As with the year before, the booklists for the next year had arrived early in August. Because of the fact that Hermione was away in France, however, Harry, Neville, and her decided to hold off their school shopping until she had returned so that they could go to Diagon Alley together. Finally, they made plans to meet on the second Saturday of the month, which was coincidentally also the day on which Tracey had made plans to meet Daphne and Pansy, something which she was not completely glad about.
'Pansy won't leave us alone,' she had complained the night before. 'I'm going to Daphne's a little earlier than Pansy is, so maybe that'll give us a little time, but after that…'
'You could come with us,' Harry had suggested. 'You won't have to see Pansy that way. You know Neville. Hermione's nice, too. You could just lie and say…I don't know…you had other plans, or something.'
'That's not the point,' Tracey then answered. 'I want to see Daphne. Pansy, I'm less sure about… But I can't have one without the other.'
Harry did not know what he could suggest to her that he had not suggested already, and so left it at that. The next morning, Tracey left for Daphne's extremely early – before the hour hand even struck nine and before Harry had even gotten out of bed – but Harry understood her desire to spend as much alone time with her friend as she could before Pansy arrived.
Harry, meanwhile, left the house at close to eleven under April's escort. They walked a short distance to the Leaky Cauldron, where April purchased three butterbeers, one for each of the anticipated children, before sitting down to wait. They had arranged to meet at eleven exactly, and Neville was punctual to the minute, arriving in the Floo less than fifteen seconds after the minute hand reached twelve. Neville greeted Harry enthusiastically, as if they had not seen each other for months, even though they had only seen one another the previous week. Mrs Longbottom and April, who had evidently met one another before, judging by their interactions and the absence of a formal introduction, exchanged greetings and pleasantries in the meantime.
Mrs Longbottom left Neville under April's supervision and departed, leaving the three of them to wait for Hermione. The minute hand passed five, but there was still no sign of her. A doomsaying part of Harry's brain began to think the worst – somehow stringing together Dobby's warning and some misfortune befalling her – but he told himself that he was simply being dramatic. Even on the off chance that they were real, they were for him, after all, and not Hermione.
Soon, it was proved that his worries were indeed ridiculous. Harry saw the front door of the Leaky Cauldron open, and three people stepped inside. The identity of the leading girl was immediately obvious to both Harry and Neville, on whose faces smiles rapidly grew, but Hermione had not come alone. Behind her were two adults, who were walking slowly with rather indifferent looks on their faces as they looked around the pub. The woman whispered something to the man, while pointing at the candle chandelier, and the man gave a single chuckle while rolling his eyes.
Hermione bounded up to them, a great smile on her more tanned than usual face. 'It's so great to see you!' she cried, throwing her arms around an unexpecting Neville, stunning him for a moment. 'And you, too, Harry!' she squealed before doing the same to him, suffocating him for a few seconds before she let up.
'Great to see you too, Hermione,' Harry said, beaming. 'Had a good summer?'
Hermione's eyes flitted for a split moment to her parents, who were slowly walking up behind her, before replying. 'All right,' she said, somewhat less enthusiastically. 'What about you?'
'Pretty good,' Harry answered.
'Same for me,' Neville added. 'Well…the Ministry stuff got a bit boring sometimes, but other than that, nothing to complain about.'
'Mus – well, that's great,' Hermione said as her parents finally joined them. Hermione's mother placed a hand on Hermione's shoulder, something that seemed to make her a little jittery.
'Benjamin Granger,' Hermione's father said, standing stiffly straight with his head held unnaturally high as he stuck out a hand towards April.
'April Davis,' April replied, shaking his hand. 'Pleased to make your acquaintance.'
Mr Granger nodded and released April's hand, and Hermione's mother put out her hand in turn. 'Helen Granger,' she said.
'Pleased to meet you as well,' April answered.
'And what are your names?' Mrs Granger asked, looking down at Neville and Harry.
