Chapter 13: The Time of the Binding
Tuesday night found Draco Malfoy standing outside a door, irritated. It was a very particular door, behind which was one, Blaise Zabini. Who, if Malfoy remembered correctly, was supposed to be with Draco on their way to the pre-rounds meeting in the Great Hall. But he wasn't there. Where was he? Behind a door. This door.
"Blaise!" Draco yelled, "Where the hell are you?! Hurry up already. It usually takes me longer to get ready than you, so what is taking so long?" Malfoy lifted one fisted hand and banged it on the door in front of him. "Get your ass moving!"
"All right, all right!" Came the muffled response. "Don't get your panties in a twist."
Malfoy scowled menacingly at the door, wishing to bore holes in it with his eyes. "I'll twist something of yours off," he said softly.
"Now, Draco," Blaise said, as he opened the door. "That's not very nice. If I didn't know any better, I'd say that you didn't like me."
"I don't," Malfoy said, turning on his heel and beginning to walk away.
"Of course, you do," Zabini said, coming up behind Malfoy and throwing an arm around his shoulder. "You love me."
When Malfoy stopped walking and turned his head slowly in the direction of Blaise's hand, Zabini quickly snatched it back, uncertain if that predatory gleam he'd seen in Draco's eyes was directed at his hand or not.
"You love me," Blaise said again, this time unsure.
"Do I?" Malfoy said, blankly, before beginning to walk again, leaving Zabini standing alone, cradling an, as yet, undamaged hand.
"Sometimes, that dude is downright scary," Blaise mumbled before hurrying to catch up.
ooOO00OOoo
"…having said that, I would now like to point out that you are prefects this year, and you must act accordingly. I have received reports that two Prefects spent the majority of their rounds last night fighting with each other instead of looking for people out after curfew. If you are too immature, or incapable of handling this responsibility, you must know that it can, and will, be revoked," Professor McGonagall looked around the assembled students severely. "Do not make this a trial on us all. Do your job, and do it right. That is all."
As the group dispersed, Blaise turned to Draco, a smirk on his face. "Gee, I wonder who it was that spent the whole night fighting?"
"I'm sure I don't know," Draco said blandly, turning towards the doors.
"Of course, not," Blaise said with a smile, following after Malfoy. They were silent for a moment as they put some distance between themselves and the other patrolling pairs. They patrolled for perhaps twenty minutes, when Zabini finally considered it prudent to speak to Draco.
"You didn't seem to be too happy today. In fact, if you weren't Draco Malfoy, I'd have said that you were in a downright foul mood. But, of course, you are Draco Malfoy, so such a thing is not possible," Blaise said, casting a sly glance at his fellow Slytherin.
"I don't recall asking you for your opinion of the state of my emotions," Malfoy responded, politely disinterested.
"I know," Zabini responded cheerfully, "but that's the joy of my friendship, you're going to get it anyway."
"I didn't ask for any help or concern from you. I'm fine." There was a touch of chill in Malfoy's voice this time.
"But you aren't. You can lie to yourself about it all you want, but I know the truth. And the truth is: you are far from fine." Blaise shook his head regretfully. "This isn't good or healthy. You haven't smiled or laughed, or, hell, even snickered snidely at anybody for three days. You've practically ignored the existence of the Mudblood and the Hero."
"I'm choosing my battles; why are you questioning me?" Malfoy turned his head sharply to look at the other boy, his eyes the color of steel, and sharp as a blade.
"It's just that you've never chosen your battles before. You always attack whenever there is any sign of weakness, regardless of the recipient."
"Maybe it's time I grew up," Draco answered crisply. He sped up the pace of his walking a minute portion, as if seeking to outpace Zabini and his line of questioning.
"But Draco…" Zabini began, speeding up and catching Malfoy by the inside of his elbow, bringing him to a stop.
In a sudden fit of fury, Draco Malfoy allowed himself to be pulled to a stop, only to whip his arm out of Zabini's reach with a violent twist of his body. Staring the other Slytherin directly in the eyes, he snarled, "That's Lord Malfoy to you Zabini, and don't you forget it! Until such time as you come of age and your mother dies, you'll not be a lord, and never my equal. Don't presume to treat me as such."
Spinning back around, Lord Malfoy resumed his walk, gray eyes penetrating the shadows of the hall, looking for errant students. Behind him, Blaise Zabini stood, in shock at the words Lord Malfoy had said.
