A/N: So, uh... it's been a while. That being said, I am back, and this is a story I want to tell, so I hope to continue with somewhat regular updates going forward. To anybody who started this story two years ago and is still reading: thanks for sticking with me. To you, and to anybody who has just picked this story up for the first time: enjoy.

Harry started to feel distinctly uneasy as he, Ron and Hermione walked up the Grand Staircase. It was only as they waited for a set of stairs to rotate around to them, and it stopped with a quiet thud, that he realized what was different. He could hear the castle. Almost everyone was outside, down at the quidditch pitch for the unveiling of the third task, and so the usual noise caused by hundreds of students going about their daily business was non-existent. In its absence, Harry could hear all of the sounds that he usually only heard at night: the staircases settling into place, the quiet swoosh of the clock tower's pendulum, the dull clatter of pots and pans coming from the kitchen as the house-elves cleaned up from dinner. They were at odds with the wisps of sunlight that still trickled in through the windows, the sunset casting everything in dark orange shadow. The castle seemed much more forbidding when it was empty, and Harry found himself looking over his shoulder with mildly paranoid regularity.

The entrance to Gryffindor Tower was sealed, as per usual, but the Fat Lady was conspicuously absent. Harry had a brief moment of panic before hearing her high-pitched laugh, accompanied by the sound of broken glass. He followed the noise down the hall, eventually finding her, unsurprisingly, in Violet's portrait. Violet and her appeared to be entertaining two other visitors that Harry didn't recognize, both elderly but distinguished-looking wizards. Each of the four had a bottle in hand, and they were all laughing heartily at something or other.

Hermione stood in front of the painting, waiting for them to notice her, but to no avail. She cleared her throat loudly, but Violet had started telling a story - something about the time she and the Fat Lady had gotten Sir Cadogan a little bit too drunk - and so Hermione went unheard.

Hermione stepped back from the painting, looking at Harry and Ron.

"Typical," she sighed. "One of you try."

Harry reached out and rapped his knuckles softly on the edge of the portrait-frame. The frame was much lighter than he had expected, and so the whole painting bounced gently against the wall before eventually settling back into place.

The sudden movement caught the attention of all four of the drinkers, particularly that of one of the wizards who, mid-sip, stumbled and sloshed a large portion of his drink all over his robe.

"Such violence is hardly called for, young man," he said, whisking a handkerchief from his vest and patting the stain with futile dignity. "I certainly hope you at least have a reason for disturbing this little soirée."

"Sorry," Harry said, feeling a little guilty. "We were just hoping to get into Gryffindor Tower."

"Portrait's open, dear," the Fat Lady said, taking a gulp of what Harry presumed to be wine. "Left it like that, I did. I'm taking the night off."

"Taking the night off?" Hermione echoed, her eyebrow raised.

"Don't you think I deserve one once in a while?" the Fat Lady asked, laughing, as she took another drink, somehow managing not to choke.

"It's a good thing that's not real wine," Ron muttered to Harry, "or she'd have gone through half the castle's supply by now."

"Have you ever wondered how it works?" Harry asked him as Hermione tried to be patient with the Fat Lady. "I mean, they're not technically alive, and it's not actual alcohol, so how do they manage to get drunk?"

Ron shrugged. "It's magic, mate. Don't think about it too much, because it won't make sense no matter how hard you-"

"Look," Hermione said, frustrated, her voice now drowning out Ron's, "I don't care whether you left it open or not, but it's not open now. I can even see it from here."

The Fat Lady looked up, concentrating for a moment.

"Hmmph, you're right. Must be losing my touch. I'll just be a moment then, dears. Don't have too much fun without me."

She addressed this last comment to her three companions, before walking out of the frame in the direction of her own portrait. Harry, Ron and Hermione followed her, the latter letting out an audible sigh when the portrait-door began to swing open.

"Leave that open, would you?" the Fat Lady said irritably to Ron, who was about to close the portrait behind the trio. "I don't want to keep doing this for everyone."

"Hardly seems very secure," Harry commented, although only after the Fat Lady had left.

Hermione nodded absently, putting the jar with Rita in it on one of the chairs next to the fire.

"So how are we going to do this?" Ron asked. "It won't be that long before everyone is back."

