Chapter 11

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In fact, in spite of the number of attacks and odd occurrences being reported in 'The Daily Prophet' and even more rumoured to have occurred, spoken about in hushed and fearful whispers, things at Hogwarts were going so well that Harry couldn't help half expecting the other shoe to drop. He was waiting for something to happen to make the school turn against him again or for the Death Eater attacks to get worse and the 'Daily Prophet' to start blaming him for not having saved them all again, or there to be a new danger in the school to defeat or mystery to solve to keep them all safe. He knew things were too calm to last, there was always trouble brewing somewhere. He just didn't expect the next thing to go wrong to be so personal.

Harry and Susan met up by chance alone in the corridor near the kitchens just before the next Hogsmeade weekend. Harry was shocked when Susan started talking about being asked out to Hogsmeade by two different boys, and asked Harry to please not be riding his broom or duelling while she was out with them, though she admitted she hadn't had a chance to accept either date yet.

"You're going on a date? What about us?" he asked, trying hard not to let himself feel hurt because he didn't want her to know how affected he was. He was angry with himself for not realising that the time he spent with Susan each morning hadn't meant as much to her as it did to him and for making assumptions about her feelings for him and their relationship.

"I'm not your girlfriend, you can't make demands on me. If you want to go to Hogsmeade with me then you should have asked me," Susan hissed, feeling his anger but not the hurt underneath it.

"Of course, you are, we practically have sex at least every other morning," Harry teased grinning. If she'd been paying attention to his feelings Susan would have realised he wasn't actually feeling amused or flippant about it, but she was incensed by his teasing, particularly since she hadn't noticed him casting the privacy spell around them which meant she panicked that they could be overheard by anyone coming around the corner behind her.

"We do not!" Susan insisted, trying not to yell in frustration.

"Susan, you might be in your bed in Hufflepuff dorm while I'm in my bed in Gryffindor but you are definitely also with me in my mind of a morning. And I'm not forcing you, I tried to make sure I did it before you woke up in the morning. You choose to start waking up earlier so you could focus on the physical sensations through our connection while I get myself off and I can feel how your body reacts to that. It may not be a normal date or intercourse but it is a sex act we do together. That isn't the action of a friend or acquaintance either, and some of the stuff we talk about through our connection I don't even tell my best friends," Harry pointed out.

"You're the one that said it was too dangerous for you to date," Susan reminded him.

"It's too dangerous for you to be seen with me as my girlfriend and you know how rumours spread round this bloody castle, if we kept meeting in secret, eventually we'll be caught and everyone will hear about it and word will get back to Voldemort, but this is different. We're not sneaking around, no-one can catch us. It's a perfectly safe way for us to spend quality time together. I thought that you understood that," Harry replied.

"So you're saying that doing what we do makes me your girlfriend, but you still can't take me to Hogsmeade. Are you telling me I can't go with someone else if they ask me?" Susan demanded furiously.

Harry sighed, "No, of course I'm not telling you what you can do," he said turning away from her. "I'll spend Saturday studying and practicing spells against the training dummies. If someone invites you on more than a casual date to the village, can you at least let me know so I can try to keep my mind occupied and to myself while you're with him?" he left the room before she could answer but it didn't stop her from feeling the hurt leaking through their bond. She wondered if he could feel her regretting not realising that she was hurting him.

-o0o-

Susan woke early every morning for the next week but Harry didn't try to contact her and he wasn't pleasuring himself, she checked on him at other times but he didn't seem to be doing it then either. Instead, whenever she tried to check in on him she found herself blocked out and he opened a book and began studying with all his concentration, even though she knew that he had already mastered the spells he was reading about half the time. She watched him from a distance at meals and in the hallways, but he didn't seem much different from normal, joking and laughing with his friends though the feelings she got from him didn't really match his expression, even when he was smiling and laughing she could feel more amusement than happiness, and she could feel waves of sadness every now and again, usually followed by a feeling of determination. She was surprised how good an actor he was and wondered what had made him learn to do that and if any of his friends had noticed that he was faking.

Harry started making more of an effort to be in the great hall for meals at a different time than she was rather than watching what she chose so they could eat the same foods at the same time and he rarely looked at her in the few classes they shared or when she passed him in the halls. Susan could feel the dedication he put into his private training hadn't wavered and occasionally she felt pain from his injuries while he was duelling his friends, though he never turned up at the infirmary to have them treated while she was hanging about trying to catch him and make sure he was okay.

