Thanks again to ViviTheFolle for beta-reading this chapter!

Warnings: Borders on Hermione-bashing.

Chapter 3

2nd April, 1996

Great Hall

"Did you hear?"

"Hear what?"

"Ron Weasley and Tracey Davis are dating!"

"No way!"

"Nah, Weasley's dosing her with a love potion. That doesn't count!"

"No, Davis is dosing Weasley with a love potion!"

"She would never!"

"How else could Weasley get a bird like that?"

"That's mad!"

Hermione smiled as she entered the Great Hall that morning with Harry, hands entwined. Once she explained herself, he had come around, as per usual. Finally! Lavender and Parvati were good for something, after all. With the whole school discussing the salacious romance, McGonagall would be forced to intervene.

Strangely enough, most of the teachers were absent from the Head table, leaving only Filch, who was trying and failing to keep the Hall silent. Well, no matter. The day was still young.

They had almost reached the Gryffindor table—which was blessedly Ronald Weasley free—when her excellent morning went south.

"You bitch!" she heard, and felt a slap the second after. Hermione felt herself hit the floor by the table, hard.

The entire Hall silenced.

"What's going on?" asked Harry, looking confused.

"Shut up Potter, this is between me and your girlfriend," said a familiar voice with a sneer.

Tracey Davis.

Hermione faced her with a glare, picking herself from the floor without assistance. She would talk to Harry later about not displaying a unified front. "Well then? What do you have to say?"

"What do I have to say?" she mocked. "What do I have to say? Look at what you did to Marietta!" the redhead yelled, pointing vaguely in the direction of the Ravenclaw table.

Ah. So that's who the traitor was. No great loss there. "So? It wouldn't have happened if she kept her mouth shut!"

"Did you consider," said Davis dangerously, "that Umbridge may have had truth serums at her disposal? Your little parchment hex didn't take that into account, did it?"

Hermione paled.

"What is she talking about?" asked Harry, looking at her intently. "What parchment hex?"

Davis looked at him, flabbergasted. "Have you got dung for brains, Potter? Don't answer that, of course you do."

There were quite a few chuckles from the crowd, and not just from Slytherins.

"Oi! You brats better shut up, or—"

Several Silencing and rope charms covered the old Squib.

"Your little girlfriend enchanted that parchment we all signed with a hex," Davis explained. "If anyone blabbed, we'd get sneak pimples all over our face. What 'the brightest witch of her age' forget to do was add a conditional clause! Umbridge forced truth serum on Marietta and she was forced to tell, and now she's scarred for life!" A wail came from the Ravenclaw table. "My friend is scarred for life! All because you were too busy getting neutered by her!"

"Hey!" shouted Harry.

"Shut up! And to put icing on the cake, she went and spread a rumour that Ron dosed me with love potions? Or was it that I dosed Ron? Or are we dosing each other, Granger? Couldn't quite make up your mind, could you?"

Hermione grit her teeth. Things were not going to plan. "Well, one of you must be dosing the other, and I'll bet that Weasley is dosing you! There's no possible way any girl would find him fanciable otherwise!"

A few coughs broke the awkward silence.

Davis gave Harry a withering glare. "This is what you broke off your friendship with Ron for? This harpy?"

At that, Hermione drew her wand and kept it at her side. "I am not a harpy, you slut! I know you and Ron have been sleeping together! I saw you!"

Lavender gasped. "Really?" she said, looking genuinely surprised. Or upset that she and Parvati couldn't spread the rumour like they usually did. It mattered little to Hermione.

Davis blushed, looking furious. "Ron and I haven't done anything!"

To Hermione's internal glee, nobody seemed to believe her. On the contrary, the attention had shifted from Hermione's parchment hex to the newest couple's bedroom habits. Davis looked somewhere between fury and tears at the mutters that filled the Hall, and Hermione drank in the sight like lemonade on a sunny summer day. She knew exactly how the Great Hall would interpret her comment, not knowing about the Marauder's Map, but the further she could knock Davis down, the better.

"Well then," said Hermione, a small smirk on her face. "Now that you're done humiliating yourself, run off back to Ronald—"

"What's going on?"

The Hall silenced once more as hundreds of eyes turned to the newest arrival. Hermione wanted to curse him. Of course Weasley would show up at the worst time.

"Tracey?" he said, spotting her, and immediately ran up to her. He draped an arm over her shoulder, looking concerned. "Are you okay?"