Harry and Neville introduced themselves, and Mr and Mrs Granger shook their hands rather clinically. Though Harry was no stranger to formal greetings now, having experienced plenty of wizarding ones, the Grangers' greetings felt cool and foreign somehow. It was far removed from the welcoming draped in ritualised formality of Mrs Longbottom but was not anywhere near as sinister as the smile-concealed dagger of Lucius Malfoy. It was simply…uncomfortable, forced, insincere.
The Grangers' attentions quickly shifted back to April upon completion of Harry and Neville's introductions, something that Hermione did not seem to mind, for she, Harry, and Neville quickly began to catch up about their summers. Harry zoned out as Neville recounted his sessions at the Ejwent Asztyrajom – he had heard them before already, after all – and the conversation of April and the Grangers behind him came to him through his peripheral hearing.
'We're dentists,' Mrs Granger was saying in a proud tone. 'Ben was also an assistant lecturer at the University of Liverpool, where we went to school, for a while, but he quit when we had our daughter. What do you work as?'
'Investment manager,' April answered.
There was a long moment's silence. 'You work in investment?' Mr Granger asked. 'There are…brokers and…and bankers…this world?'
'It's a relatively new concept here,' April replied. 'I was one of the first people to do it.'
'Where did you get the idea to do that?' Mrs Granger enquired.
'What exactly do you mean by "where"?' April answered, sounding a little confused. 'It's not exactly a new idea.'
'I mean, I wasn't under the impression that they taught anything use – I mean, anything like that – here,' Mrs Granger said.
'They did not teach how investment works, true,' April replied. 'And if by "teaching nothing useful", you mean that they do not teach maths and reading, you'd be sorely mistaken. I had mastered calculus by age fifteen, and you'll be surprised at how easy it is to pick up physics and chemistry on your own after so much exposure to magical theory.'
Harry heard one of Hermione's parents draw in breath, wanting to say something, but end up not saying anything. There was another pause. 'I…I see. Where did you learn how to do this, then?' finally asked Mr Granger. 'It sounds…well…rather complicated for someone without…a formal education…to emulate.'
'I don't know what you mean exactly by "a formal education", but I believe a degree in economics from Dauphine should certainly qualify by any metric,' April replied, her voice cool.
Yet another pause, this one much longer than the previous. 'Ah,' Mr Granger breathed. 'I…impressive, Miss Davis.'
'Thank you,' April said in the same wintery tone.
'So…where are you from?' Mrs Granger asked, her voice, now far less confident than it had been at the start of the exchange, showed that she was searching for a topic of discussion. 'I mean…are there different cities in…your…world? Are there…I don't know…'
'Leicester,' April interrupted. 'I was born and grew up there. And to answer your question, as far as I know, there is only one Leicester: the one we both know.'
Neville was now finishing his account of the trial of a Knockturn Alley boss who murdered two members of a rival crime syndicate, and just as he did, April walked up to them. Harry turned around and saw the Grangers leaving the Leaky Cauldron. Mrs Granger whispered something in Mr Granger's ear, and Hermione's father seemed to huff in annoyance at something.
'Are you ready?' April asked. She looked at Hermione, her face betraying an attempt at hiding a frown. 'Your parents said they will come back here at six to meet us.'
Hermione nodded in a rather matter-of-fact way. 'Okay. I'm ready. Neville?'
Neville drained the rest of his butterbeer. 'Let's go.'
The four of them stepped out from the Leaky Cauldron back into Diagon Alley, which, in the approximately fifteen minutes that they had spent inside, had filled up by a quite noticeable amount. The first stop they made was Gringotts, where Harry, escorted by a goblin, went down to his vault and retrieved the contents of the second chest of gold that his parents had left him. When he came back up, Hermione, who had been standing in line to exchange her pound sterling for Galleons, was also finished, and was waiting with April and Neville by the bank's entrance for Harry's return.