"You haven't received a note from your secret admirer lately, did you two break up?" Megan asked curiously, as the mail arrived one morning.

Susan frowned. "He wasn't a boyfriend, he was just a friend," she replied dismissively.

"Did you have a fight with your friend then?" Megan asked, clearly not believing her.

"We didn't fight, I guess they're just busy, or they haven't got anything interesting they want to tell me this week," Susan replied, trying to sound unconcerned.

"Or maybe he noticed what a bunch of gossiping nosy parkers Susan sits with and stopped sending letters to arrive at meal times, so you won't keep harassing her about them," Hannah commented loudly ending the subject.

Susan looked at her gratefully but got a look in return promising to bring up the subject again once they were alone.

Ernie Macmillan invited her to Hogsmeade again but she refused to go with him. "I could never be interested in someone who doesn't take my dreams and ambitions seriously, so I don't see any point wasting your time or mine pretending that I could be," she said.

"You'll regret this if we are betrothed," Ernie said angrily.

"We will both regret being betrothed to each other for far more reasons than this, if we are. We are not at all suited as a couple, but I refuse to believe my parents wouldn't have told my Aunt if they had signed a betrothal for me," Susan replied. "They must have known there was a chance that I would survive the war and they wouldn't, if I was betrothed they'd have left word of it with my guardians."

-o0o-

"Why didn't you agree to go to Hogsmeade with Ernie, all the rest of us have dates. Surely you don't want to go alone or be stuck here in the castle?" Hannah asked.

Susan sighed, "He's a pompous ass, and he'd think one date was enough to entitle him to tell me how to act and how to think for months. It's bad enough that he already thinks he owns me because his grandfather or somebody made a betrothal offer for me before my parents were killed and it wasn't rejected outright, probably for political reasons more than because my parents wanted me to marry someone like him," Susan retorted. "I'd rather stay in the castle than go on a date with him."

"If you're not going to Hogsmeade is there anything you want me to buy you?" Hannah asked.

"Only to fill up our chocolate stash, and you'd probably do that anyway. I'll give you some sickles towards it," Susan replied.

"So, not accepting a date doesn't have anything to do with the boy who was writing to you? Because last I heard you were planning to agree to go with Terry Boot?" Hannah asked.

"No that's over and done with, and they never would have invited me to Hogsmeade anyway," Susan said regretfully.

"Can you tell me who he was now?" Hannah asked.

"No, it's not important now," Susan replied sighing.

"If it isn't important, why can't you tell me?" Hannah pressed.

"I meant that you don't need to know anymore, because whatever we thought we had is over, not that the reasons for keeping our letters a secret aren't still valid, I'm not going to break my promise to him just because we're no longer corresponding," Susan explained.

"He upset you. I want to be mad at him," Hannah declared loyally.

"No, it was my fault, I said something stupid and I didn't realise how much I hurt him until it was too late," Susan said smiling sadly at her loyalest friend.

"So, you really were in a relationship?" Hannah asked surprised that her friend had been so serious about someone without telling her.

"That's the problem, I didn't think of it as being in a secret relationship and he did. I thought we were just becoming friends and he thought we had something more, in spite of the fact he refused to be seen with me for my sake. He was really hurt when I told him we weren't dating and that I didn't want to date him, or actually I didn't tell him I didn't want to date him, I told him that I was thinking about accepting someone else's invitation to go to Hogsmeade with them since I knew he wasn't going to ask me," Susan replied.

"Is it really too late? Have you tried to apologise, because it's obvious you miss him more than you want to admit? And you didn't agree to go to Hogsmeade with Terry or Ernie or anyone else, that has to count for something," Hannah asked.

"I didn't realise until we stopped communicating how much I would miss him but I can't apologise, it wouldn't change the situation, besides it's better this way I'll be seventeen soon and have access to my parent's vault and papers. I might be betrothed. There's no point trying to start a serious relationship until I know whether I'm free to love him," Susan said miserably.

"You think Ernie might be right when he says you're betrothed to him?" Hannah asked surprised.

"Merlin I hope not! But if not him, then perhaps someone else," Susan replied. "I wish they'd told Auntie. This would be easier if I'd grown up knowing."

"I don't know, what if you'd hated your betrothed. At least this way you've had the freedom to date other people up until your birthday, which you should be out there taking advantage of instead of sitting here moping about what ifs," Hannah tried to point out the bright side. "Imagine how much more controlling Ernie would be if he knew for sure you were betrothed to him."

