Chapter 28: What's Love?

Disclaimer: For the three people who've been living in caves under the ground for the past decade and haven't heard: Harry Potter and all related things belong to JK Rowling. (In case they aren't thinking very clearly after their years of being a hermit - I am not JK Rowling)

Thanks for 977 reviews goes to: Arafel2, blah-blah-blah-blah-I-want-this-to-be-the-longest-author-name-ever-thank-you-very-much, finally-defeated, willowfairy, Alyssium, lil, Mystique Rain, Go10, jules37, saraiyu, kessi1011, …..., foxer, Madam Midnight, KrystyWroth, Alexi Lupin, A Genuine Freakshow, JoeBob139, ablakevh, brettley, insidiae, Storm1079, PsYcHoJo, ToOtHpIcK (x2), mesmer, citcat299, PinkTribeChick (x2), Pheonix (x2), Krispykreme1468, Meghan, Nikki, Sarah, Plaidly Lush, PhAnToM-ChiK, Erica G., Kawaii-Kanna, jaderabbit, SPARKLING EYES, Slytheravengriffinpuff Sparkling Cherries, J Deann, Saotoshi (x2) Crystella, Kristina, distelMalfoy, pkchihuahuas, Genevive Jones (x2), CuTeNcRaZy, draconas, Loving, Krispykreme1468, annikodomo, heavengurl899.

A/N: And I'm back!

I had plenty of relaxation time, involving lots of clothes/back-to-school shopping. I bought… well, not exactly a poncho. Kind of the bastard child of a poncho and a duffel coat. A ponffel, if you will. It's shaped like a poncho, but it has sleeves and duffel-coat toggles fastening the front. Wonderfully eccentric and lovely.

But of course, you don't want to hear about my clothes shopping – you want to hear my results. And the new chapter of course, but that comes after the A/N.

It turns out I was worrying for no reason. Got 9 A stars (which is usually written A with an asterisk, but the site removes asterisks for some odd reason.). One each in English, English Literature, Chemistry, Biology, Physics, Maths, French, Latin and History. (For the non-English and generally confused – too many people were getting As, so they decided to add a new grade above an A and call it an A star. The A star grade only exists in these exams, rather randomly. It's like a super-A. An A with bells on.) The glorious Lou also did well in her exams – different exams to mine; AS levels, which I'll be taking next year. She got 2 As and 2 Bs, which is a wonderful result. Congratulate her too!

Oh, and regarding Slytheravengryffinpuff's question: I don't actually watch Buffy (not for lack of trying on the part of Sophie, who once persuaded me into watching a six hour Buff-a-thon!) That episode sounds interesting though; I'll look into it and perhaps borrow the video (again, from Sophie, who's just as much of a Buffy fanatic as I am a Pottermaniac.)

DistelMalfoy, I've also not read 'We'll Always Have Paris' (though it is on my to-read list, and has been languishing there for a shamefully long time). 'To Kill A Mockingbird' was one of my English texts last year, and it was one of my inspirations for the prejudice component of the plot, although obviously the prejudice in that and the prejudice in this won't be similar (long-term deep-seated racial prejudice versus short-term blood prejudice artificially instilled by Voldie.)

Thirdly, krispykreme1468 – sure, you can use the pulling-wings-in detail!

With all that out of the way, an important announcement. Remember the fanfic involving Macbeth I mentioned a few chapters back? I'm ready to start uploading, and the first chapter should go up next Monday. I'm hoping to run Macbeth and Fallen simultaneously, though I've no idea what my workload's going to be like this year at school and I might not be able to get both done, or I might need to move updates to a different day. Therefore the first few weeks will be a kind of pilot or test to see if it's manageable, and the update schedule of Macbeth will be very much subject to change. Fallen, however, will be my priority and will definitely run every Friday, every week, same as it's always done (apart from occasional breaks.)

And I think that's everything, so on to the chapter. Enjoy!

Love is a device invented by bank managers to make us overdrawn.

Arnold Rimmer, Red Dwarf

Much to Ron's annoyance, Ginny and Dean continued being affectionate all the way through breakfast. He threw Dean particularly tense frowns whenever the other boy gave his sister a kiss on the cheek, or a hug, or even just a touch that lingered just too long. Dean appeared oblivious to Ron's discomfort; Ginny noticed but, apart from a reproachful look, paid him no attention.