They walked back out onto Diagon Alley, and as they walked to their next destination, Hermione complained about the currency exchange process to April, who seemed to have taken to Hermione quite well.
'Why does it have to be so expensive?' she griped. 'If you exchange Galleons for pounds it's just about thirty-seven pounds, but the other way around, you have to pay forty for one Galleon. And you can only get 750 Galleons at a time. Really?'
'The exchange rate is the way it is because Gringotts needs to protect itself,' April explained. 'The magical financial system is relatively…primitive. Without these and other regulations, it would actually be quite easy for someone clever and organised to exploit Gringotts for huge profits with arbitrage.'
'Arbitrage? What's that?'
'It's taking advantage of different exchange rates for profit,' April answered. 'The Galleon is rather stable. First, it's almost impossible to counterfeit because the gold, silver, and bronze coins are enchanted with magic only goblins are capable of, but more importantly, the goblins control the money supply very strictly and fractional-reserve banking is unheard of. So actually, because of this, almost anyone can pull off the trivial version – if there were no controls, of course. Simply buy Galleons with pound sterling when the value of the pound is high, then sell when the pound is low. Wait until the pound goes up again and then buy Galleons. Repeat the cycle as many times as you'd like. Of course, this is pretty slow even if there were no regulations, so unless you have millions of pounds sitting around, you won't make too much money, but if you run a more sophisticated operation, maybe if you have a network and you take advantage of wizarding banks in other countries, you could quickly make a good amount of money for you and your accomplices.'
Hermione nodded in understanding. 'So the difference in exchange rate is there to stop you from doing that?'
'Not stop, necessarily, just make it harder,' April replied. 'If you're sharp enough, exploit the situation, find a few loopholes, you can still get away with it. A little more than a decade ago, a wizard from Berlin made something like seventy million pounds' worth by trading East German mark, which is worthless on the muggle foreign exchange market but has an official exchange rate on the magical exchange market, for Thaler, magical Prussia's currency, and then selling Thaler for West German mark. He then went and sold the West German mark on the black market for massive amounts of East German mark – five to eight times what he started with – which he then used to buy Thaler again. Eventually, the Prussian banks closed that loophole, so he and an accomplice in Russia went and did the same thing with the Soviet rouble against the American dollar, and even though he had to jump through a few extra exchange hoops with that, he still made a fortune – another fifty million or so. The best part was, the banks could do absolutely nothing about getting scammed out of so much, because it was all completely legal. Now that the Soviet Union and East Germany are both history, you can't really do that anymore – and anyway, most European banks tightened their regulations after getting swindled, but there are definitely still opportunities out there if you look hard enough.'
'I see,' Hermione said slowly, nodding and looking into the distance as they arrived at their first stop, the apothecary.
'Are you thinking of running an exchange racket now?' April asked with a smile.
Hermione chuckled. 'I mean…it doesn't seem too difficult to pull off…if there was an opportunity…'
'I like the confidence,' April said. 'If ever you want to work in my field, I think you'd have a lot of success.'
Hermione gave her a wide smile.
They quickly gathered the needed supplies from the apothecary and moved on through the rest of the supplies list. Deliberately they avoided Flourish and Blott, saving it for last in the understanding that they would likely spend a disproportionate amount of time there compared to the other shops. As a result, it was not until the mid-afternoon that they stepped through the doors into a shockingly packed bookshop.
'What is going on here?' Harry groaned as he was nearly elbowed in the stomach by a woman trying to squeeze to the front.
None of the others seemed to know, but the answer presented itself soon enough. Right in the middle of the shop was a large, three-dimensional figure of a tall, blond man. His appearance was rather attractive – something perhaps motivating the handful of middle-aged women standing around the figure to look at it with admiring eyes – and his face gave Harry the impression that he was some kind of hunter. Right in front of the figure was a sign, on which the message 'Presentation and signing of bestselling author Gilderoy Lockhart's latest book, Sailing with Sea Serpents. 3 to 4' was written.