Susan shuddered, "I know there are plenty of worse possibilities but I still pray every night that if I am betrothed that it's not him."

"It could be a lot worse, Malfoy's betrothed to Parkinson and I've heard Nott is betrothed to some girl who goes to Durmstrang but I've never heard who Crabbe and Goyle are betrothed to," Hannah said.

"But their fathers were known Death Eaters, my parents wouldn't have agreed to a betrothal with their families," Susan refuted. "They were in Dumbledore's order, they will have chosen a wizard from a light family."

"Who were they friends with that had a son the right age?" Hannah asked practically.

"The Weasleys, the Longbottoms, the Potters, the Prewitts, the Vances that I know of. I've never heard they were particularly close to the McMillans but they were a light family," Susan replied.

"You could be betrothed to Potter," Hannah said excitedly.

"I've heard rumours that he's betrothed to Ginny Weasley," Susan replied, trying to hide how awful that thought made her feel.

"She certainly hopes he is! She's his number one fan and I wouldn't put it past her to have started the rumour herself to scare off the competition. Not that Potter seems too interested in dating her or anyone else," Hannah replied cattily.

"But Potter is very close to all the Weasleys, and I've heard that he arrived to platform nine-and-three-quarters with them in first year. I thought I'd heard Ginny was dating Dean Thomas? And didn't she go out with that Ravenclaw Michael Corner last year?" Susan said, trying to sound less certain than she was. She knew that Harry had met the Weasleys on the muggle side of the entryway to the platform before first year and that he was convinced the younger redhead was dating his dorm mate, and he was close enough to both of them to know for sure. She also knew he was somewhat supportive of the relationship but not at all jealous of his mate.

"I've heard that too, but neither of those relationships has stopped her from being Potter's number one fan or from insisting that she's going to be Mrs Harry Potter one day," Hannah replied.

"Those are the actions of a fangirl not someone who is in a betrothal or wants a serious relationship," Susan scoffed, feeling better about hating the idea of them being betrothed. She hoped for Harry's sake that if he was betrothed it was to someone who was actually prepared to get to know him for himself.

"She's managed to run off every girl other than Granger," Megan said.

"I'd say that has more to do with Granger herself, and Weasley's older brothers than anything Ginny has said or done. Nobody wants to be second fiddle to Granger the way Cho was or to make themselves the Weasley twins' pranking target," Hannah said.

"It's actually Harry who made the decision not to date anyone, after Granger was sent to the hospital wing by cursed mail after Skeeter wrote about her breaking his heart in the prophet in forth year. He decided that he didn't want to risk making another girl a target, he probably encourages Granger to run the fan girls off," Susan said casually.

"He actually told you that?" Hannah demanded.

"I heard him say it, he wasn't talking to me directly," Susan corrected misleadingly.

"I think most girls would put up with Rita Skeeter's snide remarks and a few cursed letters for a chance at landing the-boy-who-lived," Megan said.

Susan laughed mirthlessly. "Yeah, and that's probably why Harry wouldn't consider dating them. Everyone sees his fame and forgets why he's famous. It's not just Skeeter and jealous schoolgirl rivals, You-know-who is trying to kill him. You think that the Death Eaters wouldn't use a girlfriend as bait to lure him into the open without protection if they got the chance?"

Megan and Hannah both shuddered at the thought, "Yeah you're right, you'd have to be a 'too brave for their own good' Gryffindor to ignore that," Megan said.

"It seems to be slowing most of them down too. I wonder if they're more afraid of the Death Eaters or Ginny and the twins?" Megan asked amused.

"I think I'd be more concerned about Ginny and the Weasley twins if I was a Gryffindor. Voldemort and his Death Eaters are a vague and unlikely sort of threat but you'd be guaranteed to piss off Ginny Weasley and she sleeps in the tower, you'd have to ward your bed really well to get any sleep at all," Eloise replied.

The others shuddered and agreed, but Susan wondered why they so easily dismissed the idea of being kidnapped by Death Eaters to be used against Harry. Could Harry be wrong about the risks of them dating?

She thought about the facts, aside from Harry's belief that anyone he was dating would be used against him the way his godfather had been, there were deaths of entire families in the newspaper almost every week now, though mostly only in the obituaries, most of them never qualified as important news unless they were purebloods or from noble lines. She knew Harry suspected that 'The Daily Prophet' was colluding with the ministry to cover up Death Eater attacks. But had they really been so successful that her friends didn't see the danger.

