An Hour of Wolves

by thebiwholived

Harry's doing just fine: being Quidditch Captain and 'the Chosen One' doesn't leave him with time to worry about much besides school and the growing threat of war. He's especially not worrying about the fact that Sirius is dead. Or about an embarrassing, uncomfortable night with a classmate he'd rather just forget. Really. He's fine. Features an eating disorder, other tags inside.

10. With the Dirt On My Sleeves

Shout out to LeakyCon for jump-starting my intense love for HP again and giving me the motivation to finally, finally finish this chapter. It's been a long wait, and I appreciate everyone who is still here reading this story, more than you know.

I'll be at LeakyCon Boston all weekend, so if you know who I am come say hi!

Hope you guys enjoy.

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Chapter 10: With the Dirt On My Sleeves

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He didn't know where to go. It was getting late, and before too long Filch would be out patrolling the corridors, enforcing curfew. But he did not yet want to return to Gryffindor and withstand the inevitable demands to recount the story of what had happened in the corridor and why Hermione was in the hospital wing. The box of sleeping tablets crinkled in his fist and he peeked inside before stashing the box away in his pocket.

Hermione had emptied them.

Not that it mattered, of course, but the thought made him bristle. He let his feet carry him through the halls, still unsure where he was going. He passed the door to the trophy room and ducked inside on impulse.

The rows of cups and plaques gleamed in the dim light. Harry moved through the room, letting the names and dates and accomplishments of past students distract him from the memory of Ron and Hermione's faces that seemed to want to plaster itself to his mind. A tall set of shelves caught his eye, and right in the middle of the third shelf, at eye level, was a pair of engraved golden shields, identical but for the names inscribed on them.

Harry Potter, Special Award for Services to the School

Ronald Weasley, Special Award for Services to the School

Harry swallowed, reminded of Basilisk fangs and ink-stained stone, and moved on. He passed a large display of silver medals and came to another case; behind the sheet of glass was a very long list of names documenting the Head Boys and Girls of each class at Hogwarts. Half-reluctant and half-eager, Harry scanned down the names until his eyes found two familiar ones near the bottom.

1977-78 | James Potter, Head Boy, Gryffindor | Lily Evans, Head Girl, Gryffindor

He stared at his parents' names, a terrible, powerful grief sweeping over him without warning. He had rarely missed them so unbearably as he did at that moment, and the knowledge that they both had lived here at Hogwarts, had walked these halls, had spent their evenings in the same common room as he did, eaten their meals in the same Great Hall, hit him as it never had before. A yawning, empty chasm widened inside him, and the wish for them to be here beside him, to see his mother, to talk to his father, to feel their arms around him was almost a physical pain. He did not think he had ever felt so horribly, dreadfully alone.

Tearing his eyes away, Harry walked quickly back the way he had come, out of the room, back down the stairs, heading for the entrance hall. Getting out of the castle, breathing fresh air, was the only thought in his head, and he regretted that he did not have his broom with him.

By the time he made it out of the oak front doors, he was craving the cool evening air so badly he could have sighed when it finally touched his face. He instinctively broke into a jog, needing to move, to run, to get out of his head. He only made it a few paces, however, before a stabbing pain in his side reminded him viciously of his bruised ribs and he was forced to slow down. He limped down the sloping lawns towards the greenhouses, arm held gingerly away from his side, and hoped that by some miracle he'd feel better by morning. The prospect of not being able to take his usual run made his stomach tighten with anxiety and he fought not to break into panic at the thought. He would figure it out.

Harry edged his way around Greenhouse One, thinking of heading towards the lake, but his heart shot up into his throat as soon as he stepped foot onto the vegetable patch. There was a figure hunched over in the middle of the patch, examining the ground, and it was only when it straightened up that Harry realised who it was.

"Luna?"

He immediately relaxed his arm against his side in a more natural stance as she turned to look at him, depositing what looked like a handful of seeds into a small bag at her hip.

"Oh, hello, Harry! What are you doing out here?"

"I was going to ask you the same thing," he told her as she watched him pick his way over around a crop of carrots. "How d'you plan to get back inside?" The now-usual guard hadn't been stationed at the doors on Harry's way out, but the sun had now fully set and he was willing to bet they had been by now. He had his Invisibility Cloak and his secret passages, but he did not see how Luna expected to avoid being found out.

"I'm not worried," she told him pleasantly, her gaze wandering over the ground again. "I come out here quite a lot at night. I do get caught sometimes, of course, but I don't really mind the detentions. And Professor Flitwick only pretends to punish me when it's up to him. He lets me have biscuits and cocoa in his office while we chat for a bit. It's quite nice."

Harry grinned. "Didn't know Flitwick was such a soft touch."

"Oh yes, he's lovely, I'm very glad he's Head of Ravenclaw. He's always been kind to me." She bent down, running her hand over the soil.

"What are you looking for?" asked Harry.

"Puffapod beans," she explained. "Most of them bloom instantly when you drop them on the ground, you see, but a few of them don't. Most people believe the ones that can't bloom are hopeless – Professor Sprout uses them in the fertilizer for the school's vegetables – but Neville says he thinks they might just grow differently. They might even grow bigger. I thought it might be a good Christmas present for him if I could get one to flower. Do you think so?"

"That sounds perfect," Harry told her truthfully.

She looked up, pleased. "Would you like to help me?"

"Sure," Harry offered and crouched down next to her, kneeling carefully so as not to jostle his ribs.

They searched in comfortable silence together for several long minutes. Clouds drifted across the sliver of moon hanging in the starless sky. Luna pulled out her wand, igniting it and sticking it behind her ear so that it illuminated the earth in front of them like a torch.

Harry's fingers moved over the soil, plucking up the occasional shining bean and adding it to Luna's pouch which she had set on the ground between them. The argument with Ron and Hermione felt fresh and raw like an open wound, and Harry couldn't help but be grateful that he'd come across Luna after all. The deep sense of loneliness that had descended upon him at the sight of his parents' names had lifted only slightly, and he looked at Luna thoughtfully as she carved out a little hole in the ground, hunting for more beans.

She had lost her mother, too, he reminded himself, and at an age old enough to remember it. It was a mystery to him how she managed to appear so upbeat all the time. She was unfailingly open and straightforward, often embarrassingly so, and Harry sometimes found it awkward. But she had never seemed to judge Harry for saying something stupid or acting like a prat – she never seemed to judge anyone much, as a matter of fact – and Harry suddenly found himself wondering what she would think….

"Hey," he said, trying his utmost to sound strictly casual. "Luna, have you ever, er…have you ever…kissed anyone?"

Luna looked up at him, her arm buried almost to the elbow in the dirt.

"No. You have, though, haven't you? Cho Chang."

"Yeah." Harry cleared his throat. "Yes, but I mean…really kissing, and…you know…other stuff…." He knew he should shut up, his brain was begging him to, but he wanted to know.

"Like having sex?" she asked baldly. She was still hunched over awkwardly, her arm hidden in the ground.

Harry coughed, and he looked away from her, pretending to scour the patch for more beans. "Er – well. Yeah. Yeah, I suppose."

"No, I haven't done that either," Luna told him without a hint of embarrassment. She finally pulled her arm out of the soil and started digging another hole. "I don't have much interest really," she said serenely. "Right now, anyway. Are you asking if I'd like to with you?"

Harry blanched. "No! No, definitely not, I was only – I just meant – "

But Luna nodded and tilted her head to the side. "That's alright, I didn't think you were. But I find it's always best to straighten these things out right away," she offered sagely.

"I didn't mean…" Harry went on, flustered. He sat back on his heels, staring at her. "It's not like you're not pretty or anything, you are, it's…. Shite. I'm sorry."

Luna giggled. "That's the first time anyone's called me pretty, besides my Dad anyway, and Mum before she died," she said pleasantly. "Thank you."

"I – you're welcome," he said, enormously relieved that she did not seem offended.

"Besides you already like someone else." Luna added three more beans to her bag.

"What do you mean?" Harry asked, frowning at her.

"Ginny Weasley."

Harry felt like he'd just missed a step going down the stairs. "How d'you reckon?" he demanded, noting with dismay that his voice sounded slightly higher than it should have done.

"Firenze said so in our last Divination lesson," she told him, like it should make perfect sense.

"Firenze?" Harry stared, completely nonplussed. "The centaur?"

"Yes. Well, I mean he didn't call you by name, of course, but he was talking about how luminous Jupiter was the other night, and about how the Summer Triangle of Vega, Deneb, and Altair was shifting over the horizon, and obviously it all meant you and Ginny are destined to be together, if you put any stock in the centaurs as stargazers. Daddy never has, but I think they're right about some things." She opened her pouch and began counting out a handful of beans as she said all this, and Harry watched her, blinking hard, his head beginning to hurt a little. "Plus, there's the way you look at her when you think she's not looking," she stated matter-of-factly, dumping the beans back into her bag.

"Oh. I – " But Luna was gazing at him so fervently that the denial died on his lips. "Yeah," he said quietly. "There's that."

Luna nodded as though pleased he had caught on so quickly.

Harry dug around in the soil for a moment. There was dirt under his fingernails now, but he didn't care. "D'you reckon she knows?" he asked anxiously.

"I don't think so. She would probably like to know, though."

"She's with Dean," Harry pointed out as if it settled the matter.

"Yes," agreed Luna. "But not forever, I would imagine. She likes him, but he frustrates her a bit, I think. He hovers."

Harry grunted noncommittally but his hopes rose in spite of himself, an image of him and Ginny walking off the Quidditch pitch hand-in-hand after a spectacular win springing up in his mind. He shook his head, bringing himself back to earth with a bump. Even if she did break up with Dean, there were other, more complicated obstacles stopping them getting together.

"Anyway, you were asking if I'd ever had sex with anyone," she continued brightly, and Harry nearly started. He had forgotten the beginning of their conversation already, the discussion of Ginny driving all else from his mind. "And I said I haven't. Have you?"

Harry was quiet for such a long time he was sure Luna must have thought he was ignoring her. But she sat patiently without prompting him, dousing her wand and gazing up at the moon which was now visible through the clouds. Harry debated ferociously with himself as he watched her, his fist clenching in the dirt, but decided that it was not too dangerous. He didn't have to say anything he didn't want to.

"Sort of, I guess," he said, very quietly, his insides squirming in discomfort, and she looked back from the moon to his face. "Yeah."

The expression on her face was a mix between polite surprise and vague curiosity. "Was it nice?"

Harry was quiet for another long moment. "No," he said, feeling as though the word had cost him more that it should have done. "It wasn't."