"Oh no you don't." Blaise snarled at the blonde's retreating back. "You'll not get away from this discussion that easily. I'm a Slytherin, too." Barring his teeth in a semblance of a smile, Blaise took off in a light jog, easily catching up to the other prefect.
"Fine, Lord Malfoy, I'm not your social equal, and I never will be, but I am more than a match for you in stubbornness, and, by Merlin, you will talk to me tonight." Grabbing the other boy again, this time by the shoulder, Blaise spun him around. "Slytherins stand by their own."
Though anger still lit his eyes, Lord Malfoy bit back a scathing retort aimed at the black boy in front of him. "Indeed we do, but you've conveniently left off the end of our motto, Zabini. 'Slytherins stand by their own in time of need.'"
"And you aren't in need?" Blaise scoffed, "You are a shell of a person moving through life like an inferni."
"Stop pestering me, or you and I will be the prefects that spent the night fighting, instead of the Mudblood and her Weasel," Lord Malfoy said, clearly frustrated, as he began to walk again.
"If that is the way it has to be, then so be it." Blaise said determinedly.
Lord Malfoy threw his hands in the air. "Damn Zabinis! You're like mangy dogs with a bone when you decide to get nosy about something. Why couldn't you leave me my peaceful silence?"
"Because, there was nothing peaceful about your silence," Blaise said softly, knowing he'd won this round.
Draco growled and continued walking, though at a more sedate pace. "Fine."
Minutes passed in silence, during which Blaise was content to let Malfoy work off his steam before the explanations began.
"My father isn't dead," Draco said eventually, "Not in a true sense. If put under Veritaserum, I'd have to say he was still amongst the living, though that isn't really the case."
Blaise retained his silence. Once you got a Malfoy talking, you'd already passed the difficult ground, and all that was left was maintaining the patience to allow them to speak at their own pace. Given the time, a Malfoy would run a topic into the ground, all inquiries satisfied, but interruptions had to be nonexistent at the beginning. Questions were allowed at the end, but only if they were pointed and intelligent. Truly, they'd make good teachers if given the right kind of student. Then again, no Malfoy would condescend to do something as menial as teach.
"His body lives, but his mind, and soul, are gone. Gone at the behest of my father's Master." Draco snarled, "That deranged jackal who has no true emotions, so he lives his life vicariously through the lives of his followers, with the help of his detested Dark Mark." On a purely intellectual level, Malfoy knew what he'd said, what he was saying, but he had to be sure he was understood. It was rather like a compulsion, and one that all blood-related Malfoys suffered from.
"He commands the Dementors, you know."
Draco paused and glanced at Blaise, as if seeking conformation.
"Oh, uh, no. I didn't know. When did this happen?" Blaise stumbled.
"About two months ago. Not long after the Dark Lord's return, he began seeking an alliance with all of the Ministry's Dark Creatures. The Dementors were the first to ally themselves with their 'Dark Star'." Lord Malfoy shook his head. "From what I'd heard, the next on the list are the giants, though our Lord," here he spat the word, "seems to be having trouble with them and their warped politics."
Draco fell into silence once more as he and Blaise discovered two separate pairs of students cuddled up to one another within 5 meters of each other. If 'cuddling' could be used to describe what those couples were doing.
Blaise was snickering as they walked away, having taken a whopping 50 points from each couple for breaking curfew and 'public indecency without the forethought to even use proper concealment charms.' Draco had such a way with words sometimes. Once things had settled down, they went back to their patrolling.
"It was the Dementors that did it. Which one it was, I suppose, doesn't really matter, not like I could do anything about it." Draco said, as if he was speaking about the weather. "But the fact remains that the driving force behind my fathers murder was none other than the Dark Lord himself. He is the one that controls the Dementors. He is the one that chooses their victims, and it was He…who told them to embrace my father."
Despite himself, Blaise let out a gasp of surprise. "Surely, not!"
"I only wish," Draco responded grimly. "My father has indeed been embraced by a Dementor and, as I speak, is going through the process to become one of those vile creatures."
"Oh, Merlin," Blaise breathed.
