A/N: No more nothing chapters. Now it's all going to be action, I promise. At least, I hope so. The characters are threatening mutiny. (Especially Harry and Hermione. They are demanding to know what they did to deserve that. They were being thick-headed gits, that's all.) This chapter would be called a "dark" chapter under normal circumstances, but…well…lets just say I've been dying for this to happen since…oh…Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. :)

Dedicated to my sister Melissa, who helps me come up with witty book titles.

Chapter 25:

In which Cho is dealt with.

If you see a man who's raging,

And he jealous and he fears,

That you've walked through walls

He's hid behind for years,

What you do then is you force yourself

To wait it out and say,

It's this day not me, that's bound to go away,

Child hold on,

It's this day not you, that's bound to go away.

            ~Hold on: from The Secret Garden

            "Now, what you do is you reach up for that latch thingy…do you feel it?"

            Hermione groped the air. "No."

            "Keep looking for it."

            "Alright, I've found it now."

            "Good. I want you to concentrate really hard on what that person looks like. Memorise everything about them. Try to think of every little detail. Do you have a picture in your head?"

            "Yes."

            "Good, now grab the latch and pull down." Hermione obediently did so.

            "GAH!" Harry stumbled backwards. Before him was a living replica of Rita Skeeter. She grinned.

            "I'll bet you didn't see that one coming, did you?" she asked, in Hermione's voice.

            "No," said Harry, stunned. "Now change back. Hurry. I don't know if I could look at you much longer."

            With a quick tug, Hermione became her normal self again.

            "Don't do that again," said Harry. "Please don't do that again."

            "Ha," said Hermione smugly. "Now I have the perfect blackmail. If you ever get me a detention again, I will personally wake you up as Rita herself."

            Harry shuddered. "Rita Skeeter at six in the morning.  Dear God…"

            ~**~

            "D'you know, it's awfully quiet around here," said Hermione, as they walked out of the unused classroom. "It's supposed to be lunch for everybody else…lots of people should be in the corridor. Not just us."

            "Hmm," said Harry. "Did we miss something?"

            "Maybe your watch is wrong."

            "No," said Harry, frowning slightly. "It's not. I got it fixed. Right before I came back this year. It was broken after I took that swim in the lake."

            "I don't know then. But something has to be going on." They walked up to the portrait hole, said a cursory "hello," to the Fat Lady, followed by the password: "Snickleway." Ron was pacing in front of the portrait hole on the inside, and rushed to meet them. He helped Hermione through the doorway, hugging her tightly. Harry climbed in after them.

            "Ron, are you alright?" asked Hermione, who sounded like she was losing a considerable amount of air, fast. "Because if you're not, I'd be happy to talk to you. But otherwise, I'd really like to breathe."

            "I thought you were dead," he muttered indistinctly into her hair. "I honestly thought you were dead."

            "Well I'm not dead," she said, pulling away and staring at him. "Why would you think something like that?"

            "It's Cho. Cho Chang. That Ravenclaw seeker. She's dead. I thought you were dead too. She was in Herbology, and then she just disappeared. Just like apparition. With a pop, she was just gone."

            "But Ron," said Hermione, staring concernedly at him, "You can't apperate on the Hogwarts grounds."

            "I know, I know," said Ron, "But she did. I dunno how she managed it, but she did. They found her right outside the forbidden forest, only, Hermione, that wasn't the worst of it. Even though she was dead, she had a cut on her forehead. Made with a knife or something, because it was jagged, and still bleeding. She was completely unmarked otherwise."

            "Well, she must have fallen or something, hit her head," said Hermione.

            "No," Ron shook his head vehemently, "No, because it wouldn't have killed her. It was that cut, Hermione. It was in the shape of a lighting bolt."

            "Oh God…" Hermione drew in a shaky breath and turned her face into Ron's shoulder. Harry didn't make any sound at all. He walked, very calmly, up to his dormitory, and shut his door. Two seconds later, the door was in splinters on the floor.

~**~

(A/N: Okay everybody, go ahead and say it. I am a balmy sadistic twat who didn't get enough love as a child. But I had to get rid of her some way. She was extremely irritating.)