"I've got it covered," Hermione replied, walking over to the room's two large windows. She tapped each with her wand, murmuring a Colour-Change Charm. The windows turned a dark, smoky grey colour, which would prevent anybody outside from seeing in.

She then walked out of the common-room, into the hallway, before returning a moment later and taking a seat between Harry and Ron on the couch.

"I cast an Intruder Charm at the top of the staircase," she explained, placing her wand on the side table.

"An Intruder Charm?" Ron asked, nonplussed.

"It'll alert me if anybody passes by it," Hermione elaborated matter-of-factly. "It's supposed to be quite tricky, and this is the first time I've tried one, but the theory seemed relatively straightforward for a seventh-year spell."

The spell must have been in the massive book he had seen her reading the night they had discussed his conversation with Viktor, Harry thought.

When you were Hermione's friend, it was easy after a while to get used to the fact that she seemingly knew a spell for every possible situation, and could perform them all flawlessly. But hearing her mention, with a quiet yet unashamed confidence, that she had taught herself a charm that students in their final year would no doubt find difficult, Harry was reminded of just how brilliant she was. She had probably studied more magic than any other student in the school, and she hadn't even know magic existed until four years ago.

He was incredibly lucky to have her as a friend. She had probably put more effort into the Triwizard Tournament than he had, sacrificing sleep and maybe even her own grades for him, and she had asked nothing in return. Harry's resolve wavered, as he thought of how fierce a friend Hermione had been. She had given so much of her heart to him, and to Ron, for as long as he had known her, and suddenly Harry felt intensely selfish for wanting to ask her for more.

Harry took a deep breath, forcing himself to focus. Rita Skeeter was the type of person who would talk you in circles and twist your words around if you didn't have your wits about you.

Beside him, Hermione had retrieved the glass jar from her bag and set it down on a chair next to the couch. Rita was sitting on the leaf of lettuce inside the jar, stubbornly refusing to eat it.

"And now for you, Rita," Hermione began. "I'm going to let you out of that jar in a moment. When I do, you are going to sit on that chair while you listen to the deal that the three of us will offer you. If you do not accept that deal, or if you fail to honour it at any point in the future, then I will report you as an unregistered Animagus to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. They will investigate, and upon discovering the truth, will have no choice but to prepare a cell for you in Azkaban."

She reached over and opened the jar, pouring the beetle it contained onto the chair. The beetle struggled for a moment to flip itself over, having landed unceremoniously on its back, before Ron reached out and gave it a sympathetic push. It wobbled a bit, unsteady on its feet, and then slowly started to walk, wandering randomly about the seat of the chair.

The trio watched it expectantly for a few moments, but nothing happened. "Don't tell me you got the wrong beetle," Ron whispered.

Harry shook his head. "I caught her using a Summoning Charm. Unless there's another water beetle out there named Rita Skeeter, this is her. The question is, how do we force her to show herself."

"There's a spell for it, isn't there?" Ron asked. "The one that Sirius and Lupin used on Scabbers - Pettigrew, I mean. The Homorphus Charm. It forces Transfigured or transformed wizards to assume their human form. People even tried using it on werewolves for a while, although it doesn't work."

"How do you know all that?" Hermione said, trying and failing to keep the surprise from showing on her face.

"I asked Lupin about it before he left last year," Ron replied, smiling in a way that reminded Harry of Fred and George. "I figured it might be fun to prank McGonagall with it sometime."

"Isn't the Homorphus Charm the one with the really awful side effects if it's done improperly?" Harry said, having had an idea. He took out his wand, tapping its tip against the table. "I remember reading that if it goes wrong, the target can end up permanently transformed, or else stuck halfway between their transformation and their human form."

"What are you talking abo- Ow!" Hermione cut off, having received a sharp elbow in the ribs from Ron, who had caught on.

Harry took a deep breath, as if steadying himself, and pointed his wand squarely at the beetle. He had just opened his mouth, ready to say some nonsense incantation, when the beetle took off from the chair, becoming a black blur headed for the open portrait-door. Harry dove for the beetle but missed, smashing his jaw into a table leg.

"Accio Rita Skeeter!" Ron said, thankfully, and the beetle zoomed back into his waiting hand. He put it back on the chair, and Harry quickly stood up, walking over to it.

