III

A Hooded Highwayman

The rest of the summer passed as holidays are wont to do: Quickly. There were no more blow-ups, but Harry could tell Hermione was bothered by several things. He might have pried, had it not been evident she was in no mood to discuss her problems, and had he not understood the sentiment all too well; the revelations about McGonagall and Black weighed heavily on his mind. One summer was not long enough to decide what to do about Minerva, especially as he was doing his best to avoid thinking about it.

All too soon he was standing on platform nine and quarters after a heartfelt farewell from Hermione's parents, noting how strange it was to be in the same place, yet see it so differently. His first time there he had been a boiling pot of nerves and excitement, soaking up the atmosphere with wide eyes. As a second timer he was focused on the crowd as individuals, searching for people he knew, be they friends or best avoided.

The biggest difference, of course, was in the girl at his side. Where Ginny had dragged him through the crowd in a rush to board the train, his hand burning uncomfortably in hers, he was now the one guiding Hermione through much sparser throngs of humanity; they had come early for exactly that reason. Finding an empty compartment was easy, once they had walked the train once to check they were the first of the friendship group to board. They even got one with a central table, much to the chagrin of several passing upper years whose faces showed the internal debate of whether being seniors with a God-given right to the best seats was reason enough to evict the Boy-Who-Lived and a blind kid. None tried their luck.

In time the gang - Luna, Neville, and a bashful Ginny - joined them, and the train was underway. A game of exploding snap was started as a way to direct their nervous energy as they all traded stories about their summers. All except Hermione, who was engrossed in an inch-thick ring-bind folder of braille sheets with an intensity that defied interruption.

Neville had had a quiet summer working his gran's greenhouses and catching up on schoolwork he had missed, he was happy to report. Ginny had been to Egypt with her family after they won a small lottery - she had the Prophet clipping to prove it, featuring a photo of the lot of them posing before the sphinx of Giza, which Harry was surprised to learn was very much the real deal; it was grooming its paws in the background.

Luna wove an epic tale snorkack hunts across the Scandinavian tundra under a midnight sun. No snorkacks had been found, but she was content to have discovered that they did not live that far north, chalking the negative result up as a success. Snorkacks or no, her story was deemed the winner.

Then the umpteenth round of snap was disrupted as Hermione threw her folder onto the table, scattering cards everywhere in a violent chain reaction of explosions and cloud of sulphurous smoke. She ignored the cries of protests and squeals of a distraught Crookshanks and dove into her satchel, pulling out several other folders of similar size, muttering furiously to herself until she found the one she was after. Satisfied, she flipped it open and skimmed her fingers over page after page, seemingly oblivious to the chaos she had caused.

"Good book?" Harry quipped, barely holding in a smoky cough.

He got harshly shushed for his efforts, and so helped pick up the snap cards instead. He got up off the floor - the cards had gone everywhere - to find a binder being thrust into his gut.

"Read it," Hermione commanded.

He took it compliantly, but there was one slight problem. "Uh, I can't read braille."

"I thought you said you were learning?" she whined.

"Yeah, but, slowly?"

"That was a month ago!"

"Very slowly?"

He looked around for some sort of support, like the failure wasn't his fault, but his friends were neither brave nor foolish enough to say anything to that effect.

"Eugh, useless. Give it here. It says: the slayer of a wizard-killer has claim to the carcass in its entirety, in perpetuity, provided the creature was not owned by another and the claim is registered with a year of the creature's death. For owned creatures the slayer may claim a trophy, most commonly the head, or pelt, or other most-distinguishing feature."

Harry was not ashamed to have no clue what she was on about, nor why it should matter to him in that moment, or at all. "Umm, right?"

Hermione huffed her disappointment. "The basilisk, Harry. If I have this right - and I fail to see how I could be wrong - then we can claim the corpse."

"And we want a giant dead snake because…?"

"Because in this book," she said, reaching for the first folder she had thrown and not stopping when she didn't find it, "it says a full grown basilisk could be worth thousands of galleons. The last adult specimen rendered was in 1867!"

"Ok, but, I mean, I'm already rich, and won't it be all rotten and stuff?"

He hadn't particularly thought about it, but he was quickly discovering he had no desire to ever see that snake again, however dead it was. Or however little he had seen of it the first time around.