Harry and Hermione found it all rather amusing.

The five of them – Ron, Harry, Hermione, Ginny and Dean – ended up leaving the table together, heading back to the common room for the half-hour of relaxation they usually got before Hermione started pestering them over their homework. Ginny and Dean were holding hands as they walked; Ron's eyes almost never left them.

This carried on, with Harry and Hermione making idle conversation, until they reached the portrait of Honoria Nutcombe on the third floor, when Ginny paused a moment and glanced thoughtfully down a corridor to the left.

'What is it, Ginny?' Ron was quick to ask.

She paused a moment before answering. 'Would you three mind if Dean and I left you to go back to the tower on your own?' Her gaze flicked up to Dean with a cheeky smile; Dean grinned back, figuring out instantly what was on his girlfriend's mind. Ron fidgeted for a moment, a dark look on his face, and opened his mouth to say something before Hermione cut him off.

'That's fine, Ginny, you two go and have fun,' she said before Ron could object, giving the couple a warm smile. 'Come on, let's get back to the tower.' She gave Harry a glance, grabbed Ron by his elbow and headed off firmly in the direction of the tower. Harry watched Ginny and Dean hurry down the side corridor before following his friends. Ron was protesting.

'You know I don't like Ginny and Dean-'

'Ginny is almost sixteen,' Hermione cut in sharply. 'And that makes her certainly old enough to be snogging Dean Thomas in a corridor, or an old classroom, or a broom closet if she chooses to. She does not,' this was punctuated by a decisive stab of Hermione's finger, 'need you flitting around being over-protective.'

Ron folded his arms, looking sulky. 'I know that, but I still don't like her dating.'

'She's perfectly capable of taking care of herself,' Hermione reminded him, 'and besides, you know Dean. You share a dormitory with him! You know he's not going to hurt Ginny, so what's the problem?'

Fidgeting, Ron tried not to meet Hermione's questioning gaze. 'I don't know,' he admitted eventually, 'I just don't like it.'

Hermione sighed, exasperated. 'You can like it or not like it as you wish, just as long as you stop glaring at them every time they so much as look at each other.'

'I don't mean to,' Ron protested, but was cut off as they reached the top of the spiral staircase just in time to meet Professor McGonagall, who was about to descend it.

'Ah, Mr Potter,' she said, giving Harry the hint of a smile. 'Just the person I've been looking for.'

Harry's first impulse was to ask if something bad had happened, but he realised almost instantaneously that Professor McGonagall wouldn't be smiling if she had bad news. Or if he were in trouble, for that matter. 'Yes, Professor?' he asked tentatively.

'I assume you've been wondering who the Gryffindor Quidditch captain is this year?' she asked. Harry was rather surprised to realise he'd completely forgotten about it, but yes, Alicia had left now, so a new captain was needed…

McGonagall was fumbling in a pocket of her robe. 'I'm sorry we've taken such a long time over it, but there's a rule that any previously suspended players can't become captain, which we obviously overruled due to the unfair nature of the suspension… it took some time to make the exception official. Ah, here it is,' she said, and pulled from her pocket a small, shiny, crimson badge, which she held out towards Harry.

Written on it, in gold writing, were the words Quidditch Captain.

Harry's heart did a funny kind of twist, as though it had its own miniature Firebolt and was flying around the interior of his ribcage chasing a Snitch. 'Me?' he asked incredulously.

'Of course, Mr Potter. You are, after all, the most senior member of the team, are you not? And one of the best Seekers Hogwarts has seen in years.' She smiled kindly at him. 'I am sure we can expect great things of the Quidditch team this year, can we not?'

Suddenly speechless, he reached out to take the badge from McGonagall's hand. 'I… I'll try.'

She nodded at him, a look of unmistakeable pride in her eyes, and a sudden wave of absolute euphoria washed over Harry. Quidditch captain! Tryouts and practices and pep talks before matches…

McGonagall must have said something else, but it was drowned in his own excitement; the next thing he was aware of – other than the badge in his hand – was Hermione giving what sounded almost like a squeal and hugging him.