"And so, I have been entrusted by my mother, and the shareholders of our companies, with the running of all of our various estates, as well as bearing the burden of being the youngest lord ever." Draco's voice had softened to barely a whisper; sorrow smoothing away the rough edges that anger had put in his voice. "It's been tough, knowing that somewhere, my father's body is still alive, while his soul has fled his body from the Dementor's contagion. Knowing that, if I were to see him now, I would be treated no differently than any other person, and would be hunted mercilessly for the soul that I contain." He shook his head in a futile gesture of denial. His walking slowed to a stop and he turning his head slowly in Blaise's direction. "So, no Blaise, I haven't had much reason to smile lately. Why would I? My father's dead, my mother, who loved him so much, is falling to pieces before my eyes, I've been made Lord Malfoy – as such I'm expected to run the estates that my father once did – and I've still got my schooling to go through as well. Not to mention I'm now stuck trying to decide whether or not to still follow the Dark Lord as my father wanted me to."
"Draco…" Blaise said warningly. He was able to forgive, and forget, what he'd heard the Head of Malfoy House say earlier, because he was distraught. But saying such things now, while he seemed so dreadfully calm, could spell disaster for his future. Blaise would not be able to deny the truth of this situation should he be asked about it. Veritaserum was not the only way to ensure that someone told you the truth.
"I'll Obliviate you later if you want, just listen for now." Draco said, waving his hand negligently. "The Dark Lord has deeply, deeply offended my family by doing something so disgraceful, so degrading, that I am almost forced to call a tanzier on him. But my father wanted to follow him. Why? Because he believed in what the Dark Lord does. So much so that he was willing to abase himself by kneeling to another man, something no Malfoy should ever have to do." He began pacing back and forth along the hallway in front of Blaise. "What should I do? Should I follow in my father's footsteps and become a Death Eater? Or should I follow the path of family honor and call up a tanzier?"
Draco stopped pacing and looked at Blaise, a crooked smile on his face. "Who am I kidding? A tanzier? On the Dark Lord? All I would be doing is signing my own death warrant, because families involved in a tanzier are prohibited from receiving outside aid. It would be me, and my mother, against the Dark Lord and all of his knowledge acquired through his life – and unlife. We wouldn't stand a chance." He began to pace again only to stop mid-stride as a thought seemed to occur to him. "There is a third option, as detestable as it seems."
"Don't say it," Blaise said, now distinctly uncomfortable, and beginning to seriously regret his choice to goad the Malfoy heir into speaking. "Even the blood-feud of the tanzier is a better choice than that!"
"Oh, but why not? It would be such fun." Draco sneered.
"No it wouldn't!" Zabini said, suddenly very afraid. "Contemplating leaving the Dark Lord's service and going neutral is bad enough, but to actually talk about…" Blaise choked, unable to say the words, even hypothetically. Desperate, he reached out with both hands and grabbed onto the shoulders of the slightly shorter boy. "You can't do it, Draco, you just can't!" he cried. "I wouldn't be able to protect you from Him should anyone ask me what you've said tonight! And Obliviates can be broken, you know that."
"Not without breaking the mind." Lord Malfoy said contemptuously. "And only if that mind doesn't know Occlumency." He raised one sardonic eyebrow, "You do know Occlumency, don't you?"
Blaise released Malfoy's shoulders and took a step back, nonplussed. "Of course, I know Occlumency, that's beside the point."
"No, it's not. You can use Occlumency to block out a great deal of pain. And if you've already withstood that amount of pain once, then there is very little chance of your mind breaking until your body dies."
"You don't mean to…" Blaise took another step back; suddenly worried about the turn the conversation had taken. Occlumency to block out pain? Surely, not. Draco mimicked his backward movement in perfect step, like a dancing partner with malice on the mind.
"To what?" Draco asked blandly, but with a wicked gleam in his eyes. "Don't trust my intentions?"
Zabini, aware of Malfoy's tendency to tease any and everyone around him, paused to reconsider the situation. Draco had already promised to Obliviate him if necessary, but Malfoy was standing there so menacingly, with such a foreboding cast to his face, that Blaise had just assumed that Draco had meant to help him protect his mind from pain with a practical demonstration. Looking the other boy in the eyes, Blaise came to the conclusion that he'd been had.
"Draco…" Blaise said, a bit of whine in his voice.
"Blaise…" Draco mocked his tone.
"Damn you," Zabini said petulantly.
For the first time in three weeks, Draco Malfoy cracked a smile, and while it was small, and undernourished, leaving much to be desired, the simple fact that it was there gave Blaise a reason to flash a smile of his own. Perhaps things were going to be okay after all.
ooOO00OOoo
"Why me? Why me?" Hermione said, the following morning, slumping down onto the bench next to Harry at breakfast time.
