A/N: Here's Chapter Two! Once a week or so is going to be my target update frequency, just so you guys know. I still have no clue where this story is going (I've got nothing pre-written or planned), so please let me know what you think about the direction it's taking. Oh, and I know that Lavender isn't supposed to play the role that she does here until sixth year, but I had to take one or two liberties with that timeline. Enjoy!
The castle seemed eerily empty as Harry walked through it. There were no classes for the rest of the day, and nobody was in the mood to study, so Harry didn't run into anybody as he climbed up the staircase towards Gryffindor Tower. He did pass Mrs. Norris on the fourth floor, but even her suspicious gaze couldn't bring down his spirits.
Against all odds, he had survived the second task. He was two-thirds of the way through the tournament, and in second place at that. There were months before he would have to stare down the third and final task, and Harry found, to his surprise, that the thought of it didn't scare him. If he could conquer the Black Lake, he could tackle anything else that the tournament threw at him.
"Balderdash," Harry said when he arrived at the Fat Lady, who beamed at him.
"Of course, dear."
He stepped through the portrait-hole and was mobbed almost immediately, as all of Gryffindor rushed to congratulate him.
"The Gillyweed was brilliant, Harry," Neville yelled from the crowd, looking as excited as Harry had ever seen him.
"Don't let that biased git Karkaroff get to you," Angelina said. "He's just scared you'll beat his golden boy."
Harry smiled, catching the open butterbeer that Fred tossed to him.
"To the Hogwarts Champion!" Lee Jordan shouted above the noise, raising a miraculously full bottle towards Harry.
The crowd echoed the toast, all eyes on its recipient.
They had all noticed the slight to Cedric, surely. It bothered Harry slightly, given that he owed Cedric for his help, almost as much as he owed Dobby. Then again, he was sure that all the toasts in the Hufflepuff Common Room were being proposed by proud bearers of "Potter Stinks" badges, so he figured that made him and Cedric even.
The next few hours passed in a loud, colourful blur, no doubt aided slightly by the butterbeer. Harry spent most of the time telling the story of what had happened at the bottom of the lake to various groups, and despite his best efforts, he embellished it just a little bit more each time.
At least he wasn't as bad as Ron, who at one point told Lavender that he had awoken early from Dumbledore's charm, found himself unable to breathe, ripped free of his own bonds, saved Krum's life by slugging a trio of mermen who had the Bulgarian pinned down, and managed to pull both of them to the surface just as his air ran out.
Harry had barely managed to contain a snort when he had heard that version of events, but it seemed to be working for Ron, who was now retelling the story to a steadily increasing group of girls.
As dinner approached, the party spilled out into the corridor, butterbeers reluctantly left behind.
The group ran into a contingent of Ravenclaws on the way down the staircase, most of whom, to Harry's surprise, congratulated him on his success, as well as offering a few choice words about Karkaroff.
"They seem to have changed their tune," Ron muttered to Harry after they had gone.
Harry nodded absently. He hadn't realized how hungry he was until he saw the tables in the Great Hall, which were covered with the usual assortment of meats and side dishes. The task must have taken more out of him than he had realized.
The Gryffindors seemed to be the last to arrive, and the meal was already well underway. The Slytherin table, which also held the Durmstrang students, was by far the loudest. Draco had managed to weasel himself into the spot right next to Krum, an arrangement which the latter didn't seem particularly happy about.
Harry took a seat between Ron and Ginny, quickly reaching to serve himself generous portions of chicken and potatoes.
"You're almost keeping pace with Ron today," Ginny commented a couple of minutes later, as he was about to take thirds.
"He earned it," Seamus said from a couple seats down the table. "Bloody brilliant performance earlier."
"Not as brilliant as Ron's," Hermione said slyly. "Harry might have swam down to the bottom of the Black Lake to rescue me, but Ron fought off all those heavily armed mermen and then dragged poor helpless Viktor to the surface by himself."
