DISCLAIMER: I own nothing but this twisted so-called "plot".
Some of the dialogue here has been directly lifted (errrr, borrowed) from HBP.
The truest, weightiest manifestation of shock is complete immobility: being stunned into a state where your neurons sort of... disconnect... so thoroughly that you're rendered mute and motionless; i.e., total mental and physical paralysis.
It was such a state that fell like a pall upon Hermione, Ron, and Ginny after Harry's alarming admission. There were other people in the common room – it was only eight-thirty in the evening – but they all faded into irrelevance, and the din and chatter that they were generating was reduced to a stifled hum.
Ron was the first to recover.
"You... almost... killed Malfoy? What?"
"It was an accident," Harry repeated numbly, "I didn't know... That spell... I didn't expect it to..."
"You're not making any sense," Ron put forward plainly, "Why don't you start at the beginning, yeah?"
"Yeah," Harry agreed, nodding in appreciation of Ron's astute suggestion, "Alright. I was on the seventh floor, checking for Malfoy on the Marauder's map, when I saw that he was in a loo... with Moaning Myrtle, of all people. Erm, ghosts... ghost-people –" Harry shook his head at himself, "–Anyway. He... Malfoy... was crying over a sink –"
"Malfoy was crying?"
It was the barely-suppressed note of glee in Ron's voice that revived Hermione's vocal chords.
"Then what happened?" she prompted urgently.
Bit by bit, Harry ran through the horrific tale. An impromptu duel... an unknown curse... an explosion of blood...
"Is he going to be okay?" Hermione asked shakily, after Harry was done.
"Snape burst in almost immediately," he replied, "Like he'd been close by. He patched Malfoy up and took him to the hospital wing. He was still unconscious, though..."
"Blimey," Ron breathed.
"What's going to happen to you?" Ginny asked, perching herself on the arm of Harry's chair.
"Detention," Harry said glumly, "Every Saturday 'til the end of term. It's a good thing I was able to hide the Prince's book; fuck knows what would've happened if Snape got a hold of it..."
"Where'd you put it?"
"Room of requirement."
"Hold on," Ron piped up in an unexpectedly loud cry, "Every Saturday...? What about the quidditch final?"
Harry's face contorted, as he let out a devastated sigh. "I won't be playing."
"No!" Ron and Ginny gasped in unison.
"It's the most important game of the season!" Ron spluttered.
That, Hermione decided, was the last straw. These people were falling into pieces over quidditch, summarily dismissing the near-manslaughter that had taken place no more than an hour ago. She felt sick... absolutely sick... and steeled herself to steer the conversation back onto a more significant path.
"I told you there was something wrong with that Prince person... And I was right, wasn't I?"
The look Harry gave her was dangerously poisonous. "No, I don't think you were."
"Harry," she said incredulously, "how can you still stick up for that book when that spell –"
"Will you stop harping on about the book!" he retorted irritably, "The Prince only copied it out! It's not like he was advising anyone to use it! For all we know, he was making a note of something that had been used against him!"
Hermione felt her eyes go round with astonishment. "I don't believe this. You're actually defending –"
"I'm not defending what I did!" Harry cut in hastily. "I wish I hadn't done it, and not just because I've got about a dozen detentions. You know I wouldn't've used a spell like that, not even on Malfoy, but you can't blame the Prince, he hadn't written 'try this out, it's really good' – he was just making notes for himself, wasn't he, not for anyone else…"
"Are you telling me," she asked while gaping at him, "that you're going to go back –?"
"And get the book? Yeah, I am," Harry said with a hardened look, "Listen, without the Prince I'd never have won the Felix Felicis. I'd never have known how to save Ron from poisoning, I'd never have –"
"– got a reputation for Potions brilliance you don't deserve," Hermione spat. She felt aflamed. She felt enraged. She felt...
"Give it a rest, Hermione!"
...She felt utterly perturbed and infuriated as she snapped her gaze unto Ginny at her sudden exclamation.
"By the sound of it, Malfoy was trying to use an Unforgivable Curse," Ginny continued, "you should be glad Harry had something good up his sleeve!"
