Last updated 1/?/2019
Chapter Eight
Haunting of the Past and Present
Sometimes, our past stays with us, and it all comes rushing back in with a wrong glance, an agressive stance, or a sharp word. Then we remember it all, as if we were stuck in those old moments again and had never truly ever left.
Growing Up
"Could you believe the nerve of them?" Hermione ranted. "They just – ! Oh, it's so frustrating. Why don't they listen?" "They" meant Harry Potter and Ronald Weasley, and according to Hermione, they were the most reckless, most infuriating boys that she had ever met.
"You saw a three headed dog?" Danny said dumbly, still in shock at the tale she had told him. A three headed dog. In the forbidden third corridor.
He had never felt more glad that Sir Nicholas had stopped Dean and Seamus from entering that room on the first door corridor. Nevermind that Harry, Ron and Hermione had gone in and somehow survived –
"Yes!" Hermione exclaimed exasperatedly. "And it was guarding something! But that doesn't matter, you see, because they broke the rules." She said "the rules" as if it were something sacred.
Danny could see when he should back off, even though he was practically dying of curiosity.
"That was pretty risky of them," he agreed reluctantly.
What was in the third floor corridor?
"Risky? They shouldn't have done it in the first place!"
"Mmm."
The conversation sort of died out of that, even as Hermione fumed. Danny couldn't help but feel glad for it, even as he wondered what sort of secrets Hogwarts was hiding.
He cast his thoughts back to what Hermione had told him, and smiled.
Neville had been there.
Humanity
In the weeks that they had been in Hogwarts, Neville had changed. Their friendship had done something to him, made him more outspoken and bold. Yet, there was still a reluctance, a pause before every word, that told Danny that it was something he dared himself to do rather than a natural assertiveness.
The change wasn't enough to convince Neville to try and help Danny figure out what might be under the trapdoor in the third floor corridor.
"Please?" Danny begged.
Neville shook his head to say "no," but Danny thought if he pushed a bit harder, his friend would change his mind.
The event ended in disaster, however, when Hermione walked into the common room, a strange sort of smile on her face. It disappeared when she took in the two of them, the words that she had last heard lingering in the air shooting through her brain lightning-fast.
She did not appear to like the conclusions she came to.
"What are you doing?" she asked, accusatory.
"Nothing!" Neville squeaked, just as Danny said, "Trying to figure out what's beneath that trapdoor."
They glanced at each other, both slightly alarmed and angry at the other's response.
Hermione scowled, undiscriminating with her reproach.
"You're not planning on doing anything stupid like going there, are you?" she asked.
Danny really hadn't been, but there was something about the way that she leapt to assumptions that made him angry.
"Well, what if I was?" he asked, taking to his feet in a strong stance, lifting his chin defiantly –
– her eyes widened into an almost comical expression of surprise, she gasped, and her fingers spasmed around the book she held clutched in her hands. There was a strange, high-pitched sound emitting from her throat when she turned around and fled out the portrait entrance of the Gryffindor common room, muttering "pigsnout, pigsnout" hurriedly as she left to where she had come from.
Danny stared after her, feeling suddenly quite lost.
What… is that about?
"Nary a tarry when there art a fairy," Neville said wisely after a pause, looking at Danny sidelongedly as Hermione stormed from the room.
"What does that even mean?" he asked, still staring at the portrait frame and Neville shrugged, looking meek for a second before catching himself.
Did I cause… that? That thought bugged him more than he could say. She had looked… scared?
"It's a wizarding saying," he said, as if that explained everything.
He paused. Danny continued staring.
Then, finally,
"It means that you shouldn't delay when a fairy is involved," he said, a little hesitantly.
"A fairy?" Danny asked, but he was already moving. He didn't see Neville's nervous gulp or noncommittal shrug, because he had already rushed past the portrait door, making his own rushed utterances of "pigsnout."
He found her in the library, of course. She was tucked away in the far corner, nearly hidden from sight. A book was open before her, but her eyes were still and glazed, a difference from the usual eager darting as they traversed across ink and parchment. She looked surprised, then apprehensive, to see him.
"Hello," he said, as he sat down across her. He wasn't quite sure why he had been in such a rush to find her, now that he was here.
"I'm sorry," she replied immediately, "I don't know why I ran off like that."
He opened his mouth to give a reflexive "it's fine" when it occurred to him that no it wasn't. He looked at her, really looked, and saw her face looked a little red and blotchy, her eyelids slightly puffy.
He had messed up. He just still didn't understand why.
"Hermione," he said, hesitating, before he decided to take the plunge. "What did I do wrong?"
If she had looked surprised when she saw him, it was nothing compared to the expression on her face now. She was stricken, and then tried to cover it up with a strange, blank smile.
"Sorry?" she said, the very pinnacle of polite behavior. "What did you do wrong? Is that what you said?"
Danny felt nervous, but he nodded anyway.
"Oh," she said faintly.
"Oh," he agreed, feeling as if he should say something.
"Look," she said, leaning in in such a way that it almost seemed that she was somehow even more distant from him, "it's fine. Let's just stay friends, all right?" Her very was very small, and it cracked on the word "friends," as if it was too presumptuous a word to say.
Oh.
Now he understood.
He looked at her, and saw some reflection of himself in her. It gave him courage.
