wing?" Hermione spoke with a strange formality and Harry shook his head. The wall was back.

"Can you tell me the new password for the prefect's bathroom?" Harry asked as he stood, "I need to get cleaned up before Transfiguration."

"You don't know it?" she looked confused and Harry shook his head.

"I'm not Quidditch Captain anymore."

Hermione bit her lower lip as she surveyed him, "Harry I really think we should go to the hospital wing or at least go talk to Professor McGonagall."

"No," Harry said firmly, "I'll be fine. I just need to get through Transfiguration and get some rest."

"Harry, I don't think-"

"Well you don't get a say do you!" he raised his voice an octave and looked at her through bloodshot eyes. "We're not together."

Hermione narrowed her eyes at him, "Just because we're not together doesn't mean I don't still-."

"Still what," Harry said through gritted teeth. "Love me? Care about me?"

"Both," she whispered weakly.

"Well don't!" Harry said angrily, "don't love me."

"Is this how its going to be then?" Hermione glared at him and picked her bag up from the floor. "The password is Billywig," she spun on her heal and and was about to leave when she called back over her shoulder, "And enjoy your detention tomorrow morning, at dawn."