-o0o-

After increasing his training because he was desperate to keep himself too busy to think about Susan, Harry started to notice that the room wasn't always available. Someone else was also spending hours in the room of requirement and he didn't know who it was. He knew that most of the DA knew about the room though he'd never explained to most of them how it worked there were enough others who did know for someone to ask. He wondered if it was a new development or if it was merely chance that he hadn't wanted to use the room at the same time as them before now. After keeping watch he realised that it was mostly Malfoy and that he always emerged looking exhausted and frustrated. He tried following him a couple of times but was always stopped by some random Slytherin first years. After getting suspicious about Malfoy constantly being followed around by eleven year olds when he left the Room of Requirement, he used the map to check and realised where he could see the two first years standing in the hall, the map told him it was Crabbe and Goyle. He checked that neither of Malfoy's goons actually had younger siblings or cousins of the same name in first year but was assured they did not.

Harry couldn't work out 'What in Merlin's name could be so important and so secret that he'd waste gallons of Polyjuice to hide the fact his friends or followers were up on the seventh floor guarding him from something.' Apart from being difficult and taking an entire month to brew it was also restricted in all legal apothecaries and expensive as hell. He used his invisibility cloak to try to hang about the seventh floor corridor in the hopes of following Malfoy or at least getting a look at the room he was choosing as he entered without any luck. The problem was that Malfoy was aware he had an invisibility cloak and was taking other precautions to prevent being followed. He tried calling the room up by thinking about the room Malfoy used as he paced but the door did not appear, he needed to know exactly what Malfoy was asking the room for.

He tried to tell Ron and Hermione about it but they both just rolled their eyes and refused to listen, Hermione tried to tell him that his Malfoy obsession was getting out of hand and Ron agreed that the blond was probably up to something he shouldn't be, but it wasn't anything they needed to be worried about. Harry didn't think that he was obsessed with Malfoy any more and was annoyed by their dismissal of his concerns. Sure he recognised that at the start of the year he might have been overly concerned by everything that he was doing and he was still convinced that Malfoy had received the Dark Mark over the summer but these days he was more concerned with shutting down his end of the weird connection with Susan and what was going on between them. Still he was suspicious of what Malfoy was doing in the room of requirement and couldn't work out how he could find out. The mystery was at least a better distraction, in stopping him focussing on his feelings for the redhaired sixth year than schoolwork, hanging out with his friends or training on his own proved to be.

He mentioned the mystery to Neville who was always prepared to listen to anything Harry took seriously but he couldn't think of a way to find out either unless they found a way to hide in the room of requirement and wait for him. They fooled around with the room asking it to show them what Malfoy was doing or to give them a way to hide in the room while others could still use it without knowing they were there watching, but without knowing what configuration the other person was asking for there was no way to call the room up and once inside only people wanting the room you were using could enter. There was no way to hide in the room without preventing others from using it. Surveillance spells didn't work in the room once the room was out of use it was like it completely ceased to exist until it was wanted by someone who knew how to work it and each new manifestation of the room seemed to be a new room entirely.

Harry and Neville knew they could fairly easily incapacitate the three Slytherins these days, particularly when two of them were in unfamiliar child bodies, but they didn't want to risk getting caught duelling in the hallways or in case one of them remembered who had attacked them and Neville didn't really think he could point his wand at a first year even if he knew it was really Crabbe or Goyle in disguise. Not to mention that Harry couldn't convince Hermione to make him Polyjuice again for them to take Crabbe or Goyle's place and hope Malfoy would tell them about his progress.

Harry used the knowledge that Crabbe and Goyle were polyjuiced into first years to force Neville to practice against dummies that looked like children because he knew that Malfoy Crabbe and Goyle probably weren't capable of thinking of the disguise and brewing that much Polyjuice themselves. Ron and Hermione refused to consider casting against children, what if you mistook a child for a Death Eater and cursed them.

"What if you mistook a Death Eater for a child with their daddy's wand and let them kill your family," Harry retorted. "I'm not saying that you have to curse every child you see. You just need to be prepared for the fact they could be the enemy and be ready to shield and retaliate if they do start flinging spells at you and your loved ones."

A/N: Thank you to all those who reviewed and those who followed or favourited this story for your support.