This time Harry and Ginny both laughed, the former grateful that there wasn't any food in his mouth at the moment.
"Bet you're glad I did," Ron said, his face turning red as he scraped some more rice on to his plate. "I don't know how you could possibly survive without your precious Vicky."
Now it was Hermione's turn to look down, trying to hide her blush.
"About as well as you'd survive without Lavender, I expect," Harry retorted, finding the matching shades of red on his best friends' faces highly amusing. But deep down inside him, something twitched in his stomach, and he found that he had lost his appetite.
"Oh, Ron…" Ginny imitated, putting her hand on Harry's arm and gazing into his eyes, "tell me again about how you single-handedly saved the lives of all four hostages, while still having the time to be so ruggedly handsome."
"We should all chip in and buy Lavender some glasses for her birthday." Harry said, earning a jab in the ribs from Ron and distinctly un-ladylike snorts from Hermione and Ginny.
"I don't think you've got too much right to poke fun," Ron deflected. "You haven't exactly been rolling in success yourself lately."
Harry almost glanced over at the Ravenclaw table, out of reflex, but stopped himself. There was no point in pretending that that battle hadn't been lost.
"Just forget about her, Harry," Ginny said. "You're a Triwizard Champion after all.. I'm sure there are plenty of other girls out there."
"You were complaining just a few weeks ago about how three different girls asked you to the Ball," Seamus said. "Seems to me that's the place you should start."
"One of them was twelve," Harry muttered, "and the other two were hardly the cream of the crop."
"What was wrong with them?"
"The first was about six feet tall," Harry said, "so imagine me trying to dance with her. The other was… I don't know. Just not my type."
"So you do have a type, then," Ginny said, leaning slightly closer to him. "Care to elaborate?"
The others all stopped eating, putting their forks and knives down. It was probably just Harry's imagination, but he could have sworn they leaned in as well, as if to hear better.
"Why do you care so much?" he asked, trying to deflect the question.
"Like Ginny said, you're a Triwizard Champion, mate." Ron said. "And the Boy Who Lived, and you've slain a Basilisk. We could make a killing selling this information to second-year girls."
Hermione rolled her eyes. "You've got no shame, do you, Ron?"
He shrugged. "Could use the money. Don't worry, Harry," he added hastily, "I'd only sell it to the relatively good-looking ones."
"They're twelve, Ron," Harry said. "Thanks, but… definitely no thanks."
Truth be told, Harry hadn't ever thought about his 'type'. He had no clue if he even had one. At any rate, he was quite relieved when dessert arrived and the topic was forgotten.
"We should go to see Snuffles soon," Hermione said quietly to him at one point, while the others were occupied with treacle tart. "I'm sure he'd want to hear from you about the second task."
Harry nodded. "The three of us can head over there on the weekend. He could probably use some more food too. I hate to think of him having to eat rats. Although maybe he enjoys killing them, given everything that happened with Wormtail."
"He probably does. I can't say that I would blame him, either. Snuffles is the one who suffered for all of the horrible things that Wormtail did. And even now he's free, he's still out there somewhere, doing God knows what."
Harry shrugged. "It doesn't matter. He showed up for long enough that we learned the truth about Snuffles."
Oddly enough, it was the reappearance of Pettigrew, the vicious, self-serving, murderous traitor that had taken Harry's parents from him, that had given Harry back his godfather. Harry hated him, more than almost anyone, but Pettigrew had proven he was nothing more than a coward. He was probably hiding somewhere deep in the wilderness, scared to death that Sirius or Lupin would come looking for him. Harry was more than happy to let him live in perpetual fear. He had Sirius back, and that was all that mattered.
Harry spent the evening in the Gryffindor Common Room playing a trio of especially violent wizarding chess games with Ron. Through a few rare moments of insight on Harry's part (and Lavender resting her head on Ron's shoulder, watching him play and doing an excellent job of distracting him) he managed to win the first game, but was soundly thrashed in the last two.
