After his argument with Anka, Harry went back to his dorm, not really wanting to interact with any of their friends. He pulled out some homework, because he knew he needed to do it, but he couldn't focus. He finally gave up and grabbed his broom, heading out to the Quidditch pitch for some flying time before dinner.

Why did Anka have to defend him for everything? Did she not think that he could take care of himself? Harry wasn't stupid or deaf, he heard the whispers from other kids in Slytherin. That Harry needed a girl to back him up all the time, that he couldn't handle anything by himself.

Most of the time he was able to ignore it. He loved Anka, and it made him feel good that someone was looking out for him, but did she have to be so brazen about it? He was a Slytherin, he needed subtlety. And that wasn't Anka's strength.

Harry was still frustrated by dinner time, and sat with the Slytherin table, knowing that his friends avoided that table most of the time anymore. He tried not to look at Anka throughout dinner, and she had her back to him anyway, so he couldn't really see her. Harry didn't eat much though. He was still frustrated with Anka, but he felt bad for how he had snapped at her earlier. Just as he was getting up the nerve to go talk to her, Flint came up.

"Malfoy, Potter, Quidditch pitch in 30 minutes."

Draco and Harry exchanged a glance. "I didn't have tonight scheduled, Flint." Malfoy told him.

"You do now," Flint told him. "Let's go."

Harry and Draco quickly finished their meals and ran off to the dorm to grab their brooms.

Flint worked them long and hard that night, and they barely made it back to their dorm by curfew. Harry was exhausted, between flying on his own, Quidditch practice, and his row with Anka. Harry barely managed a shower before falling asleep.

The next day, Harry didn't have any classes with the Gryffindors, which was frustrating because he still hadn't had a chance to talk to Anka. As the morning went on though, he started second guessing himself. What if she's angry with him? What if he pushed her away and she decided she didn't want to deal with him anymore?

He had planned to eat lunch with their group, but these thoughts filled him with anxiety, and he couldn't stand the idea of having this conversation with her in front of their friends. When Fay tracked him down to ask if he was having lunch with them, he told her that he was eating with his friends from Slytherin because he hadn't spent much time with them recently. Fay looked pensive, but shrugged and went back with their friends.

Draco asked him what was wrong as they headed back to the dorm after lunch, but Harry brushed him off. The only thing keeping him sane was that they were both supposed to have tea with Severus that afternoon, so hopefully they could talk then.

The time before tea crawled by, but finally it was time for Harry to go, so he quickly made his exit and headed to Severus' office.

He knocked and Severus let him in, and Harry collapsed in his normal seat, and automatically prepped his tea. He and Severus made some idle chit chat about the week while they waited for Anka.

She was late. Anka was never late for tea. She came straight from History of Magic, and even if Binns doesn't stop talking at class change, nobody ever stayed late. Finally, Severus leaned forward.

"What's going on?" He asked gently.

"What do you mean?" Harry asked, not quite looking Severus in the eyes.

"You've been morose since you got here, and Anka is apparently not coming." It had been an hour since she was supposed to be there. Harry admitted that Severus was probably right, Anka was avoiding him and he felt horrible. He knew how much Anka looked forward to tea time on Fridays with both of them.

"Anka and I had a fight yesterday." Harry admitted. Then he explained to Severus how it had come about. "It's my fault, I overreacted. I was just so frustrated because I don't want to always be seen as the Boy-Who-Lived-Who-Needs-His-Sister-To-Protect-Him." Harry huffed. "But I realized it wasn't her I was angry at. It was the people that have made comments about it. Because I like that Anka cares about me enough to defend me, to anyone. I've never had that before."

"Harry, I do know how Anka is. She can be overbearing and take things too far. She is a Gryffindor and a Hufflepuff. She's brash and impulsive, and so very loyal to all of her friends. The two of you will need to establish a balance that works for you on when you want her to defend you, and what things you need her to let go. And she won't be able to figure that on her own."