"Hermione," he said empathetically, "just because we have arguments doesn't mean we're not friends. We've had arguments before, remember? About homework and… well, mostly about Binn's and Snape's teaching."
"But those weren't as –" She struggled to find words. "As, as important."
"Important?" he asked.
"Yes, important." She paused. "You could get expelled from doing something like that."
Normally, that kind of response would provoke boisterous laughter. This time, he didn't laugh.
"But that's not the real reason why," he said flatly, the echoes of an aching pain of betrayal pounding through his chest.
She glanced away. "Well, no," she admitted, "I suppose not."
A pause.
"Were you bullied?" he asked bluntly, thinking he already knew the answer. He realized too late the cruelness of the question, when she recoiled from him.
Emotions, as plain as the ink of the books she loved so much, flashed across her face. Hurt. Anger. A forcible imposed self-restraint. She took in an audible breath.
"Yes," she said evenly, challengingly.
"I was too," he said.
There weren't any words where she could have replied adequately to that, but she didn't need to. He pushed on.
"I was also bullied," he said, "because my parents are ghost hunters, freaks to normal society. I don't know how bad it was for you, but because of that, whenever I had a friend…" He struggled to stop his hands from shaking. He wasn't nervous, not really, but it was an involuntary reaction when he talked about things like this. "Whenever I had a friend – I mean, other than Tucker, he would never – well, I mean, the others, who I became friends with, I tried to do everything I could to keep them. Small favors, being afraid to argue with them…
"What I'm trying to say, I guess, is that I understand. And that when I…" He cast his mind back, searching for an appropriate phrase to use. "When you came in, I was angry that you had thought I was doing something wrong right away, and I didn't think about what you had been saying meant to you. It was like…"
Like a friend abusing a "favor." Someone betraying your trust. The one who had dangled the bait of becoming a "friend" and your truest defender, making mock of your ideals and highest values.
Paulina's face flashed into his mind. He pushed it away, along with his anger and his hurt. Now wasn't the time.
"I'm sorry," he finished, earnestly. He met her eyes, and wondered if the wetness at her eyes was an involuntary reaction like his shaky hands were.
"You're wrong," she said, after a long pause. He only had a brief time to wonder what she meant before she continued. "It's still happening."
It took him a moment to understand. Confusion turned to outrage.
"What?" He had to control himself to keep his voice down; otherwise, Madam Pince would throw them out of the library.
"Not to the same degree," she admitted, "but it's still happening here. Nobody likes it when I'm smarter than them, even wizards."
Danny fumed. An urge to hurt those who would do such a thing (did he know them?), to protect because he couldn't let what happened to him happen to her again, and howhadhenotnoticed –
"Who?" he demanded.
She shook her head, frowning, looking as if she almost regretted telling him.
"It's really not that bad. They're only saying things."
"Only saying things" meant it had been worse before. Danny frowned.
"But –"
She lifted her head proudly. "I'm a Gryffindor," she said, "I can take care of myself."
He wanted to protest, but he understood too much to do so. She needed to take it on herself. Danny had escaped it by moving away from America, but she couldn't do the same. She couldn't step back
"Alright," he said, the word dragged out, reluctant.
She smiled at him.
"Thanks."
"But if you ever need help…"
"Thank you," she said earnestly, "I'll tell you."
"And if you don't," he said, looking at her, "I'll stick by your side anyway. You can tell me anything, and I promise I won't hurt you like that."
Fentons take their promises very seriously, and at that moment, there was nothing in the world that could have deterred him from saying those words without the full force of his intent behind them.
"Thank you," she said again.
They sat in silence for a time after that. It was a long, contemplative silence. Hermione closed the book that had been lying open in front of her, neglected, and stowed it away in her backpack. Danny mulled over the conversation, in retrospect thinking it to be one of the most significant, adult conversations he had ever had. But he had meant everything he said.
When they both arrived together at the Great Hall for dinner, they discovered all their fellow Gryffindors making a great fuss about "what that package had been that was delivered to Potter." Some claimed it looked like a broom. At that moment, Danny didn't make much of a note of it.
He was more concerned with his friend, who was somehow so much like him and stronger than she knew. He mentally sent her strength, and let his eyes rove over the Gryffindors as he wondered who.
Growing Up
Months passed. Danny didn't think much of what was under the trapdoor, per Hermione's request. It eventually faded out of memory as other matters took its place and it faded to the recesses of his mind.
It was strange to think of how much time he had already spent at Hogwarts, and how quickly it seemed to become a second home. The wrong feeling of casting spells seemed to ease up as the semester went on, and soon he had stopped wondering why this had been happening to him and not anyone else. Professor Flitwick had once even complimented him on his charms work.
"Well, well!" the half-man had beamed as he passed Danny's table as he cast the assigned spell. "Would you look at that! You're improving quite nicely, Mr. Fenton."
The compliment was only enlarged by the fact that Hermione had sat next to him, with her perfect demonstration ready at hand. He knew he would never match up to her, but it was nice, hearing such words from the professor.
Improving. It was something worth remembering. It suggested hard work and toil, a formidable constitution. He liked the thought of that.
He smiled, feeling oddly light. Halloween was tomorrow.
If only had he known just what a kind of a day it would be.