'Harry, that's amazing!' she enthused. 'That's a lot of responsibility, you know, you've got to arrange practices and tryouts and organise the team, it's brilliant…'

He grinned at his friend. 'Yeah, I know, I hadn't even remembered there was going to be a new captain…' It was amusing, really, that Hermione would be so enthusiastic about something Quidditch related. But of course, it was responsibility and success as well. Ron was the one who was passionate about Quidditch…

Which made it odd that he hadn't said anything yet.

Harry glanced towards Ron, and met an oddly blank face, looking down at his feet, biting his bottom lip, and belatedly a memory of first year swam to the front of Harry's mind: a memory of what Ron had seen in the Mirror of Erised. I'm holding the House Cup and the Quidditch Cup – I'm Quidditch captain, too!

As if he felt Harry's gaze, Ron glanced up, and managed a rather weak smile. 'Well done, Harry,' he said, managing to sound almost genuine. 'That's really… well done.'

'Thanks…' Harry said, not knowing what to say. 'Listen, Ron…'

'We should get back to the common room,' Ron interrupted, turning away. 'I've got that Defence essay to do… you should probably get planning tryouts, too.'

With rather stiff shoulders, Ron headed off. Harry followed, fingering his new badge and trying to figure out how on earth he was going to sort this one out.

'What's love?'

Hermione's hand twitched, almost puncturing the piece of parchment with the sharp point of the quill she was holding. 'What?'

'Love,' Draco repeated. 'I don't know what that one is either.'

He raised an expectant eyebrow at Hermione, who frowned for a moment. Certainly, Draco's question had taken her by surprise. Of course, love was an emotion like any other, like hate and fear and friendship and compassion and all the complex ones they'd discussed. But somehow she hadn't expected him to ask about it, in the same way you don't expect a five-year-old to ask about calculus.

'It's rather complicated,' she began, not knowing quite what to say. 'And it can be used to mean quite a lot of different things too… which meaning do you want?'

'Any,' he said with a shrug, then, 'All of them.'

Hermione paused for a moment, trying to think of how best to go about the mammoth subject. Love could be anything, from the kind of epic romances which were written into legend and covered centuries and continents with its passion, to the feeling a mother felt for her child, to the feeling she felt for Harry and Ron, to the feeling she'd feel for a plate full of her mum's special choc-chip-cookies. Which was probably the best place to start.

'The easiest definition of love,' she began slowly, keeping her eyes on the parchment while she thought, 'is that it's liking something a lot. So I might say that I loved reading, and Harry might say that he loved Quidditch.'

Draco tipped his head on one side, considering. 'So I could say that I loved flying?' he asked eventually.

'If you really like it, then you could,' Hermione replied, before frowning. 'Wait… do you mean flying on a broomstick, or with… you know… wings?'

'Wings, of course,' Draco said with a smile. 'It's nothing like a broomstick. It's… It feels like…' He raised his hands, as if trying to explain himself through gesture, then stopped with a frown. 'I can't put it into words.'

'Try,' Hermione asked, leaning forward over the table. Draco bit his lip, opened his mouth, closed it again, and finally shook his head.

'It's no good, I don't think I know the right words,' he said, and Hermione felt a twinge of disappointment. 'What else can love mean?'

'It can be…' She paused. 'It's complicated.'

'Try,' Draco asked, and it was such a perfect mirror of her earlier request that Hermione was slightly startled, then laughed.

'The problem is there's lots of different kinds of love,' she said. 'There's the love you feel for your friends, for one. That's…' Hermione closed her eyes for a moment; pictured Harry and Ron, and tried to put words to it all. 'When you really care about someone, and you don't want them to get hurt or upset. You'll do things to make them happy that you wouldn't do for other people, and in the extreme – when they're your best friends, and you really, really love them, you could even die for them.' She paused for a moment and didn't meet his eyes. 'You want to spend time with them, and you miss them if they're away too long. You worry about them being in danger or upset or depressed… and you're willing to overlook their flaws.'

She ground to a halt, then, and her cheeks tinged slightly red when she realised what a poor description she'd given. Loving a friend was a lot more complicated than that – but how could she explain it? And how could she hep Draco to understand it, even if she could explain it?

Draco nodded slowly. 'So that's part of friendship?' he asked, and Hermione nodded mutely. 'Okay. What other kinds of love?'