Hermione blenched. "Well, of course I'm glad Harry wasn't cursed! But you can't call that Sectumsempra spell good, Ginny, look where it's landed him!" When she saw that none of her companions thawed at that declaration, she attempted to speak in a language they were more likely to respond to, "... And I'd have thought, seeing what this has done to your chances in the match –"
"Oh, don't start acting as though you understand quidditch. You'll only embarrass yourself."
Her blood temperature shot way past its boiling point. Ginny's jaw was set pugnaciously, and at that moment Hermione felt nothing but genuine hostility towards the girl. What if she were to start listing out all the things Ginny didn't understand? All the many, countless things that not one of those upright cunts understood... not Harry, who was staring up at Ginny in wondrous gratitude, and not Ron, who was glancing between the three of them with a look of gormless discomfort on his face...
It was always her versus them. There she goes again! Hermione having a right flap about the wrong thing, as usual.
A deep, long breath later, Hermione addressed Harry.
"May I see the Marauder's map, please?" Her tone was brusque, but polite. Well accomplished, she had to say.
"Why?" Harry asked, eyeing her suspiciously.
"I need to find Theo."
"Oh, sure," Ginny said nastily, "Run off to him, why don't you?"
Hermione ignored her. When Harry grudgingly handed her the map, she wasted no time in activating it and began frantically searching for the appropriately labelled dot.
There – in an empty classroom near the hospital wing, dot-Theo was pacing up and down and up and down...
Hermione returned the map, rose fluidly onto her feet, and stalked towards the portrait hole. She felt Harry, Ron, and Ginny's eyes on her back all the way. They felt like three searing stab wounds.
By the time she got to him, Theo had stopped pacing.
For a few moments, Hermione stood at the door and watched him. He was sitting on a desk, stooped, with his face buried in his hands. The room was awash in blueblack and dark violet hues, save for a few moonbeams that streamed in through high windows, one of which was delineating his silhouette in fine silver strokes, turning him into a heartbreakingly poetic picture of tragedy.
He sat like Pathos on a monument... drowning in grief.
With a painful lump in her throat, Hermione shuffled over to him and whispered, "Theo."
He didn't budge, nor make any sound of acknowledgement. Tentatively, Hermione placed a hand on his hunched shoulder, and said once more, "Theo."
"What the fuck, Hermione."
His voice came out muffled from behind his palms, but the husky, broken tenor revealed to her that he was – or very recently had been – crying.
Theo... crying. It knocked the wind right out of her. And she had no idea what to say. All that she could think to do was move closer and wrap her arms around him, resting her head between his shoulder blades. Proximity allowed her to feel the way he was shaking jerkily, the way his breathing was erratic and laboured.
She squeezed her eyes shut. "I'm so sorry."
"What... the... fu...ck," he gasped.
She held him tightly until the she felt the last of his juddering. In the stillness that followed, she cautiously asked, "How is he?"
"In a coma," Theo replied throatily, "The wounds have healed, but he lost so much blood. They don't know how long... how long... how...fuck."
With that, Theo shook himself free of her arms, and strode across the room. He seemed, suddenly, to become possessed by some vehement agitation; the moonlight-aura around him appeared to ripple with the intensity of it.
"What the fuck," he roared with this renewed vigour, "was Potter thinking?"
Hermione swallowed. "He didn't know..."
"He didn't know what?" Theo rounded on her.
It was the first proper look she'd gotten of his face, and the ashen pallor of it... his puffy the bloodshot eyes... were like another punch to her gut.
"He didn't know what that spell would do," she replied quietly. He curled his lip vituperatively, and Hermione hastened to reaffirm her claim, "I swear, Theo. He had no idea... he panicked and shot the first thing he could think of. He didn't know that it would... um..."
"That it would nearly kill Draco? Oh really? The spell just popped up in his head out of nowhere, eh?"
"He'd read it. Somewhere."
The look that Theo gave her then turned the dreadful sickened feeling in her stomach into acid. Her insides burned.