"What now?" Harry asked mildly as he spooned himself a generous portion of porridge.
"We fought again, all last night, and Professor McGonagall found out. She said that we weren't going to get any more chances to make things work for our prefect duties, two chances was enough. Now she said she's going to split us up and pair the two of us up with people from another house who seemed to have some trouble last night as well, though I assume it's not as much as us. Nobody could have fought as much as us last night. Ron didn't even wait for us to leave the Great Hall before starting shit." Hermione shook her head morosely before folding her arms on the table and pillowing her head in them. "After last night, all I want to do is go to sleep."
"What about class, Hermione?" Ginny asked from a ways down the table.
From underneath the copious folds of her school robes, the muffled voice of Hermione floated to the ears of the recipients, stunning them into silence. "Screw class."
"Oh my god, who are you and what have you with Hermione Granger?" Harry said, mocking horror.
"Screw you, Harry Potter," she replied, her muted tones not disguising her distaste for the world in particular, and Harry in general.
"Uh-huh." Looking around the table, the general consensus was the Hermione was Out Of Her Mind.
"Maybe we should just leave her alone," someone suggested.
"Good idea," Harry nodded and applied himself industriously to his porridge.
ooOO00OOoo
As the day progressed, Hermione seemed to pull herself out of her morning funk, which was a wonderful thing. Except that she also seemed to be passing it along to Harry. The more cheerful she got, the more twitchy he became, especially as his impending detention drew near.
"Would you stop that?" Harry snapped at Hermione as she whistled down the hallway next to him.
"Well, excuse me, Mr. Pissed-In-His-Pants, but I'm in a good mood, and I'm not going to let you drag me down," she said with a toss of her head.
Gritting his teeth, Harry tried to remind himself that he wasn't really mad with Hermione, just the Toad for her unjust treatment of him, and her horribly biased opinion of Voldemort. "Sorry," he said stiffly.
"S'okay," Hermione said. "I still love you."
Two nights ago, Hermione had decided that Harry hadn't had enough people telling him that they loved him, and ever since then, she'd had the disturbing tendency to tell Harry that she loved him as often as possible.
I do wish she'd stop that. Harry thought uncomfortably as they returned to Gryffindor Tower to study for a few hours before he had to leave for his meeting with the Toad. Makes me nervy.
Studying didn't help calm his already jumpy nerves, since it was Defense against the Dark Arts that they was studying, and Umbridge was the teacher who he was serving the detention with. Five minutes before he had to leave for detention, Harry's tension spiked. Why, oh why, did she have to make me serve the detention with her? Harry fretted. Even Hermione's tense about it, I can tell. This isn't going to turn out well.
Much to Harry's dismay, upon his entrance to Umbridge's 'lair', Harry discovered that the bad feeling he had shared with Hermione was warranted.
"Come in, come in." the Toad said sweetly.
Harry closed the door softly behind him, the 'click' of the latch sounding horrendously loud in the confines of the empty classroom.
"Sit down." She had a demonic smile on her face as she indicated the lone chair in the room with a scroll of parchment and a quill.
Doing as instructed Harry picked up the quill, expecting to do lines. He was not mistaken.
"This," she said, waving her hand at the blackboard behind her, "is the line that you will copy over, for the next two hours." In big block letters the words 'I must not tell lies' had scrawled themselves inelegantly across the entirety of the board. "Get started."
Sighing in defeat, Harry looked down at the paper, the length of which he knew would continue to grow as he wrote, ensuring that he'd never have to stop and ask for more paper as a reprieve.
Placing quill to parchment Harry began by making the top line to the word 'I' when he felt a stinging pain in his right hand. Hissing in pain, he dropped the quill and inspected the back of his hand. There was a line there, running from right to left, cut into his skin, just deep enough to bleed. Bringing his hand up to his mouth, he licked the blood away, the copper taste filling his mouth for a moment.
"Is there a problem, Mister Potter?" his teacher asked sweetly.
"I cut myself, ma'am." Harry responded, though he'd be damned if he knew how.
"Really?" She asked, uninterested. "Is it deep?"
"No."
"Is it painful?"
"Well, yes…" Harry began.
"Then I see no problem. Pain is a very potent motivator, wouldn't you agree?" her voice of molasses contained a hint of steel.
Warily, Harry looked back at her. "Sometimes, yes."