By the end of the games the room had started to thin out, with most of Harry's housemates exhausted from the party earlier. Ron went up to bed after the final checkmate, but Harry didn't join him. His head was still spinning from the day's events, and he could still feel the tiniest amount of residual adrenaline in his veins when he thought about the lake. He doubted he'd be able to sleep for a while yet.
Lavender went up just after Ron did, meaning that Hermione and Ginny were the only others left in the common room. The latter spent most of the next few minutes propped up on the sofa, yawning, before finally caving in and standing up, her back cracking as she stretched.
"I think I'm going to call it a night," Ginny said, walking over to the stairs. "G'night, Harry."
"Good night, Ginny."
Hermione didn't seem to notice Ginny's departure; she sat in the armchair farthest from the fire, deeply engrossed in a thick tome. Harry couldn't quite see the cover from where he was, but it must have been a complicated read, as she went several minutes between turning pages.
Harry watched her as she read, fascinated by how completely the book captured her attention. Her facial expression changed almost constantly as her eyes moved down a page, as if every line altered her opinion of what she had just read. Sometimes she would raise an eyebrow, her eyes moving more quickly for a time, as if she was worried that whatever had caught her attention on the page would disappear if she didn't hurry to catch it. Other times she would curl her bottom lip into a frown, flipping two or three pages in rapid, forceful succession, as if she was frustrated with the book for not containing what she had hoped. After a little while he could predict with surprising accuracy exactly when she'd turn the page, based solely on the precise position of her left eyebrow or the angle of her lips.
She seemed to have an inexhaustible reserve of energy - if anything the pace of her reading increased during the ten minutes or so that he watched - and soon he found himself growing tired.
He got up from his chair as quietly as he could, not wanting to disturb her, but she looked up almost immediately.
"Where did everybody go?" she asked him, looking around at the empty common room.
"They're sleeping. It's half past midnight, Hermione."
"Is it already?" she asked, stifling a yawn. "I guess I lost track of time."
"What were you reading?"
"Standard Book of Spells, Grade 7. I've been getting a head start on reading through it over the last few weeks, so if you need something specific for the third task we'll have a better chance of finding it."
"You really don't have to do that," Harry said. Now that she was looking at him he could see the faint bags underneath her eyes. He knew she didn't sleep much - she was almost always still reading when he went to bed - but he hadn't realized that it was because she was doing research for him.
"In a couple of months you're going to be facing something again." Hermione replied matter-of-factly. "Probably something even scarier than the Horntail and the lake combined. I'm not letting you do that unprepared."
"I really appreciate your help, Hermione. But… head up soon, ok? You look like you're going to fall asleep in that chair any moment."
She shrugged. "That's what I do half the time anyway. You get used to it."
"Maybe. Beds are more comfortable though," Harry replied, fighting off a yawn of his own. "Speaking of which, I'm going to go get some sleep. See you tomorrow, Hermione."
Harry was halfway up the stairs when she spoke.
"Can I just ask you something quickly? I don't mean to keep you up, but I don't want to leave it until the morning."
He turned back, slightly irritated.
"What is it?" he asked, walking back down to the common-room.
"What happened when Viktor dragged you off into the forest? He wasn't his usual self when he came back."
Harry sighed, walking over to the chair opposite Hermione and sitting down. He should have known that this was coming.
"He asked me why I had rescued you from the bottom of the lake instead of Ron. I told him the truth, the same truth that I told Ron and Ginny and everybody else who's asked me: I saw you first, assumed you were my hostage, and didn't even see Ron until afterward."
"He believed you, right? I mean, he couldn't honestly think you were trying to cheat, that would be ridiculous, no matter what he said when you first surfaced, and besides, he got the most points for the task in the end, thanks to Karkaroff, so he really-"
"Hermione," Harry said gently, cutting off her increasingly fast ramble, "Me and Viktor are fine. He believed me. He said he didn't think I was a cheater."