"It's just… I'm Slytherin. And I could've gone to Gryffindor." Harry conceded. "But I want subtlety and planning, not just charge in and yell at everyone who could hurt my feelings. What do I care about what a first year Gryffindor is saying about me?" Harry huffed. "But I could have communicated that to Anka better. I even told her to go away. No wonder she's mad at me."

Severus sighed. "She won't stay mad at you. Anka doesn't do grudges. At least, not well." He laughed a little bit. "You and Anka will work it out. I know this type of argument hits harder. She's your sister, but she's also your best friend. But because she's your sister, it isn't like you two can avoid each other forever."

Harry cheered considerably at that. He knew that he would get a chance to talk to her eventually, but -

"What if she does keep avoiding me though? I don't want to talk to her about this in front of all of our friends."

"Well, I want to talk to her regardless. I will have her come down after dinner, and I will likely have her sleep here tonight. Come by for breakfast, and I will make sure the two of you can talk without prying ears."

Harry was satisfied with this, and they talked until dinner, and walked up to the Great Hall together, running a little late. When they walked in, both automatically looked for Anka. They found their group of friends were sitting at the Ravenclaw table, but Anka was nowhere to be found. Harry looked up at Severus, and became more worried when he saw the concerned look on his Dad's face.

"I'll handle it, Harry." Severus promised, urging Harry to the Slytherin table. "I will see you for breakfast tomorrow."

Harry nodded, but was still distracted through dinner. He saw Severus make his exit rather quickly, and he tried to relax, knowing that Severus would take care of Anka.

At the dorm, Harry was digging into his trunk when it hit him. Their journals! He pulled his out, and found that he had a message from Anka the night before.

Harry,

I know you are angry with me. I'm sorry! I didn't realize how much my actions were upsetting you. Can we talk about it?

Harry felt awful. She had tried to reach out the night before and he hadn't gotten the message because he was so tired after Quidditch. He jotted a note back, hoping that she might get it.

I'm sorry too, Anka! I shouldn't have snapped at you. I definitely want to talk about it. I'm sorry I didn't see your message until now - we had Quidditch practice last night and I came back to the dorm and barely managed to shower before I fell asleep.

Harry waited all night, but Anka never responded. He told himself that she was probably with Severus, like they had discussed earlier, but he couldn't shake his anxiety that she was just mad at him.

His sleep was fitful, and he got up early and headed to breakfast. He almost knocked, before stopping himself. He hesitantly let himself in, and found Severus reading the paper at the table and sipping his tea. He looked up as the door opened and looked pleased when he saw Harry.

"Good morning, Harry. Come, have a seat."

Harry did, and fixed himself some tea, while they waited. "Anka is having a shower." Severus told him. "She should be out in a few minutes."

"Is she okay?" Harry asked.

"She is." Severus told him. "You both have been beating yourselves up over this argument. I have no doubt that the two of you will rectify it. Anka has also had some other topics that were bothering her that are not my place to say. But her reactions the past few days have not been solely due to your row, though it isn't my place to share the specific information with you."

Harry relaxed a little. He had spent the night wondering if Severus had ever even found Anka or if she was missing entirely, since she missed tea and dinner.

A few minutes passed before Anka came out of her bedroom. She froze for a second, panic flashing across her face, before she composed herself.

"Good morning," She said, but she almost said it as a question.

"Good morning, Anka." Severus said.

"Good morning," Harry said, unsure what else to say.

Anka sat down and after a moment of silence, they both blurted out at the same time.

"I'm sorry!"

This broke the ice and they both started laughing a little bit.

"Harry-" Anka started, but he interrupted her.

"No, let me go first. Anka, I shouldn't have snapped at you. I was frustrated at being called the Heir of Slytherin and frustrated because people in my dorm have been making comments about me not being able to handle things for myself. But I wasn't ever actually angry with you. I like that you want to defend me, nobody else has ever done that before. And I feel horrible for telling you to go away. I am so sorry."