Luna frowned, her eyes becoming more earnest as she studied him. "Oh," she said softly. She looked sad. "That's not very good. It's supposed to be nice."

Harry nodded without really realising it. "Yeah," he agreed, and he looked away over the grounds. "I reckon it is." He swallowed. "Look, never mind. Forget I brought it up. It's not important. I was just…wondering."

He tried to smile at her, but she stared at him a second longer before returning it faintly. "Okay," she said, and picked up her bag. "I think we've got enough beans to be going on with." They both stood, brushing themselves off, Luna refastening her bag over her shoulder. "Thank you for helping me," she told Harry warmly.

"Anytime." Harry took out his wand and refilled the holes they had dug with the mounds of displaced dirt, making the vegetable patch smooth once more.

"You have friends, you know."

Harry looked up at her, into the wide, silvery eyes focused so keenly upon him. He frowned. "I know that." But a swoop of regret plunged through his gut, and he thought of how intensely he missed Ron and Hermione, even though they were just inside the castle.

She nodded, the moonlight reflecting off the top of her blonde head. "Okay," she said again.

Harry awkwardly regarded a row of spring onions. He was more thankful than he could say that she had said no more than that. She had not asked him how he was or what he was thinking, or told him he didn't look alright. Nor had she found it strange or distasteful that he had asked her a series of highly personal questions.

She'd just wanted him to look for beans with her, and he had never appreciated Luna Lovegood more.

He dug into his pocket, pulling out his Invisibility Cloak. "Want some help sneaking back in?" he asked her, holding it up in question.

---

"I don't know why they always have to do this at breakfast," Seamus grumbled, brushing several stray feathers from his plate and peering up at the owls swooping overhead.

Across from Seamus and Neville, Harry glanced up automatically for the telltale blur of white but wasn't too surprised not to find Hedwig there. He did, however, notice the rather bulky form of two brown owls carrying a large square package between them, and he watched with mild interest as they swooped lower and lower. The owls dived low over the Gryffindor table, finally landing with a loud thunk several seats away in front of Hermione. Harry frowned as he watched her detach the package from the owls' legs, wondering what she possibly could have ordered, but she looked up at him then, and he averted his eyes back to his half-eaten bowl of cornflakes.

It had been five days since his argument with Ron and Hermione in the hospital wing, and he had not spoken to either of them since. He had come close a couple of times, rather accidentally. Two days ago, Romilda Vane had gone to sit in an armchair near the fire in the common room and immediately leapt back out of it shrieking about a tarantula, which had then scurried over the side of her chair and onto the floor. Several people had jumped onto tables and chairs, including Ron, and Harry's laughter had faltered as he remembered Ron's terrible phobia of spiders. Harry had traded a knowing sympathetic look with Hermione and had opened his mouth to say something to Ron before remembering with a pang that he was no longer on speaking terms with them. In the end, someone had Vanished the spider and when the uproar had calmed, Harry had sunk miserably back into his Transfiguration homework alone.

Harry swirled his spoon through his cereal, scooping up some milk and watching it drip slowly back into the bowl.

He knew, deep down, that his little breakfast was not enough. That none of his meals were enough. That asking his friends to ignore everything he was doing was expecting too much – or perhaps too little – of them. But as much as he missed Ron and Hermione, he had meant what he had said. He was not going to answer their questions. He was not going to eat more, and he was not going to go to Madam Pomfrey to get something for sleep, or to help him focus, or to fix the pain in his side, because then she would make him eat more, and the thought alone was enough to make him want to vomit.

Dean dropped into the seat next to Harry and grumpily spooned some potatoes onto his plate; down the table, Ginny sat down between Hermione and Parvati, looking equally sour.

Harry wondered dully if they were having a row, but he could not bring himself to get too worked up about it this morning. He had tried to make a habit of reminding himself to keep his distance from those sorts of thoughts, and in any case, his jealousy of Dean seemed to fade a little more each day. He liked Dean a lot, and he supposed it was a little unfair to hope Ginny might break up with him just because Harry had figured out he fancied her.

Quite apart from that, Harry didn't really have the energy for it most days. It was like the more weight he lost, the more insulated he felt. He still had dreams, still had nightmares, but some of them were hazy and obscure now, like his brain didn't have the materials to think them up all the way. Part of him wondered what would happen if he kept on like this forever, if he lost so much weight that his dreams just stopped, and he could finally sleep.

The only price to pay for all that was hunger, and he had been forced to make friends with that particular empty ache a long, long time ago.

Harry took a deep breath, making his ribs twinge, and he cringed. The numbing spell was wearing off. He started to reach for his wand but stopped himself. He had to wait until he was alone to recast it, in case anyone happened to see.

The morning after he had helped Luna look for Puffapod beans in the vegetable patch, Harry had tried and failed spectacularly at taking his morning run. He had pressed himself as far as he could go, which had turned out to be a depressing quarter of the way around the Quidditch pitch, before admitting that it was just no good. And it wasn't just exercise, either. His side hurt so bad he'd had trouble getting dressed, carrying his books, even brushing his teeth. He had spent the rest of that morning in a horridly agitated state manifesting in near-constant fidgeting and a brief episode of scratching that had landed him in the boys' toilet to clean up the blood. In the end he had finally resorted to skipping double Charms to steal away to the library to research bone healing spells. He had found one that looked promising, but there had obviously been nothing to practise on first, and his first and only attempt had resulted in a nauseating crunching noise from his injured ribs that had only succeeded in putting him in even more pain than before.

So he had switched his focus to spells that might alleviate his discomfort and found a charm that had blessedly achieved a glorious numbing effect all the way down the left side of his torso. He had felt so grateful to take his first deep breath in twenty-four hours that he had spent a full minute stretching and twisting just because he could, put his books back exactly the way Madam Pince liked them, and bid good afternoon to her on the way, which, judging by her uncharacteristic speechlessness, no one had ever done before.

The only drawback to the charm was that he had to reapply it every few hours, which he was not always in the position to do without being seen, and which often meant that he woke up in the mornings feeling as though he'd been ferociously attacked by three Bludgers at once.

Still, it was better than nothing, and Harry thought he had almost mastered being able to cast the spell silently. Fortunately, this had translated to being able to perform several other charms without speaking, and Flitwick, who by all accounts should have given Harry detention for skiving off his double lesson, had awarded him several extra credit points for silently executing a successful Colour Change charm in their last class.

Harry amused himself momentarily with the thought of injuring the ribs on his other side if it meant McGonagall and Slughorn and Sprout might give him some extra credit points, too. That way he might actually pass his classes.

Harry polished off his glass of water, listening to Dean update Seamus on the West Ham football team's progress in the season thus far, Seamus's eyes slightly glazed as they were any time Dean tried to talk football with him.

"They've not had their best year," Dean was saying, and now Neville was listening in as well, looking politely confused. "Fourteenth in the league at the moment, but they could still have a chance, they've just beaten – "

But they did not get to find out who West Ham had just beaten, for at that moment a diversion happened again in the form of Romilda, whose schoolbag had split in two straight through the bottom as soon as she'd got up from the Gryffindor table, sending books and quills and bottles of ink spilling onto the floor in all directions. Romilda clenched her fists at her sides, making a noise like an angry cat, and stooped to collect up her things.

Several people made unfortunate 'oohing' sounds, and a few laughed, but Harry set his empty glass slowly back to the table, a tingling discomfort beginning to settle over him, somewhat akin to the feeling of being watched.

Despite the stab of vindictive pleasure he received every time some hapless incident had befallen Romilda, he was starting to worry about who was behind them. The first time with the purple shower gel might have been a funny coincidence, the second time with the tarantula might not have been meant for her at all, but this third time with her bag (which looked not only brand new but well-made) ripping apart in the middle of the Great Hall seemed to confirm a disquieting pattern that pointed to someone targeting Romilda on purpose, and he couldn't help the slight paranoia that crept up on him as he watched her gather up her books.

"Rotten luck," Neville commented with genuine sympathy, craning his head as Hermione and one of the fifth year prefects got up from the table to help her.

Hermione handed Romilda a bundle of ink-splattered parchment and Harry looked away, lurching to his feet. He swung his bag over his shoulder, barely noticing the growing ache in his ribs, and walked swiftly up the Gryffindor table towards the Entrance Hall. It was too early, really, to head to class but he didn't care.

Just as he reached the doors, he heard Luna calling his name, and he turned.

"Harry!" She was jogging along the row of her fellow Ravenclaws and waving a hand wildly over her head to get his attention. Harry wished she wouldn't – she was not hard to notice as they were the only two standing in the immediate vicinity and people were starting to stare.

"Harry," Luna said again as she came to a stop next to him, slightly out of breath. "Are you going to Hogsmeade this weekend?"

Harry glanced past her down the hall at Ron and Hermione, who was still helping Romilda collect her things. This coming Saturday was the first Hogsmeade weekend of the year, and normally he would have been excited at the prospect of going into the village. But there were a lot of things he didn't get very excited about anymore. "No. Probably not."

Luna followed his gaze. "Yes, I thought so. It might be fun, though. And you need some. Would you like to go together?"

He wanted to say no, but as his only plans for Saturday were possibly to stay in bed all day while everyone else was out of the dormitory, and as Luna was looking at him so hopefully, he felt he didn't have any real reason to refuse. He could use a break, he supposed. If nothing else, the expression on the faces of several of the Ravenclaw girls who were plainly listening in to their conversation made it clear exactly what they thought of Luna, and of the chances of Harry Potter saying yes to going on what he knew they believed was a date to Hogsmeade with her.

"Sure," Harry said loudly. "I'd love to go with you." And if the furious and scandalised looks on the Ravenclaws' face weren't enough, the way Luna's huge eyes shone with delight definitely was.

"Great!" said Luna excitedly, clasping her hands together. "I'll meet you in the Entrance Hall at ten!"

"Alright," Harry agreed, grinning a little.

Several other students were starting to make their way out of the Hall now, including Neville, and Luna reached out to tug on his sleeve as he passed.

"Oh, Neville, you should come with us, too!"

"Where?" Neville blinked, taken aback.

"The village on Saturday."

"Ah. Um," he stammered, shifting from foot to foot, and Harry was surprised to see that he was blushing a little. "I – I can't. I've got some things to – er – do. I might be able to meet up with you? At some point?" he continued unsurely as Harry and Luna stared. He backed away slightly. "We could have a drink in the Three Broomsticks or, uh, that. Yeah. Well, I'll – I'll see you!" he said, smiling a little hysterically, and promptly tripped on his robes, falling over backwards.

Harry stuck out a hand to help him and hauled Neville back to his feet, peering incredulously into his red face. "Alright, Neville?"

