Ron had just finished changing Harry's clothes when Hermione's gentle know was heard at the door. Everyone was behaving as though Harry was an extremely ill individual who needed rest when it was quite clear that you could strip naked and dance in front of him and Harry's disposition would not change in the least. Ron called for her to enter and stood up to greet her.

"Has there been any change?" Hermione asked timidly. She peered around Ron's tall frame at Harry's lifeless form. His stillness reminded her uncomfortably of that brief time during her second year when she spent a semester petrified. She wondered if Harry was trapped like she was, fully conscious but unable to move or respond in any way.

Ron gave a deeply sarcastic roll of his eyes and said, angrily, "Who do you whisper? All of you! He can't hear you!" He shouted at the top of his lungs, more to illustrate his point than out of any real malice.

"I know that Ron!" Hermione said sternly. "It's just habit. He's been in and out of infirmaries quite a lot these past years and it's become routine"

"Sorry, it's just tense, you know?" Ron was fighting with the impulse to cry when Hermione noticed the new bandage on Harry's hand.

"What's that all about?" She asked concernedly

"Oh!" Ron followed her pointed finger and sized the opportunity to change the focus a little. "It's pretty sick, really. We found a safety pin sticking through the middle of his hand. Dear old Snape's idea of a laugh, no doubt. Let's torture a dead body, he can't feel it" Ron said savagely.

"Don't say that Ron. Harry isn't dead, he's catatonic." Hermione said quietly.

"Why do you always do that? When ever someone's dead you make like they've gone on holiday or something. You did with Scabbers and now you're doing it with Harry. He's gone, might as well deal with it." Ron was so angry, at the world, at Hermione for being so calm, at Dumbledore who just had to be away when they needed him the most.

"Harry is not dead!" Hermione shouted at him, losing her cool. "He's catatonic, he's catatonic, he's catatonic" She repeated it like a Hail Mary that would save them all.

"Same thing though, isn't it?" Ron continued on unrelentingly. "I mean aside from a beating heart and breathing lungs he's got more in common with a corpse than with us." Ron appeared to be taking great person offense to Harry's inactive state. Perhaps it was that his best friend was usually at the center of the action, or perhaps it was the fact that Harry was his best friend and Ron should have noticed that Harry was slipping that hit Ron so hard. Whatever it was that was eating away at Ron he had decided to get angry rather than break down in tears like everyone else.

Hermione wiped the tears from her eyes and chose to ignore Ron's last statement rather than address the pain she saw behind Ron's eyes. "So what's with him then?" Hermione nodded her head in the direction of the bed that had once been Ron's which now held the lifeless form of their potions teacher.

"We're not quite sure. Dumbledore reckons that when Snape tried legilmency Harry's mind sucked him in." Ron threw Snape a look of utmost loathing mingled with something that looked suspiciously like jealousy.

Hermione looked up at the ceiling, trying to stop the tears from flowing down her face, but her actions only served to remind her that her best friend's deepest thoughts and emotions were plastered on the walls. 'Why doesn't he just kill me? End this pain. It won't be so bad I'll get to see Sirius again. Why doesn't Dumbledore just end my cursed existence?'

"Come on, let's go. It creeps me out to spend too much time alone with them." Ron made to turn Hermione around and usher her form the room but she didn't budge.

She looked up into his hazel eyes, all her pain shining in her unshed tears, "In a moment"

Ron left the room shutting the door softly behind him as Hermione sat down on the bed beside Harry.

Hermione dealt with her grief differently than the others, she had come to regard Harry' lifeless form as her 'Father Confessor' telling him her innermost secrets and fears. In front of everyone else she was strong and collected but she cried for Harry. Some nights, during the sleepless hours of the early morning she would crawl in bed beside him and whisper in his ears about the nightmares that plagued her dreams.