"You may be rich, but I am not," Hermione said a little bitterly, "so I will gladly take your half if you do not care for it. And it is not just about the money… 1867! If there is a potion or somesuch which uses basilisk venom, it might not have been brewed for a century! Just imagine it."

Harry did his best to imagine it: A cauldron of bubbling black goo, being poured into a vial by a dour looking potions master in a dank dungeon. He didn't see what the fuss was about.

"And it won't be rotten, at least not the parts anyone would want, because the residual magic of a creature that size can last for years, and basilisk venom never breaks down except when it is working on a target."

"She's right you know," Neville chipped in, "about the residual magic. There's uh, there's these mushrooms that only grow for about a month before they start to rot, but if they grow in soil that's had unicorn blood soaked into it they can live for years, cause the unicorn's magic stops all the decay in everything around it."

"Thank you, Neville," Hermione beamed. "We should really have thought of it earlier, but it just didn't cross my mind until just now. I was reading Hunters and Handlers, and it-"

"The book McGonagall said about?"

"Yes, Harry, that's the one. It had a chapter on… it was chapter six, actually… Oh, that is brilliant! She led me right to it!"

"How fascinating," Luna said, "but why would she not tell you herself? It seems much less complicated."

"I don't know. Maybe she wasn't allowed to."

"Allowed by who?" Ginny asked.

"Dumbledore?" Harry suggested.

"But why would-"

The conversation was interrupted by the compartment door sliding open to reveal a blond ponce of a boy and his flanking thugs, all wearing matching sneers.

"Oh look, it seems we've stumbled upon the local freakshow. Why they're all here: The scarred orphan; the blood traitor; the cowardly lion; the nutcase; and the cripple. What a sorry lot."

Harry's hands balled into fists. Malfoy was pressing all the right buttons, going after his friends like that. At his words Ginny was quietly irate, Luna confused, Neville not meeting his eye and Hermione sat reading her book like nothing had happened. No; only pretending to read. Her fingers never moved that slowly when she was reading for real.

"Honestly, Draco," she said, "is that the best you can do? You had all summer to come up with insults, and you went with that? Daddy would be so disappointed in you."

"Who asked you, mudblood?" he spat, looking down his nose like she was filth.

Harry wanted to punch his lights out, but he restrained himself; Hermione was the one being insulted, so he would let Hermione take the first swing. She wouldn't appreciate being defended against such a pathetic threat.

"Wow, I am impressed," she said mockingly, placing a hand to her breast. "First cripple, now mudblood? What are you point out next? Perhaps that I am a girl? Or does your absurd bigotry not extend to sexism? Does your death eater daddy draw the line at insulting women? Has mummy got him by the balls tighter than Voldemort ever did?"

"You - you! You won't get away with saying that! I'm writing my father; I'll have you expelled!"

"Yes, that's right Draco, run to daddy. Let him fight all your battles for you."

"You don't know who you're messing with," Draco threatened, trying to sound dangerous - and failing.

"Neither, it seems, do you," Hermione replied; the danger in her voice set goosebumps on Harry's skin.

"Threatening me now, Granger?"

"Yes."

He did a wide-eyed double-take. "Well, I-"

"I suggest you get moving, daddy's boy, before I show you what a snake with some real fangs looks like."

"I think you should probably leave," Luna suggested airily. "Hermione has a lot of wrackspurts this year, and they're very close to making her do something highly unpleasant."

"I'm not scared of her," Malfoy scoffed.

"You should be," Ginny muttered.

"You really should," Neville agreed.

Harry fixed a warning stare on the intruding Slytherins, willing them to get the message before Hemione saw reason to prove herself to them. He hovered a hand over her arm in case it wasn't enough - he wasn't about to let her do something she'd regret later - and noticed Luna doing the same from the other side.

Finally the light dawned in Malfoy's eyes; the realisation that two of Hermione's friends were ready to intercede in his defence, while the other two were quietly sliding as far out of the way as possible, despite the girl in question having yet to move a muscle. His right hand shifted over his pocket and he took a step back, taking him clear of the doorway.

Luna reached out and slammed the door in his face. After a tense moment or three, he sensibly chose not to open it again, leading his groupies off down the train, probably in search of easier targets.

Hermione's calm fury broke: she started to tremble; her nostrils flared with rapid breaths; and she crumpled a page in her fist like it was a stress ball - or a pureblood's neck.

"You alright Hermione?" Neville asked cautiously.

"I'm fine."