"Yeah, thanks, Harry!" And Neville hurried away without glancing back.

Harry and Luna stared after him, then looked at each other, trading identical bemused looks.

"Wonder what's got his wand in a knot?" said Harry.

---

By the time the weekend came, Harry did not think he had ever been so grateful to be done with a school week. Barring Umbridge's tyrannical reign the previous year, he had never felt quite so resentful of Hogwarts castle. Professor Sprout had paired him with Ron to work together in class on Monday, which had accomplished a great deal more glaring and highly uncomfortable silences than it had progress in their herbological handiwork; Dobby had popped up out of nowhere late Wednesday night to meaningfully ask Harry with wide, fixed eyes if he would like the elves in the kitchen to make any changes to his current diet; not to mention Harry was quite convinced he had caught Hagrid, McGonagall, and Dumbledore each watching him at mealtimes from the High Table on several separate occasions; and Snape had docked him thirty points in Defence on Thursday for submitting an essay that was two-and-three-quarters feet in length instead of three.

The Saturday morning sky appeared sunny and clear through the castle windows, however, as Harry made his way down to the Entrance Hall and the thought of a day of freedom with Luna away from classes and scheduled meals – and waiting for Malfoy to be either expelled or left alone by Crabbe and Goyle and Nott and Parkinson long enough for Harry to hex him properly – raised his spirits considerably.

The Hall was crowded and noisy with excited chatter by the time Harry descended the marble staircase, and it took him a minute to locate Luna in the sea of black cloaks. He thought he saw a flash of Ron's hair, but he did not pause to notice if he and Hermione were looking over at him or not. He spotted Luna about halfway up the giant queue to Filch's security checkpoint and managed to fight his way over to her.

"Oh good!" Luna exclaimed when Harry had elbowed his way around a group of Ravenclaws and emerged beside her, and it was only then that he realised who was standing next to her. "Ginny's coming along with us too, I hope you don't mind?"

Ginny smiled easily at him, but though Luna's expression was serene, Harry thought he saw a spark of mischief in her eyes. He would have narrowed his own in suspicion if Ginny hadn't been looking.

"Nope," Harry said instead. "'Course I don't mind, the more the merrier. Apparently," he muttered to Luna out of the corner of his mouth so that Ginny couldn't hear.

Luna stared up at the ceiling and continued to look serene.

"I thought you'd be going to Hogsmeade with Dean?" Harry directed to Ginny, hoping he sounded entirely casual as they shuffled closer to Filch and the Probity Probe he was using to scan all of the students exiting the castle.

Ginny shrugged. "Nah," she said simply, twisting her hair into a braid. Harry watched her fingers work, a little fascinated, and only became aware that he was staring when Luna poked him in his thankfully numbed ribs. "Why, were you hoping to go with him instead?" Ginny asked Harry with a lewd wink.

"Definitely not," he said, pulling a face.

Harry's stomach hopped pleasantly as she laughed, tying off the end of her braid with a flick of her wrists, and he found himself thinking that maybe it wouldn't be so bad that she was going along with them after all.

The walk down the drive and into the village seemed to last an eternity and yet take no time at all. Luna mercifully did most of the talking, but she had positioned herself so that Ginny was in the middle, which meant that Harry had to look past her at Luna, and he kept noticing the way a few red strands had fallen out of her braid to tickle her face in the slight breeze. Several times, he felt the alarming urge to take her hand and find out what it felt like in his, and for once he was glad of the chill in the autumn air that kept bringing him back to his senses.

"Where to first? Honeydukes?" Harry asked the girls, pulling his cloak more tightly around himself as they stepped onto the main road. He didn't really fancy sweets at the moment, but the wind had kicked up now that they had entered the village, the spaces between the buildings acting like amplifiers, and Harry was keen to find somewhere warm.

"I'm game," said Ginny, shivering a little herself, and Luna nodded emphatically, the bright orange pumpkin earrings she had chosen to wear that day bobbing around her ears.

They set off down High Street together, Harry listening to Luna and Ginny chat about the holiday Luna's father had planned for Christmas while he observed a group of third year boys running down the street, clearly excited for their first-ever trip to Hogsmeade, their arms already full to bursting with Zonko's products. Harry fondly remembered sneaking into the sweet shop under his Invisibility Cloak and surprising Ron and Hermione on his own first-ever trip, but the thought made him miss them so much he stopped at once.

"The Alps? For Christmas? Why aren't you two going someplace warm?" Ginny asked Luna incredulously, shivering again as gust of wind ruffled their cloaks.

"Oh I don't mind, we've been before, I quite like it there," Luna said dreamily. "I prefer a cold Christmas, you know, it seems much less silly to sit in front a fireplace drinking hot chocolate that way."

"You've got a point there," conceded Ginny, who, Harry knew, was a big believer in Christmas traditions. The tree at Grimmauld Place the previous year had been decorated almost exclusively by her, with a little help from Sirius, and Harry remembered with a burst of hope Mrs. Weasley saying she had fixed it with Dumbledore for Harry to spend Christmas at the Burrow this year.

"Well, enjoy your hypothermia," Harry chuckled, momentarily light with the thought of Christmas with the Weasleys.

"That's only happened to Daddy once, I'm sure he'll be perfectly alright this year," Luna insisted seriously, and Harry and Ginny caught each other's eyes, looking away quickly.

Honeydukes came into view and the three of them hurried forward, Harry catching the door as a group of chattering students rushed out and holding it open for Ginny and Luna to enter. Ginny stepped inside quickly, but Luna took a few steps back.

"I've just remembered," Luna smiled at them. "I've been needing some new stationery, I ran out weeks ago – I'll just run up to Scrivenshaft's and meet you after!"

Harry frowned at her. "We could go with you, if you want."

"No, that's okay," she said, smiling ever more widely and backing up. "You two have fun!" And she turned and bounded away in a sort of half-skip that said quite plainly to Harry that she was rather pleased with herself.

His heart sinking, Harry turned slowly back to Ginny, who shrugged as though this behaviour from Luna was only to be expected and, when the shopkeeper hollered over that they were letting the cold in, grasped Harry's wrist and tugged him inside the shop, letting the door swing shut behind them.

The walls surrounding them were as impressive as ever, whole shelves of different sorts of chocolate, mounds of Every-Flavour Beans, giant boxes of Cockroach Clusters and Drooble's Best Blowing Gum and Pepper Imps, but Harry was most distracted by Ginny's slim fingers still wrapped around his wrist, and when she finally let go after manoeuvring them through the dense crowd of customers near the door, Harry found he was only half-relieved.

"I swear it gets more crowded every year," Ginny grumbled with slight irritation, loosening her cloak from around her shoulders and draping it over her arm.

"Yeah," Harry muttered helpfully. "Can't blame them though," he said, watching another group of third years gush over the packets of exploding bonbons.

"Oh bless them," Ginny sighed dramatically, following his gaze and pretending to wipe a tear from her eye. "Harry, do you remember what it was like to be young, and so damn short – "

Harry snorted. "At least some of us grew out of that…."

"Just because you grow about half a foot at a time doesn't mean we all do," Ginny countered, lowering her chin at him before turning to examine a display of licorice wands. "Besides, I am not short, I'm compact, and I could kick your arse any day of the week."

Harry did not bother to argue with this, given the reputation of the strength of her Bat-Bogey Hex and the fact that he now frequently got winded walking up a flight of stairs.

Ginny picked up a package of black licorice, which she did not like but which she knew Harry did, and pressed it into his hand. "You going to get anything?" she asked, now looking directly at him.

He wanted to look away at once, but he was unwillingly engrossed in the pretty brown of her eyes. Vaguely, he wondered when his internal thoughts had started to sound a bit like the kind of tatty romance novel Gilderoy Lockhart's biggest fans might have enjoyed. He cleared his throat, glancing over the licorice display. "Maybe," he said, picking up a second package. Ginny smiled a bit at the sweets in his hand. And well if it was that easy, Harry thought, and picked up a third packet.

He didn't have to eat them, he reminded himself. But buying them just to throw them out was worth it if it meant Ginny beaming at him like that.

As they moved deeper into the shop, inspecting rows of Chocolate Frogs, Harry tried to screw up his courage to ask the question that had been bursting to get out of him since they'd been waiting to exit the Entrance Hall. He waited until Ginny was focused on a particularly dented Chocolate Frog. "So…why didn't you come with Dean, then?" he asked her, pretending to be engrossed in his own Frog.

"We broke up," she confessed, tossing the Chocolate Frog back onto the shelf.

Harry promptly dropped the one he was holding and stooped hastily to pick it up, faint lights popping in his eyes as he straightened. "You did?" he blinked, setting the little box carefully back on the shelf. "Did he…?" he started awkwardly.

"No, I did," Ginny sighed. "We've been arguing, and it just wasn't fun anymore. Why are you so interested?" She tilted her head to the side in a way that reminded Harry uncomfortably of Luna when she was trying to get to the bottom of something.

"I'm not!" Harry insisted, a little too fervently, and Ginny raised her eyebrows. He went on more evenly, "I mean, I am, I just…wanted to make sure you were okay."

She looked at him a moment before responding. "I am," she smiled just a little sadly. "I mean, I'll miss him. I really did like him, he just wasn't my type in the end."

"I'm sorry," Harry told her sincerely, and for the first time he realised how close together they were standing.

"Me too," said Ginny. They looked at each other silently for a minute before Harry forcibly wrangled his thoughts together and pointed out a case of pink coconut ice several rows down. Ginny followed him, accepting the two little shimmering squares of sweets he handed her without a word.

Harry had never thought he could spend so much time in a sweet shop, but he and Ginny took a long while looking over the shelves, coming up with increasingly unlikely ideas for their own line of magical confections and joking that they could sell the whole thing to Fred and George for a hefty profit. Hours later, they had joined the queue to pay and when they reached the register, Harry pushed his packages of licorice towards the girl running the till, then turned and lifted Ginny's rather more substantial collection of sweets out of her arms and deposited it all on the counter along with his.

"Harry, you don't have to do that!" Ginny protested, putting a hand over his as he pulled out his money bag.

"I know," Harry agreed, gently disengaging his hand from hers, and passing over a handful coins to the cashier.

"Seriously," said Ginny, pulling her cloak on and watching almost forlornly as the girl behind the counter bagged up the purchases. "Fred and George gave me about thirty Galleons for Hogsmeade trips now their shop's doing so well, it's really – "

"Ginny, I know," he said, handing her the bags and stuffing the licorice into his cloak. "It's fine."