"He'd read it," Theo repeated bitterly, "Somewhere."
"Yes," Hermione pressed pathetically, "And Malfoy was about to use the Cruciatus curse on him –"
"Oh, so you're saying he deserved to be flayed to death?!"
"NO! It was an impossibly tense situation, and –"
"That Cruciatus curse wouldn't have fucking worked anyway," he muttered, scraping his nails through his hair.
Hermione was stumped. "What... what do you mean?"
Another abrupt change of demeanour struck Theo. It looked as though desolation had dropped from a great height straight onto his shoulders, and he sagged under the weight of it. He staggered towards the closest chair and fell into it.
"Draco wouldn't have pulled off much of a crucio," he sighed wretchedly, "You really have to mean it... to want to inflict the worst sort of pain imaginable... to revel in it..." Hermione made a small sound, and he looked up at her resentfully, "Yes, I know you think that just because Draco's called you names and played mean tricks on you, he's capable of torturing people. But I happen to think I know him better. At worst, your precious Chosen One would've felt a short spasm... a twinge... Not even that, given the state Draco was in..."
"Harry said he was crying... before..."
Theo closed his red-rimmed eyes, overpowered by ineffable grief. "Yeah," he choked, "He'd gotten a letter from Lucius earlier today. Fucked him up real bad. It took me hours to get it out of him... apparently the Dark Lord had a bit of a temper flare-up and decided to take it out on Narcissa."
A lone, pearly tear trailed down his narrow cheekbone. It caught the moonlight spectacularly. For the first time, Hermione felt that she was lucky, having the option to alter her parent's memories to keep them safe. She slowly made her way towards Theo and gently wiped away the gleaming drop that had come to a precarious halt at the point of his chin.
"Are they here? Mr and Mrs Malfoy...?"
"No. Snape thought it would be best if we didn't tell them. He's probably right. ...Merlin, Hermione. I... I can't... I cannot deal with this anymore. D-Draco... The way he looks right now... bloodless... still... so still... it's one of my worst nightmares made real. I just... I..."
His head fell back into his hands, as he sobbed in earnest.
Every bit and component that Hermione was made of turned stone cold in despair. She realised that there were very few things that disturbed her as much as the sight of Theo crying. It tore at her, viscerally. Helplessly, she reached out to touch him...
"Theo?"
The lilting, dulcet call came from the door, and both Hermione and Theo started. Clad in her purple, fuzzy robe, Luna glided into the room. She kept her eyes on Theo and came to an uncertain stop a few feet away, directly in the path of a particularly sharp moonbeam.
Standing bathed in that luminous shaft of light, Luna seemed to have realised her true purpose; she was made to be drenched in such milky brilliance. Everything about her – her dirty blonde hair, her pale skin and eyes, her peculiar persona, and her very name – was specifically designed to come into its own when illuminated in such a manner. She was ethereal; she was mesmerising.
A strangled gasp from Theo had Hermione tearing her eyes away from the spectacular vision before them. He looked devastatingly awestruck. Luna's radiance seemed to have magnified some of his attributes as well – Hermione had never seen him so raw, so unmasked.
In a flash, he was on his feet, and he charged towards Luna. His face was determined and set, his stride was almost menacingly purposeful... It was quite alarming...
...Until he cupped Luna's face in his hands and kissed her.
She barely hesitated; her arms encircled his waist almost straight away, and she returned his kiss.
They were somehow contrary and harmonious all at once. Theo was the personification of urgency – he was exigent, fuelled by desperation and anguish. On the other hand, Luna was patience. She was gently coaxing calm and fortitude; tender, but potent enough to be more than a match for Theo. They were like two supplementary sinusoidal waves, weaving together and undulating fluently.
It was nothing like the clumsy, frenzied teenage snogging on frequent display in shadowy nooks and quite corners of Hogwarts. This was fierce. It was real. It was adult.
It took a faint moan from Luna to make Hermione realise that she was intruding on an extremely private moment. As quietly as should manage, she crept out of the room, reeling, but comforted by the knowledge that for the time being at least, Theo was going to be just fine.