"It's just you look-"

"I said, I am fine."

"You shouldn't let him get to you," said Ginny.

"He was not the problem," Hermione seethed.

She refused to elaborate, but Harry had some idea what might be going on in her head. He knew what happened the last time his friend had raised a wand in anger. He knew why she was so quick to act in defence of herself and her friends, and why she pulled no punches when she did. He couldn't blame her for either, but that didn't mean he wasn't a little scared of her; a deep unsettled feeling in his gut, which he thought must be what a sheep felt when the sheepdog came herding. They weren't really scared; they knew the dog was a friend; but at the first bark their instincts only cared there was a predator nearby.

Malfoy was lucky he had a shred more sense about him than Lockhart ever displayed.

They were well clear of the Scottish border when real trouble came calling.

The draft coming in through the slight crack in the window was turning bitter, like a little tendril of winter come to caress her skin. Background noise in the crowded train fell away into unnatural emptiness. Hermione stowed her folder away and slipped her wand from her sleeve, sensing trouble; when the birdsong stops, look for the hawk overhead. When people stop talking; when the dominant species instinctively sees stealth as the best recourse; what terror might then be stalking the shadows? Her next breath was deep and felt like ice in her lungs, setting her arms to shiver.

That couldn't be a natural cold, not just because it was the end of summer, but because of the way it lingered - one lungful of air could not drain so much body heat. There was a light crackling sound from the window, and when she tentatively raised a finger to check the glass it almost burned her, so cold it was.

There was a sharp yelp from the girls in the compartment, and Neville, echoed by several others throughout the carriage. Hermione noticed nothing changing, and Harry was silent - it was as if the lights had suddenly gone out, spooking those not accustomed to darkness. The lights going out on a late summer evening. Next to a window.

Sometimes, just sometimes, she really hated magic.

But then, what was magic good for really? It had cost her sight, nearly taken Harry from her, nearly taken everything from her. And what did she get in return? A few spells that couldn't give her what she wanted? Admission into a world that didn't want people like her, no matter how hard she worked to prove herself? In the muggle - the normal world, she would be celebrated, on track for a high flying career in whichever science she chose to pursue. Why was she on this stupid train to stupid Hogwarts if that was the case? Why not just cut her losses, go back to somewhere she might be accepted, cripple though she was?

Then again, she wouldn't be happy there, would she? How could she turn her back on magic, the greatest discovery of her life? On the only, albeit miniscule, chance she had of ever seeing her mother's face again. No, it was obvious Hermione Granger couldn't be happy in either world. The proverbial grass was green with mould and decay, and she couldn't see it regardless.

She let her wand drop to her lap. What use was it to her? What was she going to do: hex a threat she couldn't see? Couldn't identify? Couldn't fight? She was more likely to hurt her friends than protect them. The last time she tried protecting a friend, her recklessness got Harry killed. He was only alive because he was too stubborn a git to die. He was only alive because the universe wanted to taunt her.

Ginny can be possessed all year, and bounce back no problem. Harry can die, and come back just fine. Your eyes, though? Ooh, tough luck kid, nothing to be done about that. Guess you should have been luckier. Or stronger. But you weren't, were you? You were just helpless little Hermione, crying all alone because no one wants to be your friend. And why would they? Why would anyone care about a swotty little bookworm strutting about above her station?

And why was the voice in her head not speaking in her voice anymore? Or making any damned sense: She wasn't a swotty bookworm; not anymore. She wasn't helpless; she had fought a basilisk. Yet there was such a sense of existential despair settling in her chest, tying her stomach into knots, even as her mind rallied against it. It felt like… like being chased through the halls of her mind, by some dark and evil thing which didn't belong.

She felt she was on the cusp of banishing it when the compartment door creaked and there was nothing left in her head save torturous screams, those of a helpless girl holding her friend's broken corpse, echoing in the chamber where innocence went to die.

Neville clasped his hands to his ears and scrunched his eyes shut as he fell from the seat, as though he might block out his father's desperate voice.

"No! Leave her alone, you leave my-aaargh!"

"Frank! Frank, no, no please, why are you-!"

The cupboard door wasn't thick enough to have little Neville from the sounds of the Lestranges playing with his parents. He was too young to understand what was truly happening, but old enough to be afraid. The bad people were hurting mummy and daddy, and if they found him maybe they would hurt him too. Mummy had told him to be quiet when she put him in the cupboard, like they were playing hide and seek, and he was a good boy so he did as she told him, as much as he wanted to cry. He was a good boy, and he was going to make daddy proud. When the bad people were gone, daddy would be so proud of his Little Twig.