'Familial love,' she said. 'The love you'd feel for your parents, or the love parents feel for their children. That's quite similar to friendship-love in some ways. Mothers would usually die for their children; probably fathers would too. But it's different to friendship, because your parents protect you and provide for you and take care of you when you're sick, while parents love their children because… because they're their children, I suppose. It's hard to explain…'

Draco looked as though he didn't quite comprehend it all, but he nodded anyway. 'What does it feel like?' he asked.

'Like…' she began, and paused, frowning. She picked the quill up from the tabletop and twirled it between her fingers, picturing her own mum and dad. 'Well, from a child's point of view it feels… grateful. You're grateful to them for what they do, and you care about them, of course, and you want them to be happy and healthy and so on…' She sighed. 'It's hard to explain.'

Draco nodded, frowning, and gestured to the piece of parchment that Hermione had so nearly stabbed a hole in earlier. On the left side of the parchment was a list of the emotions Draco had at least a working knowledge of; on the right were those he didn't understand at all. Simpler emotions like fear, anger, surprise, liking, disliking, pain dominated the left, along with a scattering of things like compassion. The right had all the complex ones: friendship, loyalty, caring, courage, hatred. 'Better write it down on the right-hand side, I think.' Draco said.

Hermione did so, writing Love (familial) in her neat script and adding Love (friendly) below it. After a moment's thought, she added Love (liking something) to the left; he'd understood that.

'What about romantic love?' Draco asked, and Hermione's quill almost went through the parchment for the second time. 'I've been reading more, lately, and it keeps talking about it in books, but it never explains it properly.'

'Books generally don't,' Hermione said, biting her lip. 'Romantic love is… completely different. I've never really been in love, so I don't really know, not properly…' She fidgeted in her chair; Draco looked curious.

'You went to the Yule Ball with Krum-'

'Yes, but I didn't love him,' Hermione pointed out. 'I mean, he was kind and sweet and everything, and I liked him, but love… romantic love…' She sighed. 'It's complicated. A lot of people have tried to describe it, and everyone comes up with something different. I'll… I'll write it down on the right-hand-side for now, and explain it to you later, when you understand some of the other kinds of love. Sorry,' she added, feeling oddly as though she'd failed him.

'It's fine,' he said, looking only mildly disappointed. 'Explain it later.'

'You're forgetting the Transfiguration corridor,' Hermione complained. 'Anyone attacking the school could come straight along that, bypass the Room of Requirement corridor, come out near Flitwick's office, and then there's only those Bewildering Hexes and Harry between them and Gryffindor Tower.'

Ron leant over the map of the seventh-floor, frowning as he peered at the diagram. 'She's right, you know,' he said.

'How would they get into the Transfiguration corridor anyway?' Harry asked, frowning. 'There aren't any stairs leading up to it; they'd have to pass Gryffindor Tower to get into it…'

It was Monday morning, and the Defence Against the Dark Arts lesson was in full swing. As part of their lessons on Strategy, Delaney had split the class into small groups and given each group a map of one of the floors of Hogwarts. 'Imagine the school is under attack,' he had told them, and the class had fidgeted nervously at the thought. 'You have to plan a defence strategy for the floor to which you have been given the map. You can set up any spells you want, as long as they aren't illegal, and position the members of your group around the floor to fight the attackers. To make things more interesting, I've marked a specific place on each map with a red x; this is the place the attackers are trying to get to. Consider this in your defence of the floor.'

It was, unsurprisingly, quite a fun lesson, involving a lot of loud chatter and creativity. Hermione had already come up with dozens of spells; anyone hostile walking along the Divination Corridor could expect to be frozen, burnt or shrunk to the size of an ant; have their knees turned backwards, their noses grown so large that they couldn't raise their head, or their feet temporarily detached from their body, among other inventive hexes. Harry and Ron had delighted in carefully placing them so that, for example, after they started dancing uncontrollably they should (with any luck) end up on the patch of floor they'd Transfigured into spikes.

Currently they were considering the Transfiguration corridor. 'It would be difficult to get into,' Hermione conceded. 'The only way I can see is through the window…'

'The window?' Ron echoed incredulously. 'Who's going to think to climb in the seventh-floor of a castle?'

'A wizard on a broomstick who knows full well that the Transfiguration corridor is less likely to be covered,' Hermione said darkly. 'It is unlikely that they'd think to use the window, I concede, and they couldn't get a large force up there without being noticed too soon – the window is a tight fit.'