They made their way out of the shop, Ginny staring at the bags in her arms, the skin between her eyebrows scrunched up a little, and when the door had shut behind them and they were once again at the mercy of the chilly wind, she punched him lightly on the arm. It was playful, but there was a bit of a serious set to her face. "Don't do that."

"Do what?" Harry frowned. Ginny gestured to the bags she was carrying, and he blinked at her, his spirits sinking. "I'm sorry. I wasn't trying to upset you."

She gazed at him, a thoughtful look on her face, and her expression softened. "No. No, I know you weren't. You didn't, really, it was nice of you." She gave him a small smile. "Thank you."

Harry returned her smile, somewhat relieved, and the two of them set off up the road heading deeper into the village towards the mountains.

"Shall we go and see if we can track down Luna?" Ginny suggested with a touch of doting exasperation.

Harry agreed absently, continuing to watch Ginny as they walked, but she did not seem to be upset with him. He marveled that the tension that had existed between them for the past few weeks had seemed to have mostly dissolved, but maybe that was not surprising after all, Harry thought. He had been the one avoiding her, not the other way around, and now that they had spent more than two seconds together he had been reminded of how easy it was to get along with her. He remembered again their summer at the Burrow, teasing Ron and Hermione and playing Quidditch…laughing together about Fleur and Bill….As they strolled quietly up the street, he mused that Ginny might in fact be as effortless as Luna to be around if it weren't for his gut tumbling unpredictably at odd moments.

Suddenly, Harry was not so sure he wanted to get to Scrivenshaft's too quickly and, spotting Zonko's joke shop on their left, nodded at the building. "D'you want to stop here first? 'Fifty percent off all merchandise,'" Harry read from a neon pink sign posted in the window.

"Sort of lost a lot of its appeal, hasn't it, now we've seen Fred and George's place," she said, staring up at the sign just below the roof spelling out 'Zonko's' in giant letters. "They're hard to compete with. Still…half-price Dungbombs, eh? Can't beat that."

As soon as they had entered the shop, it became quite apparent to Harry why everything must have been on sale. Half the shelves were empty and gathering dust and though this shop, too, was full of customers, it possessed the unmistakable air of a business that was somewhat past its heyday. Ginny began to look around while Harry edged his way over to the counter along the wall where the owner, a heavyset gentleman he guessed to be about Mr. Weasley's age, was stacking several boxes.

"Excuse me. Are you closing up?" Harry asked him.

The owner straightened, mopping his shining forehead with a handkerchief, and jumped slightly upon seeing who had addressed him. "Dear me!" he said a little breathlessly, his eyes performing the flick up to the scar on Harry's forehead. "Yes, I'm – I'm afraid we are," he stammered. "Getting unpredictable out there, you know – well, of course you know, that is to say, you of all people – what I mean to say…." He seemed to gather himself a little, and continued uneasily. "Uncertain times. Me and the missus are going away for a while, not sure if we'll be back, you see, not for a while at least…."

"Right," said Harry, brushing his fringe irritatedly over his scar. "Well…thanks." He moved away quickly. "They're closing down the shop," Harry told Ginny once he'd located her by the Dungbombs, and was surprised by how much of a pang he felt by the thought.

"I thought they might be," Ginny nodded fairly, running her fingers over a dusty display. "I suppose people are bound to start getting worried. What's the matter?" she asked, seeing the look on Harry's face. "Fred and George have been talking about buying it anyway, it'll be even better than it was before."

Harry nodded, but it was only a tiny part of what was bothering him. Trelawney's croaky, raspy voice seemed to echo through his skull, like it did every time he was confronted with the realities of the danger the magical world was really facing….'And either must die at the hand of the other'….and he wondered for perhaps the millionth time when he would next find himself in Dumbledore's office.

"Are you okay?" asked Ginny, watching him closely.

"Yeah," said Harry easily. "Hope it ends up a branch of Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes, then. You getting any?" he nodded at the barrel of Dungbombs.

"Nah," Ginny answered, and Harry thought she looked oddly guilty. "I've thought better of it."

"Harry! Ginny!" They both turned to see Luna weaving her way towards them through the clusters of students.

"Find some stationery?" Harry asked her dryly when she had reached them.

"Yes, thank you!" she said brightly. "It's got sunflowers in the corners, it's very pretty."

"I'm so glad." Harry shook his head, and he could have sworn Luna shot him the barest ghost of a wink.

"You lot fancy a Butterbeer?" Ginny suggested.

"Oooh yes," said Luna, clapping her hands together. "I've not had one in ages!"

"Do you mind if we stop by Dervish and Banges first?" asked Harry. "I want to see if they've got any owl treats for Hedwig." He had run out nearly a month ago and felt a bit guilty.

Dervish and Banges, it turned out, did not have any owl treats. Ginny proposed trying the post office to see if they had any extra, which was lucky not only because Harry succeeded in procuring two packages of Hedwig's usual premium treats, but he also managed to take advantage of Ginny and Luna being distracted by a nest full of fluffy new barn owl chicks to surreptitiously renew the numbing spell on his ribs. By the time they emerged from the post office, the sun was hanging lower in the sky, the air even colder than when they had gone in, and it was with great relief that they finally stumbled into the warmth of The Three Broomsticks, red-faced and breathless.

"Wotcher, Harry!" cried a familiar voice as the three of them shrugged off their cloaks.

Tonks was coming towards them from the bar, holding a giant glass mug full of amber liquid, off the top of which rolled a wispy, fog-like substance.

"Hey," said Harry, grinning.

"Hi, Tonks!" Ginny greeted her warmly. She nodded teasingly at the mug in her hands. "Drinking on the job?"

"Off duty," Tonks told them with a wink, taking a large swig of her drink.

"Luna, this is Tonks," Harry offered, remembering that they had never properly met. "Tonks, Luna."

"You were one of Harry's friends that came to help us at the Ministry, weren't you?" Luna asked her. "You ended up in St. Mungo's."

"Yeah," Tonks grimaced. "They couldn't keep me down for long though. Do it again in a heartbeat." She smiled affectionately at them all, but it slipped as she looked more closely at Harry. She gave him the brief once-over that was quickly becoming nearly as familiar to him as the double-take people did upon seeing his scar.

"Well, it was good seeing you," Harry told her quickly. "We should probably go find a table."

Tonks smiled again, though her brow remained a bit scrunched. "Good to see you, too. Ron and Hermione are over there if you're looking for them," she said, pointing to a table in the corner.

Harry followed her finger and sure enough the two of them were sat with hands wrapped around a couple of Butterbeers. Harry caught Ron's eye and looked away quickly. "Thanks," he said dully, not feeling remotely like explaining that he was emphatically not looking for either of them.

"Bye, then. I'll tell your Mum and Dad you say hi!" she called to Ginny over her shoulder as she disappeared to the other side of the pub.

Harry led the way over to the corner opposite Ron and Hermione and the three of them were just about to sit down at an empty booth when they spotted Neville waving them over from a nearby table.

Harry dropped into the seat next to him, but before he could ask Neville what he had been up to that had made him stumble all over himself the other day, Neville got up and said, "Four Butterbeers?"

"No, I'm – " Harry started, but Neville waved him off.

"It's alright, Gran just sent me some extra pocket money, it's no problem!" And he returned two minutes later with four foaming mugs, passing one out to each of them.

"Thanks, Neville."

"Thank you!"

Harry muttered his own thanks and took his, rather wishing it had been the bottled kind and not the sort with all the extra foam on top, but he took a sip like everyone else to silence any questions and immediately felt like recoiling at the ultra-sweetness. Luna giggled at the foam moustache left on Harry's lip, and he wiped it off quickly, rolling his eyes and pushing the rest of his drink to the side while Neville asked them what they had done all day.

Just as Ginny was explaining about Zonko's the door to the pub opened and Dean and Seamus wandered in, pulling off gloves and stamping the mud from their feet. Seamus grabbed two drinks from the bar, and Harry was surprised to see them head straight for the table where the four of them, including Ginny, were seated.

"What's the craic?" Seamus said cheerfully, plunking down the mugs.

Harry looked carefully between Ginny and Dean as the boys pulled up a couple of chairs, but when all that happened was the two of them nodding a bit stiffly to each other, and as they did not seem to be inclined to start glaring at one another over their drinks, he relaxed a little.

"I'm starved," Luna announced happily, beginning to pull her new stationery, a quill, and ink out of her robes and set them on the table. She slipped a sheet free and started writing what looked like a letter. "Anyone else?"

Ginny upended one of her Honeydukes bags, sending sweets spilling over the tabletop, and popped open a Chocolate Frog, munching on it contentedly, but Dean, Seamus, and Neville all voiced their hearty agreement with Luna; Dean and Neville, who seemed quite keen to spend the money his grandmother had sent to him, volunteered to go to the bar to order and came back with five hot plates of food between them, Neville sliding a dish of shepherd's pie in front of Harry as he and Dean sat back down.

Harry stared down at the plate, slightly taken aback, and tried to push it back towards Neville. "Er – that's okay, I'm not – "

But Neville pushed it back towards him, shrugging. "It didn't cost that much. You like shepherd's pie."

"Yeah," Harry conceded, idly pick up the fork and twisting it over and over in his hand. He smiled tightly. "Thanks, Neville."

Neville nodded, digging into his jacket potato, and Harry busied himself with poking little holes in his crust while everyone else began eating.

Ginny took another sip of her beer and rose out of her chair. "I'm going to say hello to Hermione and Ron – what? I'm not fighting with them," she added at the look on Harry's face. "I'll be right back."

Harry watched her go, twirling his fork again. Hermione and Ron were now sitting with their heads bent close together talking, and he had absolutely no good feelings about what that meant.

Dean spoke up around a mouthful of beef. "What's up with you two anyway?" he asked. He nodded in Ron's direction. "Why aren't you speaking?"

For a split second, Harry had thought Dean was asking what was up between him and Ginny, and he took a moment to let his heart slide back down into his chest before he responded, shrugging. "Just had a row, that's all."

He poked another hole in his pie crust.

"You lot have been doing that a lot recently…." Neville pushed his empty plate away and watched Harry pick at his food while he turned his Butterbeer mug in his hands. "You want something else?"

"Nah, it's fine," Harry said, dropping his fork into the pie. "Here, let me pay you back…." He reached into his pocket for his money bag, but Neville stopped him.

"No, I just meant…if there's something else you'd rather have…?"

Neville, Dean, Seamus, and Luna all looked at him, and Harry wished that he was somewhere anywhere else. He shook his head. "I got some licorice from Honeydukes earlier, must've ruined my appetite," he explained half-truthfully.