The girl swallowed. "Everyone knows, Ron."

Weasley looked between Davis, a silent Harry, and her.

"Granger told Brown and Patil and now the whole school knows," she said, her voice breaking on the last word.

With an unusually perceptive look, Weasley nodded. "Let's get out of here." Giving Harry one last inscrutable look, he guided Davis out of the Hall.

Hermione's smirk became a full-blown grin once they left. "Well, I suppose that's as good an exit as they could manage," she said, taking her usual seat at the now-silent table. She scooped some scrambled eggs onto her plate. "Pass me the toast, Harry."

But Harry didn't sit down next to her.

Annoyed, Hermione turned around to find that Harry was still standing behind her, giving her a distantly familiar look with his arms crossed. "Sit down, Harry, so that we can eat and go to class. OWLs are right around the corner."

"No."

Hermione blinked. Where had that come from? His voice was unusually unyielding. "What do you mean, no?"

"Well, when someone says no, it's usually because they disagree with what has been said. I reckon the brightest witch of her age would know that, but I suppose not."

A pin could drop in the silence. Many students were looking at their neighbours in confusion, as if they couldn't imagine Harry growing a spine.

And she couldn't either. Time to do a bit of damage control. They had to show a unified front, after all. "Harry, please, we should talk in private."

Harry scoffed—scoffed!—at her. "Oh, the same way you talked to Davis?"

"That was different," said Hermione, waving her hand at the technicality. "She called me a harpy."

"She's not too far off. You've been acting strange all year. What's happened to you?"

"Nothing's happened to me," said Hermione, slowly and carefully as if talking to a child. Well, Harry was close to a year younger than her, so close enough. "You're being ridiculous."

Harry continued to look at her as if she were a stranger. "Alright," he finally said. "That's it then."

It was about time he understood, she thought as she turned back around. Hermione smiled and patted the empty spot next to her with her left hand. "Good, now come sit—"

"We're through."

Hermione's fork clattered onto her plate. The Hall burst into mutters. Hermione herself couldn't believe what she had heard. "What?" she asked, staring at her plate, torn between anger and tears, "did you say?"

"I said, we're through, Granger. From the moment we started dating you've treated Ron and Ginny, not to mention the rest of the Weasleys, like rubbish. Sure, Ron was annoying when we first got together, but you didn't stop even after he left us alone. Then you went after him when we got to school, driving him into the Whomping Willow. Yes," said Harry when she whirled around in shock, "Ron told me after he recovered. I wanted to end things right then and there, but he told me not to, that you were just stressed."

Harry chuckled, shaking his head in disbelief. "I can't believe I listened to him. And you only got worse from there. You're the one that kept pushing for the DA, kept pushing for the Map, kept pushing Ron away so that we could never repair our friendship—"

"Ron's a bad influence—"

"AND THAT'S ANOTHER THING!" yelled Harry, interrupting her. "You kept spying on Ron, obsessing over what he was doing and where he was. And I kept letting it go. You treat everyone around you like they're dirt under your feet. None of your dormmates can stand you"—Lavender, Parvati, Fay, and Sally-Anne nodded in agreement from their spots at the table—"and the only two Prefects who've been willing to take shifts with you are Ron and Anthony! And that's only because I pay Anthony to!"

Said Ravenclaw didn't meet her eyes.

"If it weren't for them, you'd be on your own! And now look at what you did! You scarred Marietta, revealed Ron and Tracey's relationship to everyone—"

Hermione couldn't keep quiet anymore. "They were sneaking around! If they were open about it, then I wouldn't have had to—"

"That's their right! You went on and on about SPEW last year but you can't muster the same consideration towards your fellow human beings! Ron and Tracey weren't doing anything wrong, they weren't hurting anyone! But that didn't matter to you, did it? Ron finds a bit of happiness and you try to take it away by telling Lavender and Parvati, and then making Tracey out to be some sort of slag!"

All around the Hall, dozens of students were nodding along.

"What happened to the girl who loved learning magic? The girl who planned out exam study schedules months in advance? The girl who was one of my best friends?" asked Harry, his voice soft and green eyes sad.

Was? Hermione swallowed, unable to give a proper answer. "Harry—"

"You're not the person I thought you were. You remind me of my aunt. Worse, you remind me of Umbridge. I don't fancy people like that, and I can't believe I let it go for so long." Harry shook his head again and left the Hall, not once looking back.