She nodded, somewhat calmer. "He asked me to visit him over the summer. In Bulgaria."
Harry drummed his fingers against the arms of the chair, trying to keep himself awake. He wasn't sure what she wanted him to say.
"I told him I'd have to think about it," she continued. "He said he figured that that was what I would say."
Harry was silent. He really wasn't in the mood for relationship counselling. He glanced up at the clock. It was almost one.
"He just seemed… sullen. More so than usual. I wish I knew why, so I could help him, but you know Viktor, he's not talkative even at the best of times."
"He was probably just tired," Harry offered half-heartedly. "I'm sure he'll bounce back tomorrow."
That wasn't the truth. Harry knew exactly why Krum wasn't in a good mood. He knew exactly what Krum was shadowboxing against. He still thought Harry was a threat, despite Harry's best efforts to convince him otherwise.
"I hope so. And thanks, Harry. That helps."
"You just spent hours looking up spells that might save my life in June. It's the least I can do."
Harry knew he should probably go to his dorm, but the chair was surprisingly comfortable, and it was warm by the fire, and his muscles protested at the thought of standing up and walking up the cold stone steps to his bed. He lifted his stocking feet up onto the edge of the chair, nestling his head in the corner between the back and the arm.
"You were right," he said quietly. "This really isn't that bad."
Hermione's only response was the sound of her breathing, which had deepened slightly. He glanced over his shoulder to see her curled up in the armchair, eyes closed, using the book's soft leather cover as a makeshift pillow.
As tired as he was, Harry lay awake for a few minutes longer, Ginny's question from dinner choosing that moment to rush back to him.
"So you do have a type then. Care to elaborate?"
He had shrugged off the question not only because he didn't feel like sharing an answer with the entire table, but because he didn't know how to answer it in the first place.
But there was an answer, he knew that. Whatever you wanted to call it, everyone has some set of qualities that they search for, even if they're not conscious of it.
Harry knew he was dealing with a sample size of one, which didn't make this kind of introspection easy, but it was worth a try. What had attracted him to Cho in the first place? She was very pretty, of course, but that wasn't the most useful adjective for his purposes.
When they had played against each other in third-year, she hadn't tried to find the Snitch on her own. She was an excellent flyer, but they had both known he was better, and with him on a Firebolt, she had had next to no chance to beat him to the Snitch in the conventional manner. She had chosen instead to tail him for most of the match, blocking him where she could, trying to keep him off of his game, to distract him enough so that at a critical moment she could slip by him to capture the Snitch, and it had almost worked.
It was a brilliant plan, one that wouldn't have come from anybody but a Ravenclaw. It was risky, as well, because she would end up looking foolish if it failed, which it had. She hadn't been afraid of that. She'd been willing to take that risk for her teammates.
Harry's head was still spinning, his tiredness turning his thoughts in circles, but he forced himself to focus. Cho had had the intelligence to think of the unorthodox plan, and the loyalty to her team, as well as the courage, to attempt it.
Intelligence. Loyalty. Courage.
Sitting across from Harry, still sleeping peacefully, was Hermione Granger.
Intelligent. Loyal. Courageous.
It was a coincidence. It had to be. All that meant was that he valued those traits in friends as well. He didn't feel anything else for Hermione, he couldn't feel anything else for her. He couldn't, no matter how much adrenaline had surged through him when he had seen her at the bottom of the lake, no matter how overwhelming the fear of losing her had been.
She was one of his best friends, that was it. Nothing more, nothing less.
But as Harry tried desperately to sleep, one final thought stayed in his head. At the Yule Ball, many people, including Ron, had remarked to him, surprise evident in their voices, that Hermione was exceedingly pretty.
When he had seen her, though, walking down the stairs to the Great Hall, simultaneously nervous and excited, Harry had been entirely unsurprised by her appearance.
As the clock ticked to one-thirty and all else was quiet in the castle, the black tide of sleep finally crashed over Harry, washing his thoughts away.