At breakfast the next morning, Harry, Ron, and Ginny were pointedly friendly towards her. Congenial. Like they were being so gracious by taking the highroad and letting bygones be bygones.
She grit her teeth returned their kindness with interest.
Harry could take off on a perilous horcrux-related escapade with Dumbledore anytime soon; Ginny needed help studying for her O.W.L.s – Hermione couldn't afford to sulk.
Over the next two days, passions and emotions ran higher than ever, quidditch mania peaked, and Hermione got stuck with a permanent migraine.
Thanks to Pansy Parkinson and Moaning Myrtle, the entire school had learnt about Harry and Malfoy's bathroom face-off. (Both girl and ghost had run rampant, wailing and howling at an identical pitch, serving as a very efficient – and shrill – public announcement system).
The Slytherin students were, as expected, aggressively cutting towards Harry. The Gryffindors were extremely put out at well... simply because their captain and star player had been banned from the final. That was it. Strict house rivalry rules dictated that they weren't allowed to feel any sort of horror towards Harry unintentional act of violence against the scum of Slytherin.
Hermione spent nearly all her time in the library archives, scouring through records from the past ten decades. Her mission was simple: Find the Prince.
The Prince, she scoffed to herself. The way Harry said it, as though it was both a grand title and an affectionate nickname, was utterly ridiculous. This Prince was probably a repressed sociopath – one that even Machiavelli would've distanced himself from.
She had put aside a pile, eliminating everyone from the year 1920, and pulled pile 1930 closer. First up: Kenneth Abbot... quite a fit one, he was...
After an hour went whizzing by, Theo joined her and caught her in a chokehold that could maybe, possibly be considered a hug, if you were just short of completely mental.
"My brilliant, beautiful, bestest buddy Hermione! How long I have wondered among these blessed old tomes in search of you!"
Hermione squirmed until he let her go, and stared him with concerned befuddlement. "You seem... cheerful?"
"Why wouldn't I be? It's a glorious summer day! The sun is shining, the birds are singing; I just took the most dee-lightful stroll through the forest."
Theo beamed. He beamed. Clearly, he hadn't gone alone for this stroll... and clearly he and his companion hadn't done a whole lot of actual strolling.
"Sound's charming," Hermione replied with a dee-lighted smile.
"Draco woke up."
"Oh?" she breathed, "When?"
"Today morning," he said as he shoved aside a few stacks of paper so that he could seat himself on the table Hermione was working at (she narrowed her eyes at his careless treatment of the ancient crumbling parchment), "He's snarky, acerbic, and cranky... prime Draco, really."
"So that explains why you're so..." Hermione flailed her hand about as she re-straightened her carefully stacked piles.
"So what?"
"So damn sanguine."
Theo laughed. "I told you, darling. It's a dee-lightful day, and –"
"Did you bring Malfoy up to speed then? Apprise him of all the latest developments? Let him know about your lovely new girlfriend?"
"Erm, yeah. I did."
"Did that send him right back into a coma?"
Theo scowled. "He... laughed. A lot."
"...And then?"
"And then he asked me about Potter's punishment for shredding him. Which is criminally lax, by the way. Detention. Honestly."
"That's it?"
"Right?! Anyone else would've been expelled –"
"No. I mean... he just laughed? He didn't... um... pitch a fit?"
For five entire seconds, Theo regarded her with a small half-smile. "You remember how during that glorious time when we were getting to know each other, I kept surprising you?" he asked.
"You still keep surprising me," Hermione answered honestly.
He reached out to squeeze her arm affectionately, and said, "Well... expect the same from Draco."
She protested ("I'm not getting to know him!"), and he just grinned ("Aren't you though?")
"NICE ONE, DEAN!" Seamus roared, as the lanky substitute chaser scored another goal for Gryffindor.
They were nearly two hours into the final – Ravenclaw was in the lead by... well, some number, and the consequent clamour was deafening. Sandwiched between Neville and Seamus (and some shapely fifth year girl whom Seamus had somehow cajoled onto his lap), Hermione was terribly distracted.