"Then I suggest you get motivated and begin writing, or I'll have to extend this detention." Harry swore her mouth resembled a bear trap.
"Yes, Ma'am," Harry replied wearily. He really didn't want to be here.
Picking the quill back up, he made the last two strokes of the letter 'I' when pain again registered in his hand. Looking down in disbelief, Harry realized that the letter 'I' he had just drawn on the parchment, was etched into the back of his hand and that the ink he was using…was his own blood.
"Oh, Merlin's balls," Harry said softly, in disbelief. She expected him to write in his own blood?
"Professor…!" Harry began, outraged.
"Mister Potter?" She cut him off sharply, daring him to say something. Daring him to be a wimp and give in, to complain about the quill. Stand up. She thought gleefully. Go ahead, do it! Throw a fit about the quill and see where it gets you! You're too much of a hothead to keep your thoughts together, and you'll only end up getting yourself into trouble, and me, none at all! Go ahead, say something, I dare you to!
Harry was a hothead; it was true, but not so much of one that he couldn't recognize the look in his teacher's eyes. She wants me to say something. How could she not get into trouble for this? Looking down at his hand, he saw that the cuts had healed themselves, and his hand was smooth and unblemished as if they'd never been there. Dear Merlin.
"Never mind," Harry said, realizing that he was in a terrible situation. The cuts wouldn't stay on his hand for any significant amount of time, and he'd heard a rumor that she would start interviewing teachers and sitting in on their classes soon. Rumor said that she even had the ability to fire teachers! What could they do about this when their own jobs were at stake? Besides, who would believe him? There weren't any marks to show, and the blood…Harry leaned over the parchment and inspected the letter he'd drawn closely. Already dry, the blood had darkened to black, appearing as nothing more interesting than poor quality ink.
Gritting his teeth, Harry picked up the quill again, glaring at it a moment in distaste, before placing it down on the paper, preparing to make the downward stroke of the letter 'm'. To his disgust, he could actually feel the quill pressing down on his skin, even as it pressed down into the parchment. His jaw tight as a sprung wire, Harry drug the quill down the paper, pain blossoming in his mind as he watched his skin tear open under the pressure of an invisible force. Turning his head up to glare at his torturer, Harry was unsurprised to see her smirking gleefully at him.
"Problem?" she asked scathingly.
"…No." Placing quill to parchment yet again, Harry began the torturous task of writing his lines, written in blood.
ooOO00OOoo
Harry cradled his aching right hand at he wobbled down the hall towards his dorm. It had been two torturous hours since his session had begun, and Harry really wasn't looking foreword to the next two detentions he had to serve with the Designer of Nightmares.
Grateful that he hadn't met anybody, Harry collapsed into his bed, his hand throbbing with remembered pain. Looking down at it, Harry was distraught to notice that there still was no evidence of the cuts that had been carved, over and over again, into the living flesh of his hand. At the end of two hours, the Toad had come up to Harry and demanded to see the back of his hand. Inspecting it closely, she had observed the thin red lines that had etched themselves into a discernable pattern on his skin and had observed, scathingly, that tomorrow he had another chance for the lesson to 'sink in properly' and to have a 'deeper affect' on him.
Serin, for his part, was scathingly mad with Harry for forbidding him to attack the Toad, and was curled up sullenly on the top of Harry's head, in his fury, refusing to speak to him.
"Pleasse," Harry tried to reason with him, "Biting her would have only made thingss worsse, not better. Few people at thiss sschool have the influence necesssary to sstop her in what sshe iss doing. That sshe iss here at all provess that the Rulerss-Of-Wizardss have a far larger hold in my Place-Of-Learning than we had originally thought." Harry explained. Hermione wasn't his friend for nothing.Silence was his only response.
"Come on, talk to me. Why are you sso mad…" Harry cut off as a person entered the room and addressed him.
"Talking to yourself in Parseltongue again, Harry?" Hermione asked, her head having breached the edge of his bed. "You know that's the first sign of insanity."
"Not if you've got somebody to talk to." Harry responded with a smile, sitting up on his bed. "How was your night?"
"Ugh, it was terrible," Hermione said, flopping down onto the bed beside him. "McGonagall paired up me and Blaise Zabini for some Merlin-be-damned reason." She brought a hand up and covered her eyes with her slender fingers. "Which, in all honesty, wasn't that bad, I can see why he's number one on the girls list now, but he inevitably searched out Malfoy, because they're such good friends and all, and in the end, it was the four of us standing in the hallway shouting at each other. Because, of course, Ron just had to be paired up with Malfoy."