Harry was not sure he had convinced any of them, but Seamus and Dean went back to their food and Neville gazed down at his mug, picking at a spot of dried foam. Luna, however, was still staring at him with her wide silvery eyes, not dreamily or serenely, but sadly. His wish to disappear from the room intensified tenfold, and he cast about for something to say. Abruptly, he remembered what he had been about to ask Neville when they had first sat down.

"So what secret stuff were you doing earlier?" Harry wheedled him, and Neville froze, his mug halfway to his mouth. That same blush started to creep up Neville's neck again, and Dean, Seamus, and Luna, thankfully, turned their full attention on him, curious.

"What 'secret stuff'?" Seamus demanded.

"It's not important," Neville insisted weakly, setting his Butterbeer back on the table and sinking slightly lower in his chair.

"I don't know," Harry said, pretending to think it over. "I think it must have been pretty important for you to want to spend the day in Hogsmeade all by yourself instead of with us."

"I…." Neville started, opening his mouth and closing it again. He seemed to be struggling with something. "I...I wasn't by myself," he said, and sank even further in his chair, the blush seeping onto his round cheeks.

"Who were you with?" Harry demanded, wondering what on earth would make Neville this thoroughly embarrassed.

"Hannah," Neville squeaked, burying his face in his hands, and his next words came out a bit muffled. "I was with Hannah Abbott. We went to Madam Puddifoot's, okay?"

Harry stared while Seamus sat up ramrod straight and Luna said, "Ooh I like her, she seems quite lovely."

"Are you going out?" Seamus interrogated him.

"I dunno," Neville said, peeking out over his hands. "I…I think so…."

Seamus laughed and banged his fist on the table victoriously. Dean wolf-whistled. Luna smiled and returned cheerfully to her letter, which appeared to be to the Daily Prophet about the endangered habitat of the Crumple-Horned Snorkack. Harry thumped Neville on the back, grinning widely. Neville looked more embarrassed than ever but enormously relieved, and he regained some height in his chair.

"You don't think it's stupid?"

Harry shook his head. "Not if you like her…." He paused, frowning. "You do like her, don't you?" Neville nodded fervently, and Harry relaxed, clapping him on the shoulder again. "Good on you, then, though I hope you had a much better time at Madam Puddifoot's than I did…." He shuddered internally, thinking of his disastrous date with Cho.

Neville filled them all in – Ginny, too, when she had rejoined them ("Oh, Neville, that's brilliant!") – and they had a good time teasing him about prospective locations for future dates, until Dean and Seamus stood, refastening their cloaks about their shoulders, and bid everyone goodbye, though not before Seamus had called to Madam Rosmerta for another round to celebrate Neville's newly-minted status as 'Gryffindor's preeminent Casanova.'

Eventually, as if they had all agreed on the precise time to leave, Ginny swiped the remains of her uneaten candy back into her shopping bags, Luna rolled up her sunflower-covered letter to the Daily Prophet, and Neville finished off the last of the second Butterbeer Seamus had bought him. Harry couldn't resist one last gulp of his own now that the foam had dissolved (his shepherd's pie lay to the side forgotten), and then the four of them made their way out of the warm and smoky bar, back into the cool October air.

Twilight had fallen, the tall old-fashioned lamps blazing to life along the High Street. Ginny threw an arm around Luna's shoulders, breathing the night air in deeply through her nose, her breath misting on the way out, and both girls starting giggling as they breathed out forcefully over and over, attempting to best the size of each other's mists.

Harry grinned at them, laughter bubbling up into his throat, but then something caught his eye across the street that threatened to make him choke.

Draco Malfoy was leaning casually against the pole of one of the street lamps, twirling his wand idly in his pale hands, chatting to Goyle. Or rather chatting to himself as Goyle listened, as Goyle wasn't exactly known for his useful additions to any conversation. Harry stared hatefully at the lamp light gleaming off of Malfoy's blond head, feeling the wood of his wand underneath his fingers, wondering in the back of his mind when exactly he had pulled the wand out of his pocket…he could hear Hermione screaming in his ears as her leg shattered…he took an unconscious step forward, his head nearly pounding with the force of his loathing, and felt a hand on his wrist.

"Don't," Neville said quietly into his ear. "There are teachers here…" he warned, nodding back at the Three Broomsticks, to a table by the window where Flitwick and Sprout were enjoying drinks together, where they could easily see out to what was happening in the street….

But Harry did not care about teachers seeing. They so far had not bothered, any of them, to lift a finger to punish Malfoy. What did it matter if they saw him? He was past caring about detentions and losing House points. His blood boiled, heating him from the inside out, and he took several more steps into the road, Neville's grip tightening desperately on his arm.

"Harry, no!" Ginny called out behind him, noticing what was going on.

Her cry caught Malfoy's attention across the street and he stopped twirling his wand immediately; he stood up straighter, a mingled look of disgust and anticipation on his pointed face.

Another hand gripped Harry's elbow tightly, a bigger hand, and Harry realised that Ron had come of out the pub behind them with Hermione.

"Stop it, mate, I want to beat him to a pulp just as much as you do, but you're going to get in trouble, come on, don't – " Ron's grip tightened even further, and he broke off.

Harry knew, somehow, that Ron was feeling the odd layers of jumpers under his cloak, and it was the fear of discovery as much as his rage that made him wrench his arm viciously out of Ron's grasp and growl, "Get off!"

Across the road, Malfoy took a step towards them.

"Hey, Granger! Control your dogs, won't you?" he called, and Goyle guffawed behind him. Hermione came up beside Ron, glaring at Malfoy across the road. But Malfoy seemed to notice the teachers through the window of the pub at that moment and think better of pursuing the matter; he gave Harry one last disparaging look and gestured for Goyle to follow him, slinking off down the lane back to Hogwarts.

Unwilling to give up so easily, Harry made to lunge after him, but then Ron and Neville had each seized him with both hands again, holding him back. His muscles bunched, gearing up to fight them off with everything he had, and he opened his mouth, ready to say something he would surely regret, until Ginny stepped in front of him, bringing him up short.

"What do you think you're doing, are you mad? What are you going to do, fight Malfoy right here in the street like a maniac?" she demanded, her eyes blazing.

Harry stared at her, breathing heavily, his arms still held by Ron and Neville. He glanced up the street as Malfoy disappeared into the growing darkness, then back at Ginny who had her arms crossed over her chest.

Wordlessly, Harry jerked his arms, and Ron and Neville cautiously released their grip on him. He glared at the ground, pointedly shoving his wand back in his pocket.

"Thank you," Ginny muttered.

Harry shook his head mutinously, not looking at anyone.

Neville spoke up anxiously. "Shall – shall we go back up to the castle, then?"

"You go," Ginny told them, and when Harry made to follow everyone else, she poked a finger into his chest. "You can stay and cool off for second until Malfoy's well clear."

Harry threw her a dirty look, biting down hard on the inside of his cheek to keep from saying anything unkind, and she returned it without flinching. Ron hesitated, and so did Hermione, who appeared slightly shaken and not entirely sure about leaving Harry behind, but they seemed to decide that Ginny had the situation in hand, and finally turned and started up the road with Neville. Luna trailed after them, giving Harry an encouraging sort of smile.

Harry still itched to go after Malfoy, but he knew he would be disappointing Ginny if he did, and the thought kept him where he was as though his feet had been nailed to the ground.

"It's not like I was going to kill him," Harry mumbled grudgingly.

"Yeah?" Ginny challenged, her eyebrows raising. "The look on your face said differently."

Harry scoffed. "Like the world would miss the tosser," he said, rubbing his knuckles against his thigh.

Ginny uncrossed her arms, and took her gloves out of her pocket, pulling them on. "Just…stay away from him, alright? You've been in enough trouble lately…."

"He broke Hermione's leg, Ginny!" he burst out.

"I know," she said, watching him as he started to pace. "I know. I've heard Sprout talking to McGonagall – "

"Yeah, talking," he cut across her, kicking a stone into the road. "That's all they ever do is talk, and take points like this is all a game, and expect us to just sit here like good little boys and girls – "

"I don't think that's true," Ginny said quietly. "And if you keep going after Malfoy like this, you're going to get hurt."

"You don't think I could take him?" Harry wheeled to face her, offended.

"That's not what I said," she said, leveling him with a look. "But that's not the point, the point is you're going to make things worse for yourself if you can't calm down."

But Harry did not want to calm down. He felt like all he had been doing for months, for years, was trying to calm down, and it wasn't working. Most days he felt ready to explode, and it had nowhere to go…but Malfoy made for a good target…after all, the git would deserve it….

He refrained from saying any of this, as he was quite sure it was not what Ginny wanted to hear. The door of the pub opened, letting out a group of seventh year students who passed Harry and Ginny, laughing and talking on their way back up to the school.

Ginny sighed, looking at Harry. "Come on, you nutter, let's go." She smiled with a certain reluctant fondness and gestured up the road, and they began the long walk back together in silence, the sound of the laughter of the other students up ahead resounding through the night around them.

---

Dinner was in full swing by the time Harry and Ginny climbed through the portrait hole into Gryffindor Tower, and the common room was nearly empty apart from the older students that had been allowed out late enough to have their supper in the village. Harry wanted nothing more than to sink into one of the big armchairs by the fire and let the warmth wash over him, but Ron and Hermione were already occupying two of them, a stash of sweets laid out on the side table next to them, and Harry reluctantly headed for the staircase that led to the dormitories, mumbling a goodnight to Ginny.

Hermione rose slightly from her chair as Harry passed as though she wanted to say something to him, and Harry glanced in her direction. He stopped cold in his tracks, an icy hand wrapping tightly around his intestines.

"Where did you get those?" Harry demanded sharply.

Hermione opened her mouth and closed it in confusion, before realising that Harry was not looking at her at all, but at Ron. There was a box of chocolates open in his lap, and Ron was holding one in his hand. He had frozen with the chocolate halfway to his mouth at Harry's question.

"They were under my bed…." Ron said slowly, evidently surprised and a little suspicious that Harry was talking to him at all.

And Harry remembered. He remembered finding the box on his bed, and throwing it against the wall, and it had fallen behind his bedside table, and he had never thrown them away, he had forgotten all about them….

"Those aren't yours," Harry said tightly, staring at the box.

"How do you know?" countered Ron, his brow furrowing. "Mum probably sent them, or Fred and George – "

"They didn't. Don't eat them, Ron, I'm serious – "

"That's what I've been telling him," Hermione started dryly. "He's already had enough chocolate today for the both of us."