"Bradley scores!" the nameless Hufflepuff commentator yelled, "Hundred and ten to Ravenclaw, putting them at a twenty point lead!"
Cue: more hyperactive screaming.
She could have been practicing memory charms. She could have been finalising her Transfiguarion essay. She could have been practicing wandless shield charms. She could have been painting her fucking toenails.
"ANOTHER TEN TO RAVENCLAW!"
Harry would be devastated if Gryffindor lost. 'Inconsolably dejected' is how she would've described his expression as he had left for detention with Snape earlier that day.
"That was a close shave for Bell! The Ravenclaw beaters are particularly ruthless today..."
O young Lochinvar is come out of the west,
Through all the wide Border his steed was the best;
And save his good broadsword he weapons had none,
He rode all unarm'd, and he rode all alone.
So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war,
There never was knight like the young Lochinvar.
"...CHANG AND WEASLEY ARE NECK AND NECK BEHIND THE SNITCH..."
Everyone around her had gotten to their feet. Hermione leapt up promptly, just in time to see Ginny shoot forward with an astounding burst of acceleration and close her fingers around the tiny golden ball.
The world exploded. The stands were a dam that burst, and people gushed onto the pitch in a thick deluge, all the while screaming... screaming...
If Neville hadn't grabbed her and kept her steady, Hermione would've been tragically crushed to death in that deranged stampede.
Eventually, the party moved into the common room, and since every single eardrum was still on quidditch-match-mode, the shouting and hollering come along too. It all reached its zenith when the team made their grand entrance, holding up a big silver cup.
All of Hermione's jaded indifference disintegrated the moment she saw the pure jubilance on Ron's face. She bounded towards him, and he pulled her into an impossibly tight embrace, lifting her off her feet.
"We won!" he cried "WE FUCKING WON!"
Pumpkin fizz and meat pies were passed around. In one corner, a group of seventh years broke into an old victory song. And that was when the portrait hole sprung open and Harry was pulled into the throng. His mouth hung open in disbelief as he attempted to make sense of the commotion around him. Helpful as ever, Ron hurtled towards him, trophy in hand and yelling, "We won! We won! Four hundred and fifty to a hundred and forty! WE WON!"
Hermione looked behind her to exchange a grin with Neville, when the entire room fell into a sudden, nonplussing silence. As ear-splitting as the preceding uproar had been... this was somehow louder.
Somewhere a glass shattered.
Slowly, Hermione turned her head, and the scene before her left her gasping.
Harry and Ginny's kiss was nothing like the one she had witnessed between Theo and Luna. This here was a meeting of oh fucking finally and oh my god is this real. It was a synthesis of sheer ecstasy and amazement.
Hermione's grin nearly split her face in half.
When they broke apart to the sound of giggles and wolf-whistles, Harry's eyes roamed once across the crowd, before he took Ginny's hand and they skipped out of the portrait hole.
They left behind a rather large group of people who didn't know what to do with themselves.
"Did you know about this?" Ron demanded, once some semblance of normalcy had been regained. Hermione, sidetracked by the sight of Dean's back disappearing behind the door leading to the boy's dormitories, didn't answer. "Oi," Ron tried again, "Did you know?"
"Huh? Oh. Yes. Of course. You must've to be blind not to have seen that this is where they were headed."
"You're joking! When... How... he's my best mate... she's my sister... nobody told me!"
She rolled her eyes, knowing it was best not to say anything when Ron was being so dramatic.
"What do I do?"
"What do you mean what do you do? You don't do anything!"
"Do I allow this?"
"...Allow?! It's none of your business!"
"She's my sister!"
"She's a person – an individual – who makes her own decisions."
"Why do mad things keep happening?" he grumbled with a scowl.
Hermione bumped his shoulder with her own. "I think, Ronald, that that would make an excellent epigraph for our collective memoir."
A surprised chuckle later, Ron clinked his glass against hers and said, "To madness, then. The one thing we can count on."