"If it really is you, Rita," Harry said, "then don't move, because that'll only make this harder for me."

Hermione opened her mouth, desperately wanting to correct Harry, most likely, but this time she overcame the urge.

Harry readied himself to 'cast' the Homorphus Charm again, but he never got the chance, for a moment later the beetle was gone, and the trio were faced by a rather frazzled-looking Rita Skeeter, her glasses askew and her poisonous green quill hanging limply from her fingers.

"Yes, yes, well done, you got me," she sighed, trying and failing to straighten her glasses. "So what do the three of you want from me? Is it some dirt? A sharp yet witty exposé of one of your rivals? The one about Miss Delacour practically writes itself, of course, but there are things I could tell you about that charming Diggory boy that would shock you. Just rumours, of course, but one hears things about some rather frequent trips to the Prefect's bathroom with the lovely-"

"I'd rather you didn't, actually," Ron said, not a moment too soon.

Rita frowned. "Well then what do you expect of me? I assume this kidnapping and subsequent extortion is about more than the pleasure of my compa-"

"We expect you to stop lying," Harry said quietly, pleased with the way his voice cut through Rita's. "We expect you to stick to the truth when you write about us - any of us."

Rita laughed, a loud, long laugh that seemed far too happy. "Oh, Harry, Harry, my dear dear Harry. I won't deny that most of my columns have a very long-distance relationship with the truth, but your story is one of the few I've never felt the need to lie about. Your life doesn't need any of my little embellishments; it sells just fine on its own."

"That's another lie," Harry said sharply, his patience running thin. "The only truth that that article you wrote about Hermione and me for Witch Weekly contained was the byline."

Of course, his denial wasn't exactly true, but he had to hope that Rita believed him.

"Oh I see," she said, tapping her quill slowly on the arm of the chair, a triumphant gleam in her eye. "I see. You're quite right, Harry. That article was just chock-full of lies. Truly appalling. Not a single itty-bitty shred of truth, I'm sure."

She winked at Harry, a wry smile on her face. "Now if that's all you want from me, I really am in quite a hurry. All these confidential sources won't eavesdrop upon themselves, after all."

She was gone before any of the trio could respond, a small black beetle dashing across the floor, scampering up to the windowsill, and slipping out into the grounds.

"Can we just turn her in anyway?" Ron asked, standing up and stretching. "Even if she sticks to her word, she's a nasty piece of work."

"Her word is as good as useless," Hermione replied, walking over to the windows and tapping them with her wand, making them return to their normal shade. "The way she scuttled out of here, she couldn't care less what we threatened her with."

Harry shifted to lie down on the now-empty couch, his head propped up on one side and his feet just barely dangling over the other. He sighed, closing his eyes and trying to drown out the sound of Ron and Hermione's conversation so he could focus.

Rita knew. She was too flippant, too irritatingly self-confident, and it was about to drive Harry over the edge. He could deal with being lied about. People had been telling stories about him for the last four years. Half the school had believed that he was the Heir of Slytherin, sure to be the next Dark Lord, and that had barely bothered him. He had known the truth, and he hadn't given a damn about his reputation, and so, much like for Sirius, the truth had been enough.

But this was different. Somehow, probably by accident, Rita had stumbled into the truth. And if she had had any doubts about that, her meeting with Harry and the others tonight had surely erased them. It was only going to get worse from here on out. Much worse, and especially for Hermione, whom Rita would almost certainly paint as some kind of - well, to borrow Ron's terminology - scarlet woman.

This had to end. Whatever Rita knew, she would make sure the rest of the world knew it too, and soon. Sure, she would have no proof, and anybody who knew Harry and Hermione might just laugh it off, like they had at Rita's first article, but she wouldn't let up. She wouldn't let go of a story like this. Before the year was up she'd probably be living full-time in the Gryffindor common-room, crawling up to the dormitories at night in hopes of hearing gossip and hitching a ride on the inside of Ron's sleeves to breakfast.

Harry's resolve strengthened again. He had to tell Hermione how he felt, and he had to do it tonight. It might not stop Rita, but either way, it would mean that he and Hermione would both know the truth, and Rita wouldn't be able to drive a wedge between them. He wasn't being selfish; he had to do this, to protect both Hermione and himself.