"That doesn't sound good," Harry said, sympathetically.
"No, no it doesn't," Hermione acknowledged. "Malfoy and Ron couldn't keep their mouths shut at all, so they were fighting. Blaise took Malfoy's side, no surprise there, but what about me? Ron stood there, saying all of these mean things about Malfoy. In fact, he was saying the same things about Malfoy that he'd been saying about me just the night before! So…" Hermione continued sheepishly, "I sided with the Slytherins."
"What!" Harry cried, sitting bolt upright.
"I know, I know!" Hermione brought her other hand up and covered her whole face with both hands, her muffled voice escaping out the bottom of her palms. "And, Merlin help me, it was fun! Malfoy has such a sharp tongue, and it's really rather amusing when he's not using it against you or me, not to mention that Blaise said some really pointed things as well. Towards the end there, I swear, Malfoy was actually saying things that would set me up to lash out at Ron." She paused, "poor Ron," she continued in a soft voice, "he didn't know what hit him. I guess he just assumed that I was going to back him up since we're both in Gryffindor, and I normally would have, but you haven't heard the things he says to me when we're alone in the hallways. I just couldn't resist any opportunity to hurt him."
"Well, I hope you got him good," Harry said, resigned.
"Yeah, I did." Hermione said with a grin. "But we didn't fight for all that long, McGonagall heard the yelling and found us. She split the fight up and told us that we were all to go back to our dorms and think about what we'd done. Said that we should think about whether or not we really wanted to be prefects, because she could take it away if that's what we really wanted."
"Is she going to take it away from you?" Harry asked, worried.
"I don't think so, I think she knows that Ron keeps starting it, and that I'm only defending myself. The other two?" She shrugged. "Don't know, don't care."
"At least you'll be alright, that's all that matters right now. I'll take what I can get." Harry flopped back down on his back next to Hermione.
"Why do you say that?" Hermione rolled onto her side and propped herself up on her elbow to look down at Harry. "What did that woman do to you?"
"Nothing particularly horrible." Harry assured Hermione, unable to bring himself to tell her about the quill that wrote in blood. "She just made me write lines: 'I must not tell lies.'" Harry spat.
"Oh, dear," Hermione shook her head in disgust.
"Yeah. And she just sat there the whole time, smiling at me; it was so hard not to just hex that stupid grin right off her face." Harry bared his teeth in a semblance of a smile, "and I get to do it all again tomorrow night."
"It'll be okay," Hermione patted his shoulder awkwardly from her position on the slender bed. "You only have two days left, then you just have to keep your mouth shut and your head down, and you won't get any more detentions."
"I don't know about that," Harry disagreed, sitting up and running his fingers through his wild mane. "She was so….happy…at the end of my detention tonight, said she was looking foreword to the next one, so that the lines could 'make an impression' on me. I'm worried about what she means." Harry thought he was dancing around the truth rather well.
"It'll be okay," Hermione said again, this time more firmly, "you'll see." She'd make it be okay.
Glancing over at Harry's bedside watch, Hermione saw just how late it was. "Geeze, it's one o'clock! I got back over an hour ago, why didn't you tell me it was getting so late?" Hermione admonished as she stood up and headed for the door. She paused with her hand on the door. "Where is everybody else?"
Harry grinned, appreciating a rare moment in which he knew something that she did not, and stood to his feet. "Open the door."
Confused as to how that answered her question, Hermione did as she was bid, and a whole tangle of bodies landed at her feet in welcome. "Dean? Seamus? Ron? And…Neville?" Hermione asked incredulously. "What are all of you doing listening in at the door of your own dorm?"
Hermione looked back at Harry for confirmation when an idea struck her. "You don't think…that they think, that we…" She trailed off.
"Yeah," Harry confirmed, his grin a mile wide.
"Eeewww!" Hermione shrieked. "You are all disgusting!" She released the door and backed away from them all, hands outstretched as if to ward them, and their horrible ideas, away from her delicate person. "Where do you get these gross ideas?"
"Well…you see..." Neville spluttered.
"You and Harry were alone in here for an hour, and it was so quiet, we knew you had to have silencing charms up," Seamus explained unabashedly. "You did, didn't you?"
"No!" Hermione cried, at the same time as Harry quietly answered,
"Yes."
