The next week proved to be a tough one for Harry. Three of his professors set essays on Monday. On Tuesday, he was supposed to spend time with Ginny, but she had to serve a detention for hexing a classmate. On Wednesday, his attempt at human Transfiguration turned into disaster, and he spent half the day in the hospital wing while Madam Pomfrey tried to remove the fur from his skin. And on Thursday, Ron and Hermione got in a row.

"What does she want to be friends with that git for anyway?" Ron muttered, watching sourly as Hermione showed Draco the best way to crush a sopophorous bean, taking it between her long white fingers, taut like piano strings, and crushed it with a silver dagger in the exact way Harry had shown her last year.

"I think," Harry said carefully, "she's just trying to be civil to him. He has had a tough go of it lately. Doesn't have any friends left here."

Ron said nothing. But then Padma was there-- "Ron, will you help me ground up this unicorn horn?"-- and he was able to tear his eyes away and assist with the task at hand.

Harry let out a sigh of relief, thankful for her presence. Padma Patil had this way of putting people at ease just by being around them, which was a gift. Her sister was rather chattery and vivacious, but Padma, in her subdued manner, burned like a calm flame, steady and unwavering, a source of warmth and solace.

And then it happened. Hermione was coming back from the cabinet, where she had retrieved a jar of salamander blood. She passed the Slytherin table, and Zabini whispered something into Pansy Parkinson's ear. Pansy giggled mischievously and glared in Hermione's direction, and just as she reached the table with her jar--

"Agh!" she shrieked, losing her footing, and Draco instinctively put his hands out to stop her from falling. The jar crashed to the floor, shattering into a million pieces, spilling blood all over.

"Thanks," Hermione said, surprised.

For a moment, she thought he was going to be as civil as to reply with "You're welcome." Instead, what came out of his mouth was "Better go wash my hands."

Ron was fit to burst. "You rotten-- lousy-- foul--" He raised his wand.

"Ron!"

He stopped, mid-hex. "I see," he said quietly. Gathering his things, he walked silently out of the classroom.

Hermione chased him down the hall. "Ron! It's not like that..."

He turned around. "You've been awful friendly with him lately."

"Ron, it's still Malfoy. He's still a git. Well," she said admittedly, "less of a git than he has been in the past--"

He scowled.

"But still a git," she said hurriedly. When he didn't reply, she sighed. "Look, all I was trying to do-- I thought maybe if he had some decent friends he'd turn out all right, you know?"

Ron snorted. "That's the trouble with you, always trying to save people who don't want to be saved."

"What do you mean?"

"Malfoy, the house-elves... they're all happy with where they are. Malfoy has to be a twit, else he wouldn't be Malfoy. The house-elves like their bloody service, how many times do we have to tell you?"

Hermione looked hurt. "Ron..."

"How about," Ron spouted, "next time you're knitting house-elf clothes, make me a sweater. And give it to me."

Her eyes filled with tears. "What would you want that for?" Her voice was husky.

"So I can have my freedom." And he left Hermione standing there, alone, in the corridor, choking back tears.

Later that night, Harry found Hermione angrily stabbing her needle into a large, misshapen sweater.

"We must have gotten a pretty big house-elf," Harry noted.

Hermione half-smiled, wiping her eyes. They were red and puffy. "Oh, Harry. It's not for a house-elf."

He nodded, taking a seat next to her. "Ron told me."

"I just want it to go back to the way it used to be," she said wistfully, "when we didn't fight every day. It was better like that. And if we have to just be friends to make that happen--" She shrugged.

"C'est la vie?" suggested Harry.

"Learn that from Phlegm, did you?"

"Glad to see you can still make a joke. And I thought you liked her now?"

Hermione shrugged again. "She's alright." Holding up her sweater, she realized that the sleeve she was working on was too long, and began to pull it out. "You and Ginny all set for the ball, then?" she asked.

Harry nodded. "Are you still going to go?"

"Not with Ron," she said adamantly. "I suppose I'll go alone."

After a moment of silence, she looked across at Harry. "Good night," she said, and kept plugging away at her knitting.

"You're not going anywhere," Harry said, puzzled.

"No, I'm not," Hermione replied. "You are."

Taking the hint, he got up. "'Night, then," he said, and went upstairs.

While everyone else was preoccupied with the Snowflake Ball (as Slughorn had termed it), over the last few weeks, Harry was making a grisly list of the Horcruxes, Voldemort's known victims, and ways in which they were killed. As Seamus Finnegan and Dean Thomas outlined their plan to smuggle some firewhisky in, Harry was outlining a plan to search for Wormtail. Hermione and Ron had stopped speaking altogether, and the night before the Ball, things only got worse.

"Have you found a date?" Harry asked Ron casually, as they took their dinner in the Great Hall.

Ron shook his head. "I don't think I'm going."

"Why won't you come by yourself? Hermione's going to."

"No, she's not," Neville put in. "She's coming with me."

"You?" Ron whirled around.

"J-just as friends," Neville said quickly, noticing Ron's frosty glare.

"Bugger," Ron said, vexed. He studied the sausages on his plate. "So, you think I should--"

"I think you should get over with it and go by yourself," Ginny said matter-of-factly.

"Well, I think you should--"

But Hermione came to sit with them then, and Harry never did get to find out what it was that Ron thought Ginny ought to do.

"I have something for you, Ronald," Hermione said evenly.

He glanced up.

Hermione pulled out the knobbly sweater and handed it to him. "You're free," she said simply.

Ron said nothing.

"It's what you wanted, isn't it?" Her eyes were searching, imploring.

Slowly, he nodded.

"Right, then." Hermione bobbed her head and ran from the Hall.

A blonde head, sitting across the room at the Slytherin table, snapped to attention, watching her run.

That night, Harry went to the Pensieve. It was an escape, almost like the Mirror of Erised had been-- even though it didn't make him forget his danger, it made him feel like he had guidance. Like Dumbledore was still there.

He plunged his head in and found himself standing in the middle of a cluttered sitting-room.

This looks familiar, he thought.

"She had a cup and a locket," a frantic middle-aged man was saying. "Where are they?"

I'm in Hepzibah Smith's house.

"Miss Ray?"

The woman he was talking to, who looked like she belonged to the Ministry's Department of Magical Law Enforcement, shrugged. "I haven't seen anything of the sort."

"She always kept them well hidden," said the man, mostly to himself. "Maybe..." And he began to dig through boxes and cabinets.

"It's poison, Alex," said a man's voice from the kitchen. He came around the corner, and Harry recognized him as a much, much younger version of Rufus Scrimgeour.

"What kind?"

"I'm not sure-- rare, though. Nothing I recognize."

Alex nodded. "We'll get the alchemists to work on it."