'Some spells to stop them getting in would be good,' Harry said thoughtfully. 'Do you know any…?'

'To stop people getting through a door, yes,' Hermione mused. 'Through a window? Only the basic closing charms, the kind you could open easily with Alohamora… I'd have to think about it.'

There was a moment's pause; then Harry spoke. 'Okay, we might not be able to prevent them getting in that window,' he said slowly. 'And we're all positioned too far away to do anything if someone does come through it. But there's nothing really important around the Transfiguration corridor, and there won't be many attackers. So what could work is if we built a trap – not curses to incapacitate someone, but a trap. A cage that dropped from the ceiling or something, or something that glued them to the spot…'

'That's a brilliant idea!' Hermione enthused. 'And some kind of alert system, one that'd ring a bell or set off an alarm when the attackers came in the window, so we cold get to them before they had a chance to free themselves… hang on a second…' She fell onto a scrap of parchment, feverishly writing things down. Harry and Ron knew better than to interrupt her when she was like this, and simply waited for a minute, glancing over the plan so far and double-checking the details, while Hermione schemed and plotted.

'How's it going?' came a voice – Delaney's. The professor regarded the scribbling Hermione with interest before bending over the map, dark-brown eyes skimming over the details they'd marked on.

'That's interesting,' Delaney said at length, 'the way that Drowsiness charm is placed so the attacker will fall asleep right on top of that Disabling Potion. It'll be much more effective, that way; when the attacker wakes up they'll be almost incapable of movement, rather than just a bit stiff as you'd expect if they'd only walked into it. Was that placement intentional, or were you just lucky?' he asked, giving them an amused smile.

Ron half-raised a tentative hand. 'It was my idea, sir,' he said, and Delaney rewarded him with a wide smile.

'Excellent, Mr Weasley, five points for Gryffindor.'

While Ron was beaming at this pronouncement, Hermione gave a satisfied sigh and put her quill down. 'Finished,' she said proudly.

Delaney gave her a nod. 'Finished what?' he asked.

'A trap,' Hermione said with an enthusiastic smile. 'For the Transfiguration corridor. We realised that there wasn't any defence on that corridor, and that while a large force couldn't get in that way, a small force could get through the windows on broomsticks…'

Delaney frowned. 'Possibly. Carry on.'

'Well, we thought the best thing to do would be to put some kind of trap there. It's a sufficiently small possibility that they'd enter that way, but it could also be very dangerous, as one or two attackers could come in that way and get straight to Gryffindor Tower, bypassing most of our defence. Especially as none of us are stationed near that corridor; they could easily get in and disable any hexes we placed in that corridor by stealth, and then sneak up on us from behind. So we came up with this; it's a two-part spell. The first part will stick their feet to the ground, effectively trapping them, and it should take a good few minutes to undo. The second part is an alarm spell which alerts one of us to the intruder.'

Delaney nodded and scanned the piece of paper. 'This looks like it would be effective,' he said eventually. 'But I feel one of you should be stationed nearer the corridor, just in case.'

'There's ample time…' Hermione began, but she was cut off.

'How about you, Miss Granger? If we put you… say, here, at the junction of these two corridors…'

'But it's very unlikely an attack would come from there,' Hermione protested, 'and I really feel I'd be more useful…'

'I'm sure these boys and the spells can keep your previous position guarded,' Delaney said with a smile. 'In fact… Mr Weasley, if you move over a corridor you'll be in prime position to defend that staircase.'

'But professor…' Hermione began again, before falling silent and biting her lip.

'Of course, you can do it whichever ay you want,' Delaney said, 'but personally, I prefer my version. Consider it. And keep up the good work, boys.'

He have them a wide smile before turning and going on to another group, leaving Hermione frowning after him. She was beginning to get very suspicious…

A/N: You see that middle scene? The definition-of-love scene? Not one of the three betae who actually did this chapter touched anything on that scene. It was quite worrying; I prefer it when people are pointing out errors left and right. If they don't, I worry that all the errors are still in there.

Anyway, shouldn't be worrying. Now review, or I'll make you do my homework (which admittedly consists of 'find a word that's changed its meaning', because I've only been back one day and most of that was administration.) But I'll get plenty more next week. And I'll see you on Monday with Macbeth, and next Friday with Fallen.

Review!