            Hermione had expected to find Harry grief stricken. Shaking with sobs, maybe. But she forgot that she had never seen Harry cry, and she found that she was not likely to ever see it. After eleven terrible years with Dudley, the boy who lived didn't cry. Even when he should have.

            Harry was lying on his bed, face down. "Don't you ever knock?" he asked, his voice muffled into the pillow.

            "I couldn't find the door."

            "It's around; on the floor somewhere."

            Hermione looked about the room. Pieces of the door were certainly around the room. As well as pieces of everything else. One of the windows was broken. It looked like an elephant had stopped by for tea.

            "Do you want to talk, Harry," asked Hermione tentatively.

            "No. Go back and let Ron comfort you. I'm fine."  The last window shattered, spraying the floor with glass.

            "That's what happens when you try to conceal your emotions," said Hermione quietly. "You're thinking about what that demon said, aren't you? Well you couldn't have saved Cho, Harry; you just couldn't have. It's not your fault."

            "It bloody well is!" Harry sat up. There were no tears in his eyes, no sobs that he was trying to conceal. His eyes were as hard as cut emeralds. He took a breath and controlled himself. "You may want to leave Hermione, because what I told Ron is true. People tend to die when they are around me for too long."

            "No, they don't Harry," said Hermione softly.

            "They do! And every single one of them is my fault! Cho, Cedric, my parents…"

            "You couldn't have prevented any of that."

            "I could have. And that's what Voldemort is trying to tell me. Here's another person dead, and it's all you're fault. Did you hear what Ron said, Hermione? She had a lighting bolt carved into her forehead. You couldn't get any plainer if you wrote 'Guilt-o-gram for Harry Potter: This is your fault.' On her jumper and had Hedwig bring her to me at breakfast."

            "You don't know that."

            "Yes I do. Why? Because that's what you do to your enemy. Break him down, make him go mad. Slowly kill the people that he's close to, the girl he fancied…" his voice broke.

            "That is Voldemort's problem, not yours, Harry," said Hermione. "You can't do anything about it."

            "You know what the worst bit is, Hermione," said Harry. "It's working. I am going mad." He gave a harsh laugh that echoed strangely in Hermione's ears. "It'll be you next, or Ron, or Sirius, or Professor Lupin…one by one he will kill them all off until it's only me. And then I won't have the will to live anymore. Maybe I'll just help him out. Just hang myself by my bedclothes and save all of you." He laughed again.

            "No," said Hermione. "I won't let you die. None of us will. Whether it is Voldemort or yourself, I won't let you die. When you do, it will be over my dead body."

            "That's just it, Hermione," said Harry. "You won't be able to do anything about it. Do you know what Voldemort said right before he killed Cedric? Do you know what the last words Cedric heard were?"

            Hermione didn't know what to say. Harry had never told her what had happened the night of the third task.

            "He said, 'kill the spare.' The spare. People aren't people to him. Just something unwanted that always comes back. Like weeds. Just weeds that get in the way. And when something gets in your way, you kill it. Getting me over your dead body is precisely what he has in mind."

            Hermione grabbed Harry's hands, and pulled him up off the bed.

            "Listen to me," she said firmly, looking straight into his eyes. "You can't go mad, Harry. Even if I die, you can't. Because it isn't your fault. It's Voldemort's fault. He's the one who killed all those people. Not. You."

            "I as good as killed them," said Harry, looking away. "It's like saying that it isn't Wormtail's fault because he didn't actually kill my parents."

            Hermione hugged him, not knowing what else to say.  He stiffened, and then relaxed, putting his head on her shoulder.  She stroked his hair. "It wasn't your fault, Harry. It wasn't." He stood there for a second longer, and then pulled away.

            "Thank you," he said formally. His face was a mask now, it showed no emotion at all.

            "There are times when I could cheerfully kill you, Harry James Potter," said Hermione in a strangled voice.

            "Go ahead," he said softly, a wry, twisted smile on his face. "You'd be doing all of us a favour."

            ~**~

A/N: Ok, depressing. Sorry about that, it had to be done.

Disclaimer: Everything belongs to J.K. A line or two is from "Seeing a Large Cat," by Elizabeth Peters.