He only had to stay quiet, stay where he wouldn't be noticed, not draw any attention to himself. It was so hard, but he would do it for them. They'd tell him they were proud. One day, they'd tell him. One day mum would get back the light in her eyes, and dad would recognise him and pull him into a hug, and they would be proud of him. If he told himself enough, if he just lied so convincingly he believed it himself…

He just wanted his mummy back. Why wouldn't she come back? Why was mummy never coming back?

Luna was not particularly happy. A nasty dementor had ever so rudely floated its way into the compartment and was being truly unpleasant to her friends. It was being mean to her too, making her relive watching her mother blasted apart by the spell she was working on, but Luna already dreamt of that often, and her mother wasn't really gone, so she wasn't overly fussed about herself.

Mr Meanypants, as she decided the dementor should be named, was also trying to convince her there was no such thing as a humdinger, nor nargle nor snorkack nor so many other poor endangered creatures. Like it knew better than the daughter of the man who discovered the six-toed giant niffler.

No, its efforts to upset her slid off her as easily as the unacknowledged tear rolling off her cheek. Except… it was hurting her friends. Every friend she had was in that compartment, and every one of them was hurting, screaming, as their essence drained away. Everything that made them brave and strong and so stunningly beautiful was being taken away from them, and from her in turn, and she could do nothing to stop it.

Just like with mother, she could only watch, helpless. And although mother wasn't truly gone, as no-one ever was if you held them tightly enough in your heart, it was not the same as her being there. She couldn't lose her friends that way. She couldn't go through that again. She couldn't.

She tried to lift Hermione up from where she had fallen off her seat, but the girl was a dead weight, so she couldn't.

She wanted to run away, to find help, but that vile thing blocked her path, and she couldn't.

She couldn't leave her friends. She couldn't leave. She couldn't.

By the time a soft silvery glow came to drive Mr Meanypants away, Luna was crying the sort of tears she couldn't help but feel, and every last one of them hurt.

Harry felt hands on him, grabbing and yanking and promising a good beating for being such a selfish little freak, and he was hoisted up onto a seat. Petunia shouted his name, but she wasn't angry. Worse; she was scared. That would earn him an extra belting from Vernon, scaring his precious wife like that. She was so terrified by his nasty freakishness she didn't even sound like herself; she sounded more like Hermione, that nice girl he had dreamed of befriending back when he still had enough hope to dream.

When he opened his eyes - not looking at his aunt when she was speaking to him was grounds for bed without tea all on its own - she even looked a bit like Hermione, her hair wildly out of place, her eyes burning a fierce red with anger.

No, that was just her blindfold that was red. Like Hermione's. How he wished Hermione were real. Hermione would swoop in and save him from his uncle, and his cousin, and they would run away to Hogwarts or Diagon or wherever they wished. If only the hallucination before him were real.

Someone else was shouting too - another woman's voice, or a girl more like. The lungs on her; just like Ginny. Another hummed a tune, so at odds with the terror of the moment and yet perfectly in harmony; a songbird in a storm. Luna would like whoever that was.

It was the chocolate bar shoved in his face which snapped him back to reality - no way, no way at all, not even if it were poisoned, would Aunt Petunia offer him chocolate. Yet there it was, right in front of his eyes, there for the taking, with Luna and Ginny and Neville and Hermione all looking at him expectantly (well, not Hermione). He snatched the chocolate and stuffed far too much into his mouth, lest it be taken away again.

Right away he started to feel better. Something about the crisp snap of the bar, and the way the chunk melted on his tongue, was centring.

"Thanks," he said, though it came out raspy and ending with a cough.

"Easy, Harry," said the unfamiliar man he hadn't yet noticed lurking in the doorway.

Harry startled and fumbled the chocolate bar into his lap.

"Let your throat rest," the man continued calmly, as if he hadn't scared the crap out of a child. "That goes for all of you. Relax, eat your chocolates, and sit tight. Seventh years are patrolling the train, so you're perfectly safe. I need to go speak with the driver… honestly, what in Merlin's name were dementors doing on the train?"