She whipped her head around to stare at him. "What?"
Harry sighed and sat down onto his bed. When he'd pulled his feet in front of him and was sitting Indian style, he began to talk, but no sound escaped him. Standing to his feet, and stepping away from the bed, Harry explained, "I have a permanent silencing charm around my bed."
"Why?" Hermione asked, befuddled.
"To study." Harry answered.
"To hide the girls!" Dean cried triumphantly, "I knew it!"
"No." Harry said with a chuckle and a shake of his head, "I study late at night when you guys are asleep, and sometimes I read aloud. I didn't want to wake you all up."
"But…" Neville said slowly, eyebrows furrowed. "If you only use it to study, why couldn't we here you and Hermione talking?"
"She had to have been in bed with you!" Seamus pounced on that bit of information. "Good going, Nev!"
"She was," Harry said, enjoying the uncomfortable look on Hermione's face.
"The whole time?" Dean asked hopefully.
"The whole time," The raven haired youth confirmed, wickedly.
"Harry Potter, you little liar!" Hermione spat out, advancing on him. "You're making it sound like we were shagging, just like those three were trying to make it sound like Ron was," she made a vague, but universally understood gesture with one hand, "in the bathroom the first night of prefect duties!"
There was a sudden fit of coughing from her left and she paused in her attack on Harry to turn and look at the congregation still loitering in the doorway.
"What?" she asked again, it seemed to be her favorite word tonight. She took in the Ron's flaming face, and the other three's incessant – and obviously fake – coughing as they tried to slide out the door. "You mean…" she said as realization struck, "you weren't trying to insinuate that, but rather, hide it from me?" She asked, horrified.
"Oh, Merlin." She breathed, becoming sick, "and he said my name…" her face as well began to flame red as she blushed. "I've got to go," She said suddenly, forcing her way through the boys in the doorway and fleeing.
When the four boys had finally managed to get back inside their doom, having firmly closed and locked the door behind them, all they saw was an empty room, and the curtains drawn firmly around Harry's bed.
I bet I know what he's doing. Ron thought darkly. Laughing his ass off at me, that's what. I'll show him, I'll show them all! How dare those sneaky Slytherins try to steal Hermione from me, and how dare Harry try to as well! I'll teach them all a lesson, and then Hermione will love me! Nodding his head in satisfaction, Ron ignored the snickering of the other three males and completed his nightly routine. Tomorrow, he would go to the library and find a suitably nasty spell to cast on them all. One that was rare and difficult to cast. Then Hermione would be impressed with his intelligence and magical skill. She'd have to take him back then.
ooOO00OOoo
Thursday, Ron got up at the crack of dawn and made his way down to the library, surprised to discover that he wasn't the only person who got up that early to get into the library.
"Ravenclaws," Ron muttered to himself and rolled his eyes as he set his stuff down at a table in the back, claiming it as his own. Abandoning it there for a moment, he went and browsed through the many shelves of the library, determined that he would find something to make Hermione his, for all eternity.
ooOO00OOoo
Harry was annoyed. For two days now, teachers and students had been asking him where Ron was, as if he'd had a reason to know. Ginny had asked him where Ron was when he'd not shown up for breakfast; Harry had replied that he didn't know. Professor McGonagall had asked him where Ron was when he didn't show up for transfiguration; Harry had replied that he didn't know. Fred and George had asked him where Ron was during lunch (they'd had a prank they wanted to test on him); they were sorely disappointed when Harry responded that he didn't know. Even Professor Trelawney asked him where Ron was, claiming that her inner eye was 'a bit clouded' at the moment. Harry, sorely tempted to run screaming from the room, gritted his teeth and responded, calmly, if a bit tensely, that he didn't know.
Now, an hour later, Harry was still in a bad mood. And if one more person asked him where that red-haired, freckle-faced, lying, backstabbing, two-faced, conniving, son-of-a—no, Harry love Mrs. Weasley, and wouldn't say such things about her, even in his mind.
Stalking into the courtyard, Harry chose a bench from which he could easily observe any annoying person approaching him with another damn question about Ron's whereabouts. It was Friday afternoon, he had another torture session with the Toad to go to tonight, and Serin was off hunting with Hedwig. All he wanted to do was relax.
"Hey, Harry." Hermione said, sitting down next to him. "How are you?"
"Tired, and annoyed," Harry responded pithily.