"... that's the issue," Hermione was saying as Harry returned his attention to the conversation. She was pacing in front of the couch, unsettled. "If we took this to the Ministry, even if they believed us, she'd get a chance to tell her side of the story, about how we kidnapped and subsequently blackmailed her. She could drag us right down with her."

"Nobody in the Ministry would believe her," scoffed Ron.

"It would be her word against ours," Harry said glumly. "And we're three fourteen year-olds. It's the same situation as last year, when we were the only ones who knew the truth about Sirius."

"Anyway," Hermione said, a little bit too cheerily, "we can worry about that later. You haven't told us about the third task yet, Harry!"

"It's a maze," Harry replied. "Each of us has a separate one, and they meet at the centre, where the cup is. There'll be other obstacles too - Bagman hinted at creatures, enchantments, that sort of thing."

Hermione had somehow found a quill and scrap of parchment and was scribbling furiously, muttering quickly under her breath.

"A maze?" Ron asked, incredulous.

"Four of them."

Ron's brow furrowed. "But where can they possibly fit four mazes?" His expression darkened. "They're not… they didn't put them in the forest, did they?"

"Quidditch pitch," Harry said. "Bagman claimed it'd be good as new for September," he added quickly, seeing Ron's face fall at the thought of the pitch being ruined.

Harry glanced over at Hermione again, who was still writing, now on the reverse of the parchment. She paused for a moment, tapping the feathery end of the quill against her thigh, the corner of her mouth curled upward as she tried to recall something. She reached to brush a few rogue strands of hair behind her ear and then seemed to remember whatever it was that had been eluding her. She added it to the end of her note, her hair forgotten for the time being.

"You'll need that too," she said quietly as she turned the parchment sideways, presumably to fit even more writing into the margin, "since I doubt… hmm.."

She summoned her bag from across the room without looking up and pulled out a textbook that must have weighed almost as much as she did, setting it next to her on her chair.

Harry walked over to her quickly, putting his hand on the book's cover before she could open it. Once she got started with research, she didn't tend to stop for anything other than a fire (and even then it had to be a fairly large one), and he needed to talk to her tonight.

Hermione tried to lift his hand out of the way, and when he refused to move it, shot him a sharp glare.

"You look exhausted," Harry said truthfully. "Whatever you're working on, it's not worth losing a good night's sleep."

"It's seven-thirty," she said, not incorrectly.

"And if you start reading this now," he said, tapping his fingers on top of the textbook, "you'll work until at least two."

"I'm compiling a list of counter-curses and hexes that might be useful in the maze. Any one of them could save your life, and I consider that worth the loss of a little sleep."

"You're not going to win this one, Harry," Ron said, sounding quite amused. "Separating Hermione from her book is a bit like trying to steal that egg from the Horntail, except the dragon is much less…"

Ron trailed off meekly, no doubt out of a strong sense of self-preservation. Hermione was scowling at him with such intensity that Harry would have been entirely unsurprised if the wall behind Ron had crumbled.

"Maybe… maybe I'll go and brush my teeth," he said, backing slowly towards the staircase to the dorm.

"Don't push me, Ronald, or I might just start breathing fire," Hermione said, her scowl melting into a playful, self-satisfied smile.

"The same goes for you," she added, once Ron was out of sight. "I appreciate the concern, but I'll be f-"

She let out an enormous yawn, covering her mouth with her sleeve. "I'm fine," she insisted, sitting up a bit straighter in the chair.

Harry cracked a smile, but his insides were churning like butter. He thought back to when he had bumped into Cho, back in the fall, and awkwardly pulled her out of her group of friends to ask her to the ball. He remembered how worried he had been that he would trip over his own tongue and say the wrong thing, how terrified he had been that she'd be shocked, or worse, insulted.

He was feeling all of that again tonight, except worse, a dozen times worse. He wished that he had prepared, that he had thought more about how he wanted to say things, but it was too late for that now.

"At any rate," Hermione continued, business-like, "since you won't let me work in peace, you can help me make a training plan for you. What combat spells do you know?"

The words were bubbling up in Harry's brain, ready to burst out, but he kept them bottled up. Wait for the right time, he told himself. Breathe. It's just Hermione.