Harry ignored this, his eyes still fixed upon the box, and stalked towards the armchair where Ron was sitting, but Ron's expression turned challenging as Harry approached him and he said, "What do you care, it's not like you eat sweets anymore anyway…."

Harry lunged to swipe the box out of Ron's hand, but Ron whipped them out of the way and pointedly popped the chocolate into his mouth.

"Ron, NO!"

But it was too late, and Harry watched in horror as Ron swallowed. He felt almost paralysed with terror as he stood there with his hand still outstretched. He was aware somewhere in the back of his mind that other people were paying attention now, surprised by his shout, and that Hermione and Ginny and Ron were all looking at him as though he had lost his mind. But then Ron dropped the package of chocolates and they fell to the ground with a thud; he suddenly looked as if he had been clubbed over the head. His jaw went slack and his eyes became distant, looking at something far away that nobody else could see. Then a delighted, blissful expression came over him, happiness shining in his wide blue eyes.

"Romilda," Ron sighed dreamily.

Harry's stomach seemed to fall straight through the floor.

Hermione stared at Ron incredulously. "Vane?"

She bent and peered into Ron's eyes, made highly difficult by the fact that Ron was now looking desperately about, apparently hoping to catch some sign of Romilda. Hermione scooped up the box of chocolates from the floor, turning it over to read the back, her eyes flicking quickly back and forth in search of some explanation. Ginny was looking wide-eyed between Harry and Ron.

Harry's mind was blank, wiped clean by dread and disbelief, but as he stood there immobile, Ron half-rose out of his chair, saying "Romilda?" again in such a terrible, hopeful voice, and it was like a stimulant to his brain; he moved forward purposefully, taking the package of chocolates from Hermione's hands and tossing it straight into the fire, which rose higher for a moment, turning the colour of deep magenta, then settled back to its normal size. Harry seized Ron under the elbows and hauled him out of the chair, knowing suddenly exactly what to do.

Ron struggled and tried to bat Harry's hands away. "What are you doing, I've got to go find Romilda! She's waiting for me, I know it, I just have to – "

"I'm taking you to her," Harry told him, hating himself for saying it, but Ron stopped struggling immediately.

"You are?" said Ron breathlessly, amazed, now clinging onto Harry's arms.

"Yeah," Harry told him, pushing him towards the portrait hole. "She's downstairs, I'll show you…."

"Brilliant, brilliant…." Ron muttered, reaching up to straighten his hair with both hands.

"Harry, what's – " Hermione began, but Harry was not going to explain it to her here, in front of Ginny and the other students who were still staring. He shook his head sharply and gestured for her to follow him and Ron out of the common room.

"He'll be fine, Ginny," Harry called, catching the worry on her face as he hurried to keep Ron from tripping over himself out of the portrait hole. "We'll be back later, don't worry…."

The Fat Lady swung shut behind them. Hermione was wringing her hands as she watched Ron hurry to walk ahead of them; she looked very white.

"He'll be fine," Harry repeated, and it was like the past ten days had never happened. Ron's plight had driven everything else from his mind, and he could not muster the energy to be angry with Hermione over the sleeping tablets at the moment. "We've just got to get him to Slughorn…."

But Hermione didn't quite seem to be listening. "It's a love potion, isn't it? It was inside those chocolates. They were…they were yours, weren't they?"

Harry grimaced and nodded. "Romilda Vane gave them to me, I think she thought I might be stupid enough to try them. Forgot I hadn't thrown them out," he explained, trying to sound off-hand, even though his belly was a mass of bubbling nerves.

Ron was glancing about wildly again, looking for Romilda, and walked straight into a suit of armour, bouncing backwards with a loud clang. "She didn't see that, did she?" he asked hastily, rubbing his forehead.

"No, Ron," said Hermione a bit absently, taking Ron's arm and guiding him back into the middle of the corridor. "She's not here."

If someone had asked Harry how Hermione would react to Ron accidentally being dosed with love potion and subsequently acting like a total idiot, he might have said she would have found it amusing, or at the very least annoying, but he would not have guessed at her going pale, and a bit distant like she was now, as though she were trying to figure out a particularly serious Arithmancy problem. It was making Harry even more uncomfortable, though he wasn't entirely sure why it should.

Slughorn's study was on the sixth floor, a relatively short trip from Gryffindor Tower, but Harry prayed the whole way down not to run into Romilda coming back from dinner, his mind cooking up every worst-case scenario. But they managed to make it to the door without incident and Harry knocked, hard.

"Won't Slughorn be at dinner?" Hermione voiced, coming back to herself a little.

"No," Harry told her while Ron checked his breath, blowing surreptitiously into his own palm. "He almost never eats with the rest of the staff on Saturdays…."

"What are we doing here?" Ron whined. "I thought we were going to see Romilda!"

"She's in there, Slughorn invited her for supper tonight," Harry invented, jabbing a thumb at the door.

"Oh," said Ron, straightening his collar, "okay, yeah…yeah…."

Harry was about to knock again when the door was pulled open and Slughorn appeared, a napkin tucked into his shirtfront. He looked slightly put-out at being interrupted, but his eyes brightened upon seeing Harry and Hermione.

"Good heavens, Harry my dear boy! Miss Granger," he said, nodding genially. "I must say this is a surprise, I'm just having my supper, you see – "

But Harry and Hermione quickly explained about the love potion, their story infinitely proven by Ron trying to push his way into the room, held back only by their hands on him, and Slughorn waved them into his lavishly decorated study. Chortling, he offered them to sit while he went to his potions cabinet and went about preparing the antidote.

"Where is she?" Ron demanded, peering behind a wardrobe.

"She'll be here in a minute," Hermione reassured him, patting his shoulder kindly.

Harry sat down on the edge of a sofa, and Hermione sank down next to him, her hands clasped tightly together as Ron paced about the room muttering to himself about keeping his cool.

The expression on Ron's face was soppy and lovesick, and Harry couldn't stop himself wondering if that was what he had looked like, that night in the broom cupboard. Just imagining it made him feel instantly mortified all over again. He wiped his palms on his thighs, listening to Slughorn clinking around behind them.

"Harry?" Hermione ventured cautiously. "You're shaking…."

He glanced at her. She was watching him very seriously, and it threw him. He knew his voice would not come out right if he tried to say anything, so he shook his head. He felt his nails try to dig into his wrist and he got up, focusing instead on attempting to usher Ron into a chair to stop his pacing. He managed to get Ron to perch on the arm of a bergère just as Slughorn bustled back into view, a glass of clear liquid in his hand.

"Here you are, Roger – ("Ron," Harry and Hermione both corrected him at once) – drink up, it'll help calm the nerves," instructed Slughorn, handing him the glass.

Ron took it from him eagerly and downed the whole thing in one. They all watched him. After a second, the infatuated expression slowly melted off of his freckled face, and his eyes went a bit wide, staring round at the three of them in horror.

"Blimey…." he croaked, handing the now-empty glass weakly to Harry.

Slughorn chuckled; but Harry knew something of what Ron was feeling, remembered coming back to himself after the enchantment had lifted, and he felt a bit like throwing up.

"There now, all better," Slughorn said good-naturedly. "How about a drink after all that excitement, hm? I think I've got some wine here, or Butterbeer if you like – "

"Thank you, Professor," said Hermione suddenly, shooting to her feet. "We really appreciate all your help, but I think we ought to be going actually, we'll let you finish your supper…."

"Ah yes," conceded Slughorn, looking torn between enjoying the company of two of his favourite students and the temptation of finishing his meal in peace. "Well, by all means! Lots of work to get to, I expect, no rest for N.E.W.T. levels, I daresay!"

"Yes," agreed Hermione, smiling politely and smoothing her skirt. "Lots of work, come on, Ron…Harry…."

Ron moped towards the door, shaking his head like a dog trying to rid water from its ears. Harry thanked Slughorn again, who gave a gracious wave, and followed his friends out into the hall where Ron seemed to have fully recovered from the addling effects of the love potion.

"Close call, eh?" Ron said, blowing out a breath in disbelief. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and chuckled nervously, looking at Harry. "I suppose those chocolates were meant for you, then? Who knew everyone would be so desperate to get a chance to snog the Chosen One – "

"That's not funny," Harry snapped, and Ron broke off.

"C'mon, mate, it was only a joke, it's just lucky we didn't run into Romilda, I guess…."

"It's not a fucking joke, Ron – how would she even get a potion like that into the castle?" Harry rounded on Hermione, voicing something that had been nagging at him for weeks.

Ron stared, looking a bit offended. Hermione was looking at him, too, and she took a minute to answer.

"She probably ordered it from Fred and George's shop," she explained slowly. "They offer a service where they switch the bottles and labels so Hogwarts security can't detect anything, they told me about it over the summer. I'm sure there are loads of students who have got things they shouldn't…."

Harry felt sick. He had forgotten all about the fact that Fred and George sold love potions.

"What's the big deal?" Ron asked, shrugging his shoulders. "It's not like contraband at Hogwarts is a novelty, so what? Honestly half of Fred and George's client base is probably students from here – "

"So what?" Harry repeated angrily. "What the hell are they thinking, letting just anyone buy this stuff?"

"Harry, calm down, it's not as though any of the stuff they've got is Dark, or dangerous, they're gags," Ron explained, a little exasperated.

"Oh yeah? Just gags, are they?" Harry argued, his temper rising fast. "How d'you think you'd feel if someone gave you a love potion and this time no one had been around to stop it and – " He stopped abruptly, mortified at what he was saying.

"And…what, Harry?" Hermione asked softly. She sounded almost scared.

Harry did not like the way she was looking at him. It was the look she usually got before she ran off to the library to confirm a theory. He stood rooted to the spot, his tongue leaden in his mouth. He couldn't say it. He couldn't.

Ron looked between the two of them. He took his hands out of his pockets, a wary unease creasing his forehead.

"Okay. Come on," Hermione said seriously, and there was an ominous note of finality as she grasped Harry's hand in hers and began to pull him down the corridor, away from Slughorn's office door and back toward Gryffindor Tower.

Harry wanted to stop, to pull his hand away, to again tell them both to leave him alone, but he could tell by the look on Hermione's face that she already knew something of what Harry could not bring himself say to them. Exactly how much and how she had figured it out he wasn't certain, but the thought that she might know anything was a horrifying, alarming, terrifying sort of relief. He felt as if he were sliding down a slick slope toward a kind death after years of suffering and part of him did not want to stop it at all.