Anka shook her head. "You don't have to be sorry. I'm sorry for not considering how my actions effect you."

Harry shook his head. "You wouldn't have known what was going on in the Slytherin dorm, Anka. You can't take responsibility for something that you couldn't possibly know. But if it makes you feel better, I do forgive you."

"I forgive you too." Anka said, and her eyes welled with tears. "What- how do you want me to handle this type of thing going forward? Because Harry, I don't know how to not defend you in some circumstances. I promise that I will work on it, but it's going to take me time to do so. If you can tell me what you'd prefer, that might help."

Harry shook his head. "No, Anka. I don't mind you defending me, honestly. I wasn't actually angry at you. But maybe if you keep it to the Gryffindor's that you are defending me against and let me handle the Slytherins? And anything else we can discuss first?"

"I can do that!" Anka lit up. "That, I know I can do." She grinned at him, her first real smile all morning, and Harry felt a weight lift off of his shoulders, and he grinned back at her.

"Is there anything else the two of you need to discuss about your row?" Severus asked them. Harry had almost forgotten he was there, but he did have one more thing.

"Yeah," Harry swallowed. "Anka, I didn't see your message in the journal from Thursday night. I saw it last night and I did respond. We had a last minute, long, Quidditch practice and I came back to the dorm and showered and barely was able to get into bed. I promise I wasn't ignoring you."

"Oh." Anka breathed. She nodded. "Thank you. That - I feel better about that. I thought you were just ignoring me because you were angry. And I didn't want to have that conversation over the journal anyway, but I didn't want our argument to go on… well, as long as it did. But I wanted to give you space too - I don't know, I was overthinking it, I guess."

"Well, I didn't mind that you wrote to me. I wish I had seen it earlier so that you hadn't decided to skip tea yesterday." Harry shot her a mocking look and she laughed a little. "Did you really skip tea because of our fight?" Harry asked her, serious.

She hesitated. "That was part of it." She admitted. "But there was a lot of other stuff going on in my head that I don't really want to go into right now that played a much bigger role."

"That's okay, you don't have to share." Harry assured her. "But please don't ever skip tea again just because we had a fight." Harry begged.

Anka nodded. "Dad already lectured me on that." She admitted. "I won't, I promise."

"That goes for you too," Severus told Harry. "You aren't allowed to skip tea because of an argument either. Tea is for us to spend time together as a family. I expect you both to be there each week."

Harry nodded, grateful for the clarification for both of them.

With that, they segued into breakfast, discussing lighter topics, like Quidditch and classes. As they were finishing up, Severus addressed them.

"I have some errands to run outside of Hogwarts today," He told them. "If you have need of me, I will be back by dinner. If there is an emergency, such as Harry hearing that voice, go at once to Professor McGonagall, or if all else fails, to Professor Dumbledore." He looked between them. "Can you two handle that?"

Anka laughed. "We'll be fine, Severus." She promised.

Harry nodded. "Yeah, we're good now." He looked at Anka. "Do you want to go to the Lab like normal?"

Anka nodded. "Yeah, but I need to get some things from my dorm. I don't have everything since I slept here last night."

"I'll walk with you." Harry said, picking up his bag. Anka ran into her room. "Though, I think I'll leave this here and grab it when we get back?" He phrased it as a question, not sure Severus' opinion of them coming in when he wasn't there.

Severus looked like he stopped himself just short of rolling his eyes. "Are you asking my permission to leave your bag in your home so that you don't have to carry it to Gryffindor tower when you are literally coming straight back here? Harry, what do you think the answer to that is?"

Harry laughed. "Okay, thanks Dad." He grinned, setting his bag back down. "Anka, you ready?"

Anka had come out of her room with her school bag. "Yeah, I am. Let's go. Bye Severus," she said, and Harry echoed her, following her into the hallway.

