Disclaimer: Two reasons I don't own Harry Potter or anything associated with it-1) Do I really look all that much like JK Rowling? 2) Would I really be writing fanfiction if I owned the original story?
And...I couldn't make a profit off of any of my fanfiction stories, even if I wanted to!



Chapter Six-Hidden Feelings






The night that Harry spent on the Knight Bus was one of the worst nights Harry could ever remember having, even worse then the night before the second task of the Triwizard Tournament-when he hadn't known how he was going to perform the task. The night seemed to drag on and on and on and on...at one point, the night just seemed to be so long that Harry was beginning to become quite sure that time must have magically slowed down by some unknown force that wanted to torture him.

Fear, worry, and nervousness clouded his thoughts as Harry desperately tried to sleep on the bumping, swaying, and rolling bus. Harry hadn't bothered to pay for hot chocolate, he was pretty sure he might throw up anything he tried to eat or drink, especially something as thick as cocoa.

Besides worrying profusely about Sirius, he was also thinking about what he had heard on the news back at the Dursleys. Attack at Southapton, attack at Liverpool...that made two Voldemort attacks since the start of the summer, and it was only the morning of July 15th...Harry felt slightly sick at the thought of how many more attacks there could be before Harry's birthday on July 31st. Once again, Harry thought that there were large similarities between what was happening now and what happened back before Voldemort's downfall, except that this time the Minister of Magic himself was in denial, and it was all other people could do to try and stop Voldemort from rising to become more powerful than he already was-but without the Minister, they could hardly do much. Harry made a soft noise of frustration in the back of his throat. Why couldn't Fudge just wake up and smell the coffee?

Harry tried to relax by reminding himself what Hagrid had said at the end of last term-that he wasn't going to be too worried as long as Dumbledore's around, that he would do his best to take care of things. Dumledore...the thought gave Harry some small comfort.

The constant rambling of the Knight Bus's conductor, Stan Shunpike, didn't help Harry sleep in the least. He talked for what seemed like forever about how skilled the Ministry was at catching dark wizards, about great it was that Black was going back to Azkaban, and about how, if the Death Eaters are going to succeed, they should really be more careful in concealing themselves. Harry didn't even try and explain everything to him-he sounded too opinionated and Harry was too nervous and tired to bother. He hoped, though, that if he played his cards right, the whole magical world would know the truth about Sirius's innocence soon enough.

When he finally arrived at Hermione's the next morning, Harry felt dizzy and slightly nauseous as he stood on level ground for the first time in hours. The Knight Bus's constant swaying motion had given him a small case of seasickness. After saying goodbye to Stan Shunpike and rubbing his head wearily, Harry looked around and thought he must have given Stan the wrong address. But, no, the sign in front of the house read "4515 Irwin Avenue. Granger." It was the right address. Harry stared.

Instead of the average-sized, suburban home Harry had been expecting, in front of him was a house that could only be described in one word-enormous. Although not quite the size of a full-out mansion, Harry found himself looking up at the huge house with his mouth hanging open slightly, dimly noting how large the front lawn was, and how many windows the house had.

His shocked thoughts were interrupted by a voice breaking through the silence.

"Harry! Oh, Harry!"

It was Hermione. She came running out the enormous house, her hair flying behind her, and came over to where Harry stood, still staring, on the sidewalk. When she reached him, she began talking very fast.

"Harry, listen, I talked to my parents, they said that I can go with you to St. Mungo's, that's cleared up. We can find Sirius as soon as possible, and probably Professor Dumbledore will be there, too. Maybe we can convince Cornelius Fudge into giving Sirius a trial! Oh, I hope so...oh, I forgot to tell you! Hedwig arrived with a letter from you-you must have sent that before we saw each other, huh? Why don't you come in and have some breakfast? We can talk about how we're going to about with...uh...things. Don't worry, my mum and dad won't bother us-they don't really understand all this magical stuff anyway."

She stopped to take a breath, and looked curiously at Harry, who had slowly moved his gaze away from the house and was now staring at Hermione.

"Oh, so you like my house?" She asked, raising her eyebrow slightly.

"I...uh..." Harry suddenly found himself at a loss for words. "I...er...didn't realize it was so...um...big."

Hermione heaved an enormous sigh, as if she was quite used to his reaction. Picking up Hedwig's cage, she grabbed Harry's arm-who found that he only had enough time to grab his turnk before she pulled him into her house.

By the time he entered the Granger's house, the initial shock of seeing that one of his best friend's lived in a house that could fit about four of the houses on Privet Drive in it had passed, but was soon reawakened as glanced around. Harry's jaw, which had finally closed, now dropped to it's full potential.