So caught up was he in his own warring thoughts, Harry didn't notice which doorway Hermione was pulling him through until they were already across the threshold. Ron followed them quickly into the room and made to shut the door when Harry finally looked up and balked. He took in the stacks of boxes, the crate of Madame Glossy's Silver Polish, the innocuous bit of carpet rolled up in the corner. He could taste the sweet potion on his tongue, in his throat, and he glanced automatically to the floor, almost expecting to see the damning puddle of pink syrup he had spit out onto the floor.

Harry ripped his hand out of Hermione's, stumbling backwards and wrenching open the door before Ron could close it.

"Harry, wait!" Hermione called.

Harry staggered along the corridor, one hand on the wall to support himself. He heard Ron and Hermione behind him, and he felt Ron seize his shoulder.

"You can't just keep ignoring us, for Merlin's sake," Ron snarled.

"I…can't be in there," Harry tried to gasp, but he couldn't make the words come out right.

It was clear Ron did not understand. Harry knew he thought he was just trying to run from them again. Ron's grip tightened on his arm and he practically hauled Harry down the hall and through another doorway into an unused classroom.

Hermione closed the door this time as Harry sagged against the wall, doing his best to catch his breath. He tried to pull his arm out of Ron's grasp, but Ron's tolerance seemed to have reached its limit, and Harry still could not find the words to explain. Ron grabbed hold of his other arm and pushed Harry none-too-gently against the wall.

"Ron!" Hermione protested, but Ron ignored her.

"You're not going anywhere, not this time, I'm sick of this," Ron said sharply.

The lingering smell of the broom cupboard seemed to cling to Harry's nose, and the squeeze of Ron's vice-like grip around his arms made him feel trapped and cornered.

"I don't – I don't want – " Harry managed, his breath hitching. He tried to prise Ron's fingers open but he didn't have the strength.

"Tough," Ron snapped. "I want you to stop being a selfish bastard, but that hasn't worked out either. I've had enough of you biting our heads off and acting like you can't trust us! What the hell is your problem? I thought we were supposed to be best mates."

Ron's eyebrows knitted together as his grip shifted, and Harry knew, again, that Ron could feel the thick layer of jumpers he had taken to donning. Narrowing his eyes, Ron seized the hem at Harry's waist and rucked up the fabric, revealing the total of three tops he was wearing and baring Harry's now rather concave stomach to their disbelieving eyes. Hermione gasped over Ron's shoulder.

Harry had just enough wits about him to be grateful Ron had not lifted the side of his shirt covering his bruised ribs.

Ron swore fiercely.

Harry felt the air whisper across his naked skin and saw in his mind the roll of carpet against the wall in the corner of that cupboard and he wanted to shove Ron away, wanted to get out of this room, but his lips were no more able to say "no" than they were that night and all he could do was turn his head away from his friends and the memory threatening to pull him apart and close his thin fingers over Ron's wrist, a silent plea for Ron to let him go.

"Ron," came Hermione's quiet, urgent voice. "Stop."

Ron released his hold instantly, letting Harry's shirts fall back into place and stepping back slightly so that they were no longer touching.

Harry returned to himself just enough to be able to open his eyes and turn his face back to his friends, though he could do nothing more than remain frozen against the wall. The two of them were looking at him, wide-eyed and cautious.

"Harry?" ventured Ron, and his voice was insistent. Scared, Harry realised.

"You're white as a sheet," Hermione said quietly, her voice trembling. After a second, she swallowed and asked, "Why can't you be in that cupboard, Harry? What happened?"

"Nothing," said Harry, but it was automatic.

He knew that this time there was nowhere to run and the tiny part of him not currently devoted to refraining from vomiting or passing out knew he was about to do what he should have done weeks ago. If anything, it only made him feel worse.

"What happened?" Hermione repeated firmly.

"Nothing," Harry whispered again, his voice cracking. One last desperate try. He swallowed, hard.

The truth of what was happening seemed to heighten his senses, and everything fell in upon him all at once – their eyes on him, the smell of chalk in the room, the certainty of what he was about to do. His legs felt unsteady, and Ron moved out of the way as he blindly staggered to a chair, sinking into it. They were not going to give up, he knew. And he was so tired. Tired of carrying the weight of these awful secrets alone. Ron and Hermione standing above him made him feel even more vulnerable if that was possible, but he was certain his knees would not support him through the things he needed to say. A blaze of heat suffused his face and he buried it in his hands, bracing his elbows on his knees.

"You can tell us," Hermione said into the silence. Her voice was barely a whisper.

Harry knew he should answer, but his mouth felt closed up by a permanent sticking charm.

"It – it's about Romilda Vane, isn't it? And that love potion…she gave you some. Didn't she?"

Harry felt a keen mix of relief that she was taking the lead in this conversation and embarrassment that she somehow seemed to already know exactly where to take it.

With agonizing slowness, he nodded into his hands.

"Did you two kiss?"

Just as slowly, he nodded again.

Hermione paused. "Did she – ? Was it…more…than that?"

Wishing his neck muscles would seize up and stop working of their own accord, Harry nodded again miserably.

There was a stretch of silence. Then a careful scraping sound as Hermione pulled out another chair and sat down quietly in front of him.

"It's okay," she said softly. "Look at me."

Reluctantly, so very reluctantly, Harry dragged his burning face from his hands and looked up at Hermione. Her face was tight and set. She was staring unflinchingly at him. It was like looking into a bright light.

"What did she do?"

Harry looked away. He wrapped his arms loosely around his stomach, feeling cold again. His mind felt like it was frozen and moving too fast at the same time, running circles around itself in an effort to suspend this moment in time, to stall the inevitable. An eternity seemed to pass, and perhaps it did, for Harry's breath froze in his chest, his body as still as a statue. He felt the words crawling up his throat, aching to get out. Several times, he tried to move his mouth, until eternity came to an end, and Harry finally couldn't hold them back anymore.

"She made me..." he choked out. "She made me...have sex with her."

Harry heard himself say it, and he was surprised the walls did not come crumbling down around him.

For a long moment, neither Ron nor Hermione moved or spoke.

"Okay," Hermione said, sounding as though she were trying to keep herself – keep all three of them – together. "Okay."

Harry glanced at her. She was staring at him, and he could almost see her thoughts tumbling together in her brain, assembling, triaging. Her gaze was intent, and Harry glanced to Ron, scared of what he might find but needing to know.

Ron's eyes were wide, his mouth slightly open, and there was a pinched edge to his face that hinted only too clearly at his disgust. Harry looked away, the need to defend himself rearing up so forcefully it pushed the words out of him before he knew what he was saying.

"I'm sorry. I know it's stupid. I don't know why I've been so…." He tightened his arms around himself and searched around for words that might possibly describe what had been happening inside his head for the past two months. "I dunno. It shouldn't be a big deal. You can laugh, if you want."

He almost hoped they would. If they did, maybe he finally could too. For a second, he was quite sure they would be relieved that this was all that had been bothering him, and then they could all just forget any of it had ever happened.

But Hermione did not look relieved.

"Laugh," she repeated, like she wasn't sure she'd heard him properly. She was staring at him as if seeing him clearly for the first time. "Harry," she said slowly. Carefully. "You were raped."

There was a ringing silence as that damning sentence hung in the air like a putrid smell. Ron looked at Hermione, a deep frown forming, then back at Harry, the pinching in his face more pronounced.

The ugly thing under Harry's skin gave a wild pulse. A dozen thoughts clambered to be examined in his brain, but the loudest and most important one – the one he seized upon and threw up like a shield – was that that word did not, and could not, apply to him. He felt held in place, the blood drawing out of his fingers and toes. The panic that had seized him so frequently the past months did not feel like it was fighting to get out of him, but rather like it was turning inward, locking his mind away safely, so that he did not feel quite like himself. It might have been another person sitting here talking to his best friends.

Harry heard himself make a sound halfway between a scoff and laugh. "No, I wasn't," he said as he stared in mild disbelief at Hermione. His lips felt numb. "She's a girl."

The concern in Hermione's eyes had turned into something more alarming. "That doesn't mean anything, Harry. She – she made you do something you didn't want to do."

"But I did," Harry argued, and wondered why his breath wasn't turning to mist before his eyes. "I did want to. She made me want to – she Stunned me, and made me take the potion. I didn't fight her. I couldn't," he told her, his voice breaking. This seemed important to say. In his present state of odd detachment, Harry was finally able to admit to himself the real reason he had not told Ron and Hermione all this a long time ago.

He had not been able to stop her.

For all that he was supposed to be the Chosen One, for all the apparent talent at Defence everyone insisted he possessed, for all that he was a sixth year and she was a fourth year, Romilda had been able to Confund him, and trap him, and do whatever else she had wanted to him, and the shame was enough to burn Harry to smoldering ash from the inside out.

"That doesn't make it better, Harry," said Hermione gently. "In a lot of ways, it makes it worse."

Harry could feel himself shaking his head slowly back and forth. He focused on a spot on the far wall.

"Oh God…." Hermione whispered, and the anguish in the way she said it threatened to tug Harry back into his body. Her hand came up, fluttering over his knee, but she did not touch him. She pulled her hand back into her lap.

"Romilda was at Quidditch tryouts," Ron said abruptly, staring at Harry.

Harry nodded numbly, and he knew they were all thinking of the scene he had made in the locker room that day.

"So it's been you, then? Playing all those tricks on her?" Hermione asked cautiously, her hands folded tightly on her thighs.

"No," Harry said simply. He didn't really want to think about that right now.

There was silence again, until Ron finally spoke up, his voice low. "Is that why you haven't been hungry?"

Harry's stomach did a little flip, and his whole being wanted to grasp desperately at the tail feathers of that particular little secret and pull it back and keep it inside him, but the part of his mind that knew his food problems were getting worse every day pushed the other part even further into nothingness.

Still staring helplessly, his fingers trembling, Harry heard his own flat voice say, "I am."

Ron shifted on his feet. "You are, what?"

"I'm hungry," Harry said. "I get hungry. All the time."

Hermione closed her eyes at this, biting down on her bottom lip before opening them again.

Ron looked disturbed. "Then why," he started, a pleading note in his voice, "won't you eat?"

And even though he felt far away from the conversation, Harry still did not want to explain. He didn't want to say all this. He did not want them to know how screwed up he was, but his mouth had taken on a mind of its own, and now that he had started talking he couldn't seem to stop.

"I can't," said Harry. "It feels all wrong, now. It's too much. I'm…I feel…heavy, all the time. It won't go away. When I don't – when I'm empty – it helps. It's better. I feel like…like I can get her out of my head. Like I can get everything out of my head. I can breathe."

Ron stared at him. His eyes flickered briefly to Hermione, and something passed between the two of them. "So…you're doing it on purpose?" he asked in a tone that hinted that his worst suspicions were being confirmed.