"Ah," Hermione nodded solemnly. "So, where's Ron?" she asked cheekily.
Harry glowered at her. "You do know you are the only person who could possibly ask me that right now and live?" he asked her darkly.
"Yeah, I know." She said with way too much cheer and nudged his shoulder gently with her own. "Cheer up, I'm sure he'll turn up soon, and then they'll leave you alone."
"Should just put a damn cow-bell around that prick's neck," Harry grumped.
Hermione laughed softly and sat in companionable silence with him for a while.
Students were congregating in little clumps in the courtyard, clearly segregated by gender. The girls stood in tight little circles, giggling about something, while the boys stood casually in semi-circles – opening towards the girls of course – and chatted about everything and nothing at once. Every once in a while, a few of the girls in one group would split off and join one of the other groups, and the males would inevitably follow, sometimes towards a different group, and sometimes with a different number of people leaving, but always the same strange dance.
Time passed, and, eventually, Harry's bottom became numb. Glancing to his right, he noticed amusedly, that Hermione had pulled out a book, and appeared to have been reading it for some time. Chuckling softly, Harry reached out a hand and tapped her gently on the shoulder.
"Hmm? What?" Hermione started.
"It's about time for me to go, I've got Divination next." Harry stood to his feet and laced his fingers together, raising them over his head to stretch out sore muscles.
"Okay," Hermione said, putting her book away. Taking Harry's proffered hand, she stood to her feet. "I might as well go back to my dorm and do some homework, before Runes later on today."
Harry smiled at her in goodbye and turned to walk away. Suddenly, a voice from behind him yelled out an unfamiliar phrase in a rage-filled tone:
"Spiritus Semper Simul!"
Acting on instinct alone, Harry spun – lightening quick – on the balls of his feet, and leapt in front of Hermione, at whom the spell was aimed, his wand flashing into sight as he threw up a hasty protection charm in front of them both. It was too late; the spell was too powerful, his shield; too weak, and Harry's breath slammed out of him as he felt the bone-breaking impact of the spell lash across his skin. Flying backwards, Harry fell hard on Hermione, and the two of them lay in a tangled mess of limbs on the ground, his wand still tightly clenched in his hand.
Dimly, Harry heard the sound of someone crying out in pain and surprise. Part of the spell had hit Harry, but the shielding spell had done it's job, and deflected most of the attack, sending it skittering off in another direction to strike an innocent bystander. Groaning to his feet, Harry was unsurprised to discover that, in the few seconds that he'd lain, winded, on the ground; he, Hermione, and – Ron? – had acquired a crowd. All of them stood around the trio in a rough circle, mouths gaping at something Harry couldn't see. Turning his head to the left, Harry saw the shocked features of Ronald Weasley and all of the anger and frustration he'd held in through the day over the inane questions people had asked him boiled over in one dark cloud of emotion. Striding up to the red-head, Harry balled up his fist and drew it back past his ear, sending it crashing into the back-stabbers face with the crushing force of a punch that began in his left foot, traveled up his leg, through his torso, and down his right arm to center directly behind one tightly clenched fist.
Harry had never heard a sound so satisfying as the involuntary grunt that Ron gave as his body collapsed, boneless, onto the ground.
"Ouch! Shit!" Harry cried, shaking his hand out as pain reversed the course the energy had taken, traveling back up his arm, before deviating from the standard course and traveling directly up his brainstem and making it's presence known in his already-addled brain.
"What happened to Malfoy?" Harry heard Hermione ask as she compulsively, and shakily, brushed leaves from her robes as she eyed the body on the ground with the white-blond hair.
"The spell rebounded off Harry's shield and hit him." Harry heard someone else respond.
"Is he okay?" Hermione asked worriedly.
"Yeah," was Malfoy's grumpy response as he sat upright.
"Then we'd better get out of here before a teacher shows up," Harry said, and turned to do just that. Gathering up Hermione's scattered books, Harry walked up to her and together, the two of them turned and walked quickly away from the scene of the crime.
It was then, that Malfoy screamed.
ooOO00OOoo
I know, I know, you all probably hate me now, but what can I say? I've been planning this moment since the idea for this story was first hatched, and I am so happy with the way it's turned out. For those of you who really want to know, the spell Ron said, "Spiritus Semper Simul" translates, roughly, to "Spirits always together." More on exactly what that spell has done at a later date. P.S.: The whole tanzier thing, yeah all mine. Tootles!