They walked in comfortable silence, and Harry was just glad that things didn't seem awkward between them. Harry idly wondered what errands Severus was running that day, and he also wondered what else had been bothering Anka the past few days. Then it hit him. He knew she had gotten a letter on Wednesday night - and she only really got mail from Remus. Like him, he didn't have many people in his life that weren't with them at Hogwarts. Her only person really was Remus, which recently had seemed to send her into a tailspin every time he was even mentioned. Harry decided that that wasn't the conversation he wanted to have right now, and he was pretty sure that Anka didn't either.

He was saved by his thoughts when Anka stopped in a corridor in front of a bathroom. "Harry, look." She told him. He looked around and realized they were in the corridor that Mrs. Norris had been petrified in. The wall still said, 'The Chamber of Secrets has been opened.' He followed Anka's pointing finger to the spiders that were a ton of spiders trying to get through a crack.

"That's strange." Harry commented. He looked around at the floor. "Look, there are some scorch marks over here." Anka came over and looked at that too.

"I wonder if there is anything in the bathroom," She mused, and went and opened the door signifying that the bathroom was out of order.

Harry hesitated. "Anka, that's a girl's bathroom."

"Don't worry." She said. "It's Myrtle's bathroom. Nobody uses it." Harry thought that that was probably wise, but shrugged and followed her in, not wanting to let her go alone.

"Hello Myrtle," Anka greeted pleasantly.

Myrtle wasn't looking at Anka, though. She was eyeing Harry. "This is a girl's bathroom," She told him. "You aren't a girl."

"No, Myrtle. We just wanted to know if you saw anything the other night, on Halloween. The night that Mrs. Norris was attacked?" Anka asked, straight to the point.

"I wasn't paying attention," Myrtle exclaimed, dramatically. "Peeves had been mean and I was upset and I came back here to kill myself except- except-" she burst into tears and dived back into the toilet behind her, out of sight.

"Well," Anka shrugged. "It was worth a shot."

The left the bathroom, and Harry was relieved to see that nobody had seen them. "She's… different." Harry commented.

Anka shrugged again. "That was better than she normally is."

"You know her enough to know how she normally is? I had never seen her before the Deathday Party."

"Well, yeah." Anka looked a little uncomfortable. "It wasn't always easy growing up in a castle full of older children. I talked with a lot of the ghosts and I did a lot of exploring. I didn't spend a huge amount of time with Myrtle, Severus put a stop to it, but she fascinated me when I was about 8." She laughed a little bit.

"Why did Severus stop you?" Harry asked, curious.

"Oh, he didn't think she was a good influence." Anka laughed. "He's probably right. She's really negative, probably not what I needed at that point. That was during a period where I was pretty angry about my circumstances, she wouldn't have helped matters."

"Angry?" Harry asked, not sure if he was pushing too far.

They were walking again, and Harry didn't think she was going to answer at first. Just as he was about to change the subject, she spoke again. "I was just… frustrated. Severus was teaching all the time, and the few students who didn't see me as a nuisance were in class. I was supposed to be doing my own lessons, but I would finish them pretty quickly and be utterly bored the rest of the day. I didn't feel like I had anyone, so I sought out the ghosts for company. But Severus was right, Myrtle was never a good ghost for me to be spending time with then. I think he would have preferred Peeves to Myrtle, honestly." She laughed. "I did give him a run for his money at that time. I was grounded all the time."

Harry laughed too, glad that she could joke about what seemed to be a stressful time for her. "How did you get past it?" He asked her.