Harry opened his mouth, wanting to say both 'yes' and 'no' at the same time. It didn't feel like he was doing it on purpose, anymore. "Not really," he admitted. "I don't know how to stop. 'M not sure if I can."

Ron stared a moment longer, shaking his head slightly back in forth as though that might shuffle everything into place. He looked away, staring at the blackboard. Abruptly, he swore and aimed a vicious kick at the leg of a nearby desk.

Hermione jumped, and so did Harry, whose body and brain felt like they had been slammed jarringly back into one piece at the loud noise. They stared at Ron, who noticed them looking.

"Sorry," he said shortly.

Harry suddenly felt highly aware of his surroundings again, of the way Ron was looking at him, the sheen of tears in Hermione's eyes, the hardness of the chair underneath him. Everything he had just said replayed in head, and his stomach dropped. He felt flayed open and raw. He already wished he could take it all back – the realisation that he couldn't was nearly incapacitating. He shouldn't have said anything. How could he have been so stupid? Hermione and Ron knew now, they knew (they knew they knew they knew) and he imagined that this might be how it would feel if someone had ripped out his guts and put them on display under a spotlight.

Hermione reached out again, and this time she made contact, touching his arm. Harry pulled away and stood, backing away from her. He wanted to say I'm sorry or forget about it or I was joking, anything to stop them looking at him like they were, but there was nothing he could think of that could reverse what had just changed between them.

Hermione stood, too, moving towards him, and Harry forced himself to stand still, because not for nothing was he a Gryffindor.

She looked into his face, her eyes unbearably sad, then she whispered, "Come here," and slowly, carefully put her arms around him, pulling him to her.

The warm weight of her body against his felt instantly dangerous, but it was also nice in a way Harry hadn't experienced in what felt like ages. He stood stiffly in her embrace, but the frizzy hair tickling his cheek didn't smell like roses or chocolates, and she was touching him so tenderly, and his arms went around her, gripping the back of her jumper. His head fell onto her shoulder as his body nearly sagged with the relief that someone else was finally carrying some of the weight.

Her arms tightened around him, holding him, and she said softly in his ear, "You're going to be okay, Harry." He screwed his eyes shut tight, his knuckles digging into her back, but she didn't seem to mind. "It wasn't your fault."

Yes, it was, Harry wanted to say, how could it not have been?

She pulled back just enough to press a kiss into the hair at his temple and he almost couldn't breathe past the lump forming in his throat. Then he was shaking, every fiber of his body concentrating on not crying, because he had felt more vulnerable in the last hour than he had in his entire life, and Ron was standing not five feet away watching.

Another arm came around Harry's shoulders then, Ron's arm, encircling both him and Hermione, and Harry's first startled thought was how awkward it was. Hermione had hugged him before, sometimes – usually when he was recovering from nearly dying.

Ron did not. It just wasn't something they did, and that was how it was.

It felt foreign, and slightly uncomfortable, and so completely fitting in an oddly intimate way that if Harry hadn't already been struggling to breathe properly, the feeling of Ron's arm across his back might have done it on its own. Overwhelming affection and a fierce sense of simultaneous yearning and belonging surged through him and threatened to tear him apart from the inside.

It took Harry a moment to realise he was feeling safe, standing here with Ron and Hermione's arms around him. They weren't reacting like he had feared they might, as though he, Harry, was disgusting, or stupid, or weak. They were just there. Beside him, just as they had always been.

The burning in his throat started to pool behind his eyes, and Harry bit down savagely on his lip until he tasted blood. With greater reluctance than he could admit, he forced himself to move, balking at the thought of making an even bigger fool of himself than he already had. He let go of his grip on Hermione's jumper, shifting, and their arms fell away from him.

Harry's face flamed, and a hot tear slid from the corner of his eye before he could stop it. He swiped it away quickly, pretending to readjust his glasses, and studied a globe of Neptune on a shelf to his left. He tried to think of something to say, but thank you didn't quite seem to cover it.

"Well," he croaked finally, braving a glance at them. "Now you know."

Hermione's face crumpled, and she scrubbed her face with her hands. Ron's face was as red as Harry suspected his own was, but he didn't look away. The skin around his eyes was tight with concern.

Hermione seemed to get a grip on herself, and she emerged from behind her hands, sniffling. "It can't keep on like this," she told Harry, sounding like she had a bad head cold. "You know that, don't you? We've got to tell somebody."

"I just told you two," Harry said, as though it were obvious.

Hermione shook her head. "That's not what I mean. I'm glad you told us, I'm so glad, Harry, I am, but…we – Ron and I – we're not enough. You need help." Her eyes hardened ominously as she added. "And Romilda Vane should be expelled. Dumbledore needs to know."

Harry's insides turned to ice, the idea was so unthinkable. "No," he rasped. "You can't tell him."

"But he – "

"You can't tell him. Anything." He stared at her. "He can't ever know, Hermione. Please…."

"I won't let her get away with this!" Hermione hissed so fiercely Harry thought she might have been channeling Crookshanks. "That vile – that evil – she sneaked that potion in! They're banned at Hogwarts, and they should be everywhere else! She…she hurt you…." Her chin wobbled as she looked at him imploringly, and more tears threatened to spill over.

"She didn't hurt me," Harry corrected her quietly, feeling his face flush again.

Hermione's eyes filled with something like pity at this; unable to stand it, he averted his eyes back to the globe of Neptune.

"It's your choice, Harry," Hermione said quietly. "But I don't think she deserves your protection. Do you?"

"I'm not trying to protect her," he said bitterly, his lip curling at the thought.

"I know that," said Hermione softly. "But she broke the rules, and you're the one paying for it. There's nothing that can be done about what she did if you don't say anything. Will you at least…think about it?"

Harry nodded tersely, more to get her to stop talking about it than anything else. He imagined the would-be expression on Dumbledore's lined face, and he knew he could never allow it to happen.

Hermione bit her lip, and eyed him warily.

"But, Harry, someone has to know about the food."

Harry's mouth went dry, and he shook his head, turning back to her. "I'll figure it out, I just…I just need more time."

"You said you didn't think you could stop doing it," Ron reminded him, frowning.

Harry's stomach twisted. He felt sweat beginning to gather at the back of his neck. "I can. I can do it, if I have to," he told them. He did not know if this was true, only that he would rather die than go to see Madam Pomfrey. He didn't have a choice.

"It doesn't always have to be all down to you, Harry, when are you going to accept that? This isn't something you can fix with a spell or a potion, you're not well, and there are people who can help – stop shaking your head – Dumbledore would want to know about this, I know he would, and McGonagall. Besides, they might already know – "

"How would they?" Harry asked abruptly, his throat dry. Snape's voice rose out of nowhere, echoing in his head. You fool….

"Well, Hagrid knows a bit now, doesn't he? You should have heard him after you left that night, he was…well, he didn't take it too well. For all we know, he might have said something already," said Ron.

Hermione looked a bit guilty. "We should have done, I know we should have, ages ago. But…oh Harry, we didn't want you to think you couldn't trust us, or – or – but now look what's happened!" Her eyes were trained on his midriff, and he knew she was thinking of what she'd seen when Ron had bared his stomach. "And anyway, Dumbledore's not oblivious Harry, he's quite clever, and sometimes lately I think he – "

Harry cut her off, not desiring at all to hear the end of that sentence. "I'll talk to Hagrid. Okay? I'll calm him down, and – it'll be fine. I'll be fine. No one else needs to know about this, it's just a weird phase or – or – I dunno, I can fix it, I swear…." He looked at her imploringly, and he could see her resolve wavering as he pleaded.

Her jaw tightened, however, and Harry was forcefully reminded of Mrs. Weasley. "No. No. Harry, you've got to let us – "

"One week."

Harry and Hermione both looked at Ron.

"Ron, you can't be serious, this has gone on long enough, look at him – !"

But Ron held up a hand. His face was set. "You've got one week, and if it doesn't get any better, we're taking you to the hospital wing. I don't care if we have to drag you there." And he looked like he really meant to do it.

"A week!" Harry sputtered. "That's not enough – "

"Look, I'm not stupid, I don't mean five-course meals, or even normal ones, okay? Not yet. But Merlin's balls, just more. Alright? You've got to eat more than you have been, and if you can't do it…that's a problem, Harry. That's a big effing problem." Ron's face seemed to pinch again, like he was fighting down bile.

Harry's attention seized on to the 'not yet' part of Ron's statement and suddenly felt as though he were fighting down the same thing himself. He wondered how everything had got to this point, that a normal meal sounded like a death sentence, and that Ron was the one imposing procedures about Harry's health.

"C'mon, Ron," Harry beseeched him. "I need more time than that…."

"No," Ron answered. "Time's up, mate. Listen, you can hate us if you want, I don't care. At least you'll be alive to do it."

There was silence for a whole minute in which Harry attempted to find some loophole, some possible way out of this arrangement. He knew he didn't have a choice, but he did not like conceding so easily to the power Ron and Hermione now held over him, the power he had stupidly just handed to them, and he stretched the moment out before his compliance as long as he could.

"Fine," he said shortly, looking away in defeat. "Happy?"

Ron snorted heavily. "Yeah. I'm absolutely thrilled you're so miserable," he said sarcastically. "Really chuffed that you have to be negotiated into eating more than three cornflakes for breakfast. The party's on Thursday."

Harry said nothing. His eyes bored into a spot on the chair beside Hermione until his vision seemed to go fuzzy around the edges.

"Anything else you haven't told us?"

Harry thought about the ache that was now growing again in his ribs, but he was not sure he wanted to mention it. He'd had enough of spilling his secrets for one day.

"Yeah."

Ron and Hermione both immediately looked like they were bracing for an impact.

"Neville's dating Hannah Abbott."

They stared at him, taken aback. Then Ron said, "You're joking…." and Hermione lifted a hand to her mouth to stifle a giggle, and before Harry knew it they were all three of them laughing, really laughing, high on nerves and fear and relief, and for a second Harry felt like they were all eleven years old again, when their biggest problem had been facing down a mountain troll in a girls' bathroom.

They eventually managed to calm themselves down and stood for a moment, offering each other exhausted half-smiles as the events of the night hovered almost tangibly between them.

"Come on," Hermione said tiredly, tugging at Ron's arm. She looked at Harry. "Let's get to bed, alright? We could all use some rest. Things will look better in the morning. It'll be okay…."

Things were surely going to look far worse in the morning, Harry thought, his mind on the week ahead of him. But he did not bother to say this, or to think too deeply about what Ron and Hermione now knew about him and the furtive looks they continued to give him as he led the way silently out of the room.