'Ah, that'd explain it,' April said.
'Gilderoy Lockhart…' Hermione breathed, looking up at the figure. 'He's our Defence Against the Dark Arts professor this year and the author of our textbook! Oh, of course! He's a writer, isn't he?'
'He is a writer by profession,' April confirmed. 'His books are all about him defeating dark magic around the world. They're very popular. Almost every time he publishes a new one, it's at the top of the bestsellers list in the Prophet.'
'Defeating dark magic,' Hermione repeated, a slight undertone of admiration in her voice.
'Well, that's what the books claim, at least,' April qualified. 'Anyone who reads them can tell that they're a bit…exaggerated. I think he probably does fight the dark arts, but he's just not superman. The books are written for entertainment rather than for historiography, and of course, it certainly helps his popularity that he's rather attractive physically. I know a few people, mostly women, who say that's the biggest reason they're a fan of him.'
Hermione nodded slowly. 'And he's going to be teaching Defence this year at Hogwarts.'
'That's what the Daily Prophet says,' April affirmed. 'I suppose he'd have a lot of practical experience, though whether that translates to being a good teacher…well, you'll see for yourselves. Should be a rather exciting year for you in any case.'
Harry, to be perfectly honest, could not care for the signing and would have liked to procure all his coursebooks quickly so that he could look through the shop for other books that may interest him. Unfortunately for him, however, all the Gilderoy Lockhart books – of which their textbook was one – were stocked at the front of the shop, right by where Lockhart was sitting, and by consequence, right by where the crowd was the thickest, meaning that they had no choice but to wait in the queue anyway.
The better part of an hour must have been wasted in the queue, Harry thought when they finally made it to the front and he laid eyes on Gilderoy Lockhart himself. In real life, he was not entirely as impressive as the figure in the centre of the shop suggested. There were scars crossing his face, some of them relatively fresh-looking, and the bridge of his nose was slightly crooked, as if it had been recently broken. His hair was not a perfect, flawless gold, but had many streaks of grey through it. When he stood up to shake a fan's hand, Harry noticed that his stature, too, though still impressive, was not exactly imposing.
Another fan walked up to Lockhart, and he stood up, shook the witch's hand, exchanged a few words, then signed the book. The witch picked up the signed copy and admired the page with the signature, before gushing something to Lockhart that Harry could not make out – though he was sure it was something he would feel extremely uncomfortable hearing said to him. Lockhart, however, did not seem to pay attention to what was said at all. He simply smiled a relatively indifferent smile, nodded, and waved the witch on.
Finally, they reached the shelves where Lockhart's books were stocked, and April reached over above the heads of the waiting fans and grabbed three copies of their required book, Shapes of the Shadows: An Anthology by Gilderoy Lockhart. It was a smaller book, the size of a novel rather than what he would have expected from a textbook. The cover was also made of parchment reinforced with some kind of cloth-like material, unlike the leather-bound hardcover books for their other classes. Harry flipped through the text, and it seemed to be organised and laid out like he would expect from a novel, too.
'Let's get out of here,' Neville said.
They tried to turn to leave, but found out almost immediately that they were going to get nowhere. The crowd was so tightly packed that there was little way of squeezing through, and any attempt at doing so simply resulted in them being sworn at. One witch even snapped at April to control her children, and they had no choice but to give up.
'We're almost there anyway,' Hermione argued. 'We may as well get our books signed. Plus, it might not be such a bad thing to meet him. He's going to be our teacher this year, after all.'
There was no better option, and Harry supposed that there was no harm in waiting another five minutes and meeting their professor. Just before the table stood a box, on which a sign informed that a signature cost one Sickle, which was to be donated to a 'St Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries'. Harry, Neville, and Hermione all reached into their money bags and produced a Sickle and dropped it into the box.