He found himself in a living room that could be compared to the Gryffindor common room back at Hogwarts. There were couches and large armchairs everywhere, three polished wooden coffee tables, shelves that held a large assortment of fragile and expensive objects, and a huge fireplace with a photograph above it the size of the Fat Lady's portrait-a photograph showing Hermione at about the same age she was when she entered Hogwarts with her parents. Hermione, shaking her head and making tutting noises at his reaction, although visibly amused, kept her grip on his arm and steered him out of the living room.

Hermione's hand on his arm the whole time, Harry was unable to close his gaping mouth as she led him through the second largest kitchen he had ever seen (the largest was the kitchen at Hogwarts) and into an equally large dining room where Hermione dumped Hedwig's cage in a corner, and motioned for Harry to do the same with his trunk.

"Wait here, I'll get us some breakfast," Hermione said, disappearing into the kitchen. Ignoring what she said, Harry followed.

In the kitchen, Hermione was bent low as she rummaged through the refrigerator. When she emerged a moment later with a carton of orange juice, she looked at Harry as she put the carton on the counter.

"So, this is how the other half lives," Harry muttered, staring around the kitchen that looked about the size of three times the Dursley's living room.

Hermione leaned back against the counter and crossed her arms, a small smile appearing on her face, which Harry could see that she was trying to conceal. "Harry, you act as though this is the Palace of Versailles."

"Actually," Harry said, grinning at her. "I think Buckingham Palace would be a better comparison, since the royal family still lives there. The Palace of Versailles is just a museum, isn't it?"

Hermione was no longer trying to not smile, and grinned back. "Yes, it is. I went there when I went to France."

There was a silence in which Harry awkwardly asked, "Um, Hermione, how come you never told me you were so...er...so..."

"Rich?" She suggested quietly, with somewhat of an exasperated look on her face.

"Uh, yeah...what you said. Rich, right. Rich."

Hermione sighed. "Harry, all my life before I came to Hogwarts I went to the same school. Not some special school that half the kids in the country need a scholarship for, but just an average grade school. When I was little, I would tell my friends about my home and my life, and it would be so different from their homes and their lives, and we were so young that they didn't understand and thought I was weird. So when I got older I just didn't give people I was becoming friends with much information about my life, and also I was, you know, well..."

"A know-it-all?" Said Harry. Under normal circumstances he would have grinned at the description, but he didn't feel that this was the right time to smile.

However, Hermione did. "That's one way of putting it...so as a result, I never really made many friends. When I came to Hogwarts, and after our troll incident-" Harry grinned. "-I became friends with you and Ron, and this-"she gestured her arm vaguely around the kitchen. "-just never came up, and Ron, you know, is touchy about these things."

Harry was silent. I should have realized it before, he thought suddenly. Her parents are dentists...dentists make a lot of money...she never really did tell much about herself in first year... It was a little scary to Harry about how little he really knew about the life of one of his best friends.

His brain was buzzing. His mind was dealing with too many things at the moment: This new information about Hermione...Voldemort...and, his stomach lurched-Sirius...he felt as if his head was going to explode.

Hermione seemed to understand exactly what he was thinking, when she said, "Harry, you are not going anywhere until you eat something." She stopped and shook her head. "I sound like I'm your mother..."

Harry laughed and was in much higher spirits as he began to help Hermione make breakfast.




A/N: A note on the last chapter-I originally posted it, then I went back and added a new scene and posted that version...so if anyone didn't understand some things that Harry was thinking about when he was on the Knight Bus it's probably because you read the original chapter, before I reposted it with the new scene. Go back, read it, and then hopefully everything will make sense!

Yeah, sorry, I shouldn't have posted that whole thing...but I first posted the original version, then I got an idea and went back and changed it...sorry if it confused anyone!

Lily of the Valley: Yeah I like that line too! The whole bird thing was supposed a meatphor to their hair colors-I wasn't sure of anyone would get it, and I'm glad you did...Thanks a lot! Really? Is the Goddess in author here? I'll check her out...

Abby: It's okay, I know exactly what it's like to come home exshausted from a practice or rehearsal or something. It's in the nineties here too (actually, I think that is spelled right) and we just had an enormous thunderstorm...Right, being hyper is very randdomn, it's only a matter of time...
I have an adoring fan? Oh my gosh that is so cool! Wow! Thanks a lot!

Lily Potter: Lol yeah, I thought that part would be funny if I had Dudley eating cookies and stuff...