"Um… just Disarming," Harry said, after thinking for a second more. "And a Patronus, if that counts?"

She shook her head as she pulled out a fresh piece of parchment. Harry was trying to relax, but he could feel adrenaline starting to surge through him, and he was suddenly finding it near-impossible to sit still and keep his hands from shaking.

"You'll need to learn Stunning, the Reductor Curse, and the Impediment Jinx. At a minimum. And you have two weeks, so if you spend six hours a day and start-"

"Hermione," Harry cut in, unable to wait any longer, "I really appreciate your help, but can we talk about this later? There's something I need to ask you about first."

"Of course," she said, turning away from the parchment to face him. She frowned, probably noticing that he was shaking like a leaf. "Is everything ok, Harry?"

Harry nodded. Then he took a deep breath, looked his best friend in the eye, and let everything out.

"I was thinking about the lake," he started, forcing himself to speak slowly. "And about the choice that I made down there. I mean, it wasn't a choice. Because I honestly didn't see Ron. But when I saw you I knew that I couldn't possibly leave you there, that it would break me if I did, and I didn't feel that when I saw Ron a minute later. I wanted to save him too, and if Krum hadn't grabbed him I would have, but I knew I couldn't leave you there, or I would never forgive myself."

He stopped to take a breath. He felt as though he was in the lake again, deep underwater where it was so dark he couldn't tell which way was up, and all he could do was hope he was headed in the right direction, because he had no other options.

Hermione's face was unreadable. She probably had no clue why he was rambling, or what his point was. There had to be a more eloquent way to say what was in his heart. There had to be a way to tell her that he wanted to know what it would feel like to hold her, to kiss her, to have her at his side, but he couldn't find it. Maybe he just wasn't brave enough to be that direct.

"I… I was thinking about all of this," he continued, "and I realized that - that I don't feel the same way about you as I do about Ron. I - you mean something more to me. More than just my friend."

He kept hoping to see something in her eyes, some sign of approval, but she hadn't even blinked since he'd started talking. The only change he'd noticed was that her right hand was now squeezing the arm of the chair so tightly that her knuckles had gone white.

They looked at each other for a moment, and then Hermione spoke, so softly that Harry could barely hear her.

"Are you trying to ask me out?"

Harry nodded, and then suddenly his glasses were tumbling off of his head, and the world was a blur of brown hair. He felt arms squeezing tight around him, and only then did he realize that Hermione had launched herself at him, into a fierce hug. He stumbled backwards onto the couch, unable to keep his footing.

She pulled back just as suddenly and handed him his glasses from the floor. He put them on and saw her beaming down at him, and something in his chest soared.

"You.. you have no idea how long I've… oh never mind," she said, still smiling. "We should talk though, and people will be back from the reveal of the task soon, so let's go for a walk."

She reached down, and he took her hand, letting her help him to his feet.

"Harry! HARRY!"

Ron screamed from behind Harry and Hermione, who both quickly dropped the other's hand, recent events momentarily forgotten. A second later Ron ran down the staircase from the dormitory and into the common-room, his toothbrush still in his hand.

"Harry you need to come up here now," he said, breathing heavily. "Something very bad is happening. Very very bad."

He ran back up the stairs, leaving Harry and Hermione to follow him. When Harry got to his dormitory, he saw immediately why Ron had panicked.

Harry's area of the dormitory was in complete disarray. His bedsheets and curtains had been thrown into the centre of the room, and the lid of his trunk had been blasted off of its hinges by some spell, leaving its contents strewn across the floor.

Harry quickly started looking through his things, trying to see if anything was missing.

"I have no idea what happened, mate," Ron was saying, although Harry wasn't paying any attention. "Nobody other than a Gryffindor should have been able to get in here, now that Neville knows not to write down passwords anymore. I don't know who would do this."

"I do," Hermione said, her voice quivering slightly. She pointed, and Harry saw what both he and Ron had missed previously. Stencilled in green ink onto his headboard, glowing with an eerie, unnatural light, was a Dark Mark.

"Bloody hell," Ron whispered.

"That's not the worst of it," Harry said, a dull lump settling in his throat as he finished taking an inventory of his few possessions.

"My Invisibility Cloak is missing."