Finally, it was their turn at the signature table. It was a long table, though only Lockhart was sitting at it. On top of the ornate tablecloth stood a large jar of ink and a fancy-looking Quill. Behind the desk were several photographers and reporters. One woman who, in Harry's opinion, was dressed rather garishly and who was holding a quill which Harry could only describe as acid-green and dancing, kept trying to squeeze her way into the centre, right behind Lockhart, but one of the photographers responded to her continual attempts by pushing her away back towards the edges.
'Am I correct in guessing that you are second-year students from Hogwarts?' Lockhart asked when Harry, Neville, and Hermione laid their books down on the table.
'We are,' Hermione answered brightly, evidently pleased that Lockhart had figured out immediately who they were.
Lockhart nodded in a rather mechanical manner. 'Are you looking forward to the school year?'
'Of course!' Hermione replied. 'Aren't you going to be our new Defence Against the Dark Arts professor? What're you going to be teaching us?'
'I will be indeed,' Lockhart confirmed, his voice sounding somewhat bored. 'As for what I'll be teaching…' He jabbed his finger at the book. 'Everything you need to know from that book.'
Hermione seemed a little disappointed by Lockhart's short and rather curt response, but she did not push him any further. Harry, who was simply looking towards getting out of there as quickly as he could, was relieved to see Lockhart pulling the three books towards him and picking up his quill.
'What're your names?' Lockhart asked.
'Hermione Granger,' Hermione answered readily.
Lockhart signed her book with a short message. Neville was next, and he received the same treatment. Finally, it was Harry's turn. The woman with the acid-green quill was trying to push closer again, and that only added to Harry's sense of unease. He did not need the entire shop to know who he was – especially not these reporters who looked like they would write a full-length article about a bird eating a morsel of bread in Virtic Alley
'What's your name?' Lockhart asked, his quill poised over the page.
'My name is Harry.'
'Harry…'
'I…just Harry.'
'You don't have a last name?'
Harry gulped. 'I don't like my last name,' he lied desperately, knowing that it probably sounded far stupider than he realised. 'I just go by Harry.'
Lockhart looked at Harry sideways and studied Harry's features pensively for a few moments before giving a small smile, momentarily closing his eyes, and nodding. 'I see…it will just be Harry, then,' he said before signing the book, snapping it shut immediately, and handing it back.
'I will see you at Hogwarts, Harry.'
At long last, Harry cleared the crowd of people and joined back up with Neville, Hermione, and April. Out of curiosity, he opened Lockhart's book to see what he had written. When he saw it, he froze in shock and surprise.
Dear Harry Potter,
I wish you good luck. While I am thankful that you have recovered from your unfortunate injuries in the Hogwarts fire last May, I hope that such misfortunes do not befall you again.
Yours truly,
Gilderoy Lockhart
Harry returned from Diagon Alley with bags that, if not for magic, would have probably weighed so much that he would have had a hard time even picking them up off the ground on his own. In addition to the required school supplies, which accounted for the majority of the mass – for what reason did Professor Ross feel the need to assign six different books for History of Magic? – he had also purchased several extra books that he found interesting. There were the 'educational' books, one of which was an introduction to Eltrys that seemed to do a better job of teaching the subject than Anna's dictionary – though that was not exactly a high bar, while another was dedicated to 'useful' spells for all situations that 'they don't teach you at school'. In addition, he had also purchased two wizarding novels out of curiosity. Muggles read books about imagined magical worlds. Did wizards read books about imagined worlds without magic?
It took Harry a while to arrange everything in his trunk when he arrived back home, such was the magnitude of the haul. Just when he finished and tucked his trunk back under the bed, Tracey arrived back home, a large bag in her hands.
'Hello, mum, dad!' she greeted. 'Hello, Harry!'