The stranger lingered a moment, his sad eyes on Harry in a way that made him feel oddly like prey, then left them to their shared misery and rapidly disappearing chocolate. No-one spoke for a long time. The train got back underway, the man didn't come back, and time ticked by slowly in the agonising silence of five children lost in their traumatic pasts.

Harry wondered what his friends might have felt, or relived, if only to take his mind off his own woes. Part of him wanted to ask, and Neville picked up on his indecisiveness.

"You alright, Harry? Professor Lupin said that thing was going right for you; it was bad enough just being in the same compartment."

"Going after me? So… did no-one else get the... I mean, feel like…?"

"Oh no, we all felt it," Luna explained. "That's the aura of a dementor. It takes your worst memories and uses them to expel all happiness, so it can feed on it."

"That is horrible!" Hermione gasped. "Why hasn't the ministry got rid of the things?"

Harry thought that to be an excellent question.

"They use them to guard Azkaban," Neville said. "Keeps the p-prisoners in line. Gives them what they deserve too, if you ask me."

"But punitive measures have been shown to be generally ineffective in reducing the rates of repeat offences within a population. They should be focusing on rehabilitation, not… torture."

"Rehabilitation?" Neville scoffed. "Half of Azkaban is there on a life sentence, and they're the ones the dementors are kept near. There's no rehabilitating those people. They're just evil."

"Even if that is the case… dementors? Is it not better to be rid of them and find another way?"

Harry could see the plans forming in his friend's mind already, and decided he was totally onboard before he even knew what they were. If there was a possibility of a world where he never had to worry about feeling like that again... where no-one would feel like that...

"You can't kill a dementor," Luna replied. "Or at least I don't think anyone ever has. Nor should they; dementors are living creatures just like anything else. It's not their fault they need to feed on emotion to survive."

"But they're horrid!"

"I expect a chicken would say the same about you," Luna said haughtily, picking up her Quibbler magazine Harry was sure she had read cover to cover already to signal she had said all she had to say on the matter.

"But why did it go after me?" Harry puzzled out loud, not able to let go of the thought.

"Who knows?" Neville said with a shrug.

"Bad luck?" Hermione suggested.

"Typical. First this Black guy, now emotion eating demon-creatures," Harry lamented. "Is there anyone who doesn't want me dead this year?"

"Lupin seemed nice," Neville offered weakly.

Harry had to agree, but it hardly seemed important compared to his worries. Besides, he would reserve judgment on the professor he assumed was there for the defence post; Lockhart had soured his general perception of teachers of the subject, and Hermione had never had good things to say about his predecessor either. No, his focus needed to be on the clear and present dangers to his wellbeing. Hopefully the dementors would be kept well away from the castle proper, and the ministry might tighten whatever leash they had them on after the day's incident.

Sirius Black, though, was a crazed mass murderer specifically motivated to kill him. And unlike the last time Harry had faced such a thing, he wasn't a blissfully ignorant baby with freakish luck. If Black got through the protections, there would be a fight, and not one Harry could expect to win.

"It's going to be okay, you know," Hermione declared, as if she knew every thought in his head.

"What?" he grunted.

"This Sirius Black situation. He won't get anywhere near you."

It isn't like Hermione to trust the ministry's ideas to work, he thought, and how she could support the use of those abominations near schoolchildren?

"You think those blasted dementors are going to work?" he asked, incredulous to the extreme.

"I think if I were him, I wouldn't want to come within a hundred miles of Hogwarts. And if he does, he will be stopped," she promised.

He didn't think it coincidence that she didn't say who would do the stopping, nor that her fingers tightened about her wand as she spoke. He revised his earlier thought: A fight against Sirius Black wasn't one he could expect to win alone.

A/N

Hey all! Great to see new reviewers, and old still along for the ride after the break. Y'all keep me going.

If anyone wants to help an aspiring writer out: Feedback on the amount of introspective writing and grounding descriptions would be great. I feel like I try to convey thoughts, intent, etc. in the speech itself when writing dialogue, but get carried away and write nothing but the words being said, and would appreciate a reader's opinion on how that affects immersion, pacing and understanding of character.

If you fancy doing a critical review but the deconstruction of technique isn't your forte, consistency of character is my biggest concern RN. Please be gentle, but above all, be honest. I started this fic as a way to improve, with no intention of sharing it. Just because I then saw the opportunity to give something back to this community which has provided so many late nights (and early mornings) of ferocious reading, doesn't mean my initial purpose has changed.