Anka considered it. "It's why tea time is so important - not just to me, but to Severus too. It was more then, but he implemented a daily time that was specifically for the two of us to spend time together, and it would be right after his last class of the day and we would have tea. I think in hindsight that he had to get some permission from Dumbledore, but he stopped doing patrols during the evenings, and he wouldn't schedule any detentions until after dinner. The only time that he wouldn't make it would be if someone blew up a cauldron in his last period and he had to tend to it. Even then, if it wasn't too dangerous, he would let me help." She shrugged. "He told me when I was older that he thinks that before that, I just wanted attention - any attention, from anyone. And starting the specific time with him each day did help. I didn't feel like I was constantly having to do things to get his attention. Previously, I only got a lot of attention from him when I was in trouble, and he realized it. I knew that regardless of what I did, he was going to spend tea time with me. It was one of those things that he would never take as a consequence, so I knew that I would have that time with him, so I stopped acting up because I wanted to be able to enjoy our time."

Anka blushed. "Sorry, that was probably way more information than you wanted." she said, but Harry shook his head.

"No, I think that just helped me to understand you a lot better." He felt even worse about her skipping tea the day before, but that wasn't his most pressing question. "Did the older kids bully you?"

Anka looked away. "Not too badly." She said. "When I was really little, no. But at 7, 8, 9… I didn't understand why I couldn't be like them. There were some silencing charms, some practical jokes, it was mostly never anything too serious." Harry caught the word mostly, but wasn't sure if he should push. "There were times they crossed a line." She admitted. "But there were some older students that put a stop to it and took me under their wing. And Harry - Severus doesn't know any of this. And I don't want him to." She looked at him with pleading eyes.

"Of course not." Harry said. "I can keep a secret." Harry realized that this is where Anka's need to protect him from - because there was a time where nobody was protecting her from the bullying at Hogwarts.

They had arrived at the Gryffindor dorm. "Wait here," Anka told him, leaving him down the hallway. She whispered her password so Harry couldn't hear and went into the dorm. There still weren't too many people out, since it was early on a Saturday, but the few people who came out of Gryffindor Tower didn't even give him a second glance. Finally, Anka emerged, her bag over her shoulder.

"Fay and Neville are already gone," She told him. "They are probably at breakfast. The Lab?" Anka asked, and Harry nodded, and they kept their conversation light on the way back to the dungeons.

They entered and found that they were the first ones there, they had even beaten Hermione for once. They got situated, and pulled out their Charms work to start with. Fay and Neville came in next, and Fay gave them a wary look.

"Are you two speaking again?" She asked, eyebrow raised.

Harry felt like a deer in headlights. He hadn't thought of what to tell their friends. He hadn't told anyone about their row, but he didn't know if Anka had.

Luckily, it appeared that Anka was prepared- or at least, really good at faking it. "We never stopped speaking," She said, incredulously.

Fay snorted. "You looked like death warmed over the past two days. And Harry stopped joining us for meals. I'm not stupid."

"I didn't say you were." Anka snorted. "I got a letter Wednesday that stressed me out and Harry was giving me the space I needed to work through it."

Fay still looked skeptical. "So why haven't I seen you since History of Magic yesterday? You never came back to the Tower."

"I had dinner in Severus' quarters. He and I were discussing it and I ended up sleeping there."

"But Professor Snape was at dinner last night." Fay pointed out.

Harry was glad that Anka was leading this conversation, because he wouldn't have had any answer for her, but he felt bad about Anka making it out like everything was her fault.

"Yes, because he's a professor and has to make an appearance. He then came back to his quarters with me."

Fay didn't look overly satisfied with Anka's answers, but she shrugged. "Alright. So, what are we working on?"

They started working, and Hermione and Ginny showed up next, taking a seat and joining in, and Ron straggled in last.

Harry almost sighed. The only thing missing was Draco. Harry missed having him in the Lab. He had felt the absence all year, and he wished he could do something. But at the moment, he didn't think there was anything he could do, so he pushed the thoughts aside, and worked on enjoying his time with the friends that were there.

AN: I've picked back up with working on Prisoner of Azkaban, so here's a chapter to keep my motivation up! Drop a comment with your thoughts. XOXO