Her voice sounded upbeat, but something seemed off. There seemed to be some kind of strain in her voice that she was trying to cover up, which Harry could barely detect – it seemed like she was tired. Harry supposed that it was unsurprising that she was. She had been out and about for nearly the entire day, after all.
Through dinner, Orville, who had been meeting with a client all day, asked Harry and Tracey questions about their day. When Harry mentioned the encounter with Gilderoy Lockhart in Flourish and Blotts, he asked Orville out of curiosity if he knew him, but he answered that he did not – beyond the well-known public persona, of course.
'Well, he's a bit of a…April, what was the term you used for people like him again?'
'Playboy?'
'Yes, playboy,' Orville said. 'Too much money, too little sense. Maybe he's taken a few too many blasts to the head on his travels. Big house, large collection of carriages – horse-driven and not – a lot of women in his orbit. That kind of thing. I don't think he's wise enough about his life or cares enough about…anything…for us to ever have had an opportunity to meet.'
'I suppose when you get yourself regularly into situations where you're likely to die painfully, you might not want to care about the long term,' April theorised.
'That's probably accurate.'
Orville and April then proceeded to ask Tracey about her day. Orville's questions seemed to be particularly focused on Pansy, but at the same time, Pansy was the one subject that Tracey did not seem to want to touch on at all. She seemed to be quite happy to talk about where they visited in Diagon Alley, or about Daphne and her sister Astoria or their kneazle, but whenever Orville asked about Pansy, directly or indirectly, Tracey seemed to try to dodge the question or reply in a way that did not answer the question that was asked.
Harry knew that Orville had noticed, for he soon stopped asking about Pansy completely and changed the topic of conversation. After dinner, Tracey retreated to her room and did not come out for some time. It was not until late that night, when Harry was going to the kitchen to fetch a drink of water before bed, that he saw her again.
Tracey was making herself a cup of tea. The expression on her face was somewhat forlorn as she stirred a cube of sugar into her cup. 'Oh, hey,' she squeaked in a small voice when she saw Harry.
'Hey,' Harry replied. 'Uh…how are you?'
'Fine,' Tracey said in a not-so-fine sounding voice.
She stood without a word for a long minute, staring out the window at the empty Diagon Alley and not mixing her tea. Harry did not know what to do. He did not want to abandon Tracey without a word, for there was certainly something on her mind, but he also did not want to push Tracey further about something that she did not seem to be too eager to talk about. They stood stilly and silently together, listening to the occasional sounds of the breeze.
'Well, I'll go to sleep now, then,' Harry said awkwardly after a while, long enough that Harry thought that if Tracey had not said anything yet, she was not going to. 'Good night.'
Harry had just begun to slowly back out of the kitchen when Tracey finally broke her silence. 'Come.'
'What?'
'Come,' Tracey repeated. Without another second's wait, she started out of the kitchen. Harry followed her into 3her room, where she closed the door almost immediately after Harry stepped inside.
Tracey sat down hard on the bed and sighed before looking up at Harry. 'It's Pansy.'
'What about Pansy?'
'I don't know what we are anymore…or what we can be.'
'What do you mean?'
Tracey took a deep breath. 'What happened today,' she said. 'She's changed in the last month…more than I imagined she could. I don't know if I could be friends with her. I know mum and dad wouldn't want me to be friends with her…or even around her. But…actually cutting her away is not as easy as saying that.'
'What did she do?'
'Where do we start?' Tracey recounted with despair in her voice. 'When she arrived this morning, she acted so cold towards me that we may as well be strangers. What's worse, she's getting Daphne to act the same way as her, too. I tried to ask her why she's acting like this, but she told me to "mind how I behave in public". We weren't even in public then! Only later when Pansy left did Daphne tell me that she's been trying to act more like her mother. "It's the way traditional pureblood families teach their daughters to act in formal settings with new people," she told me, but even she thought there was no reason for Pansy to be acting like that in front of us, when we've known each other for years.'
'And then…when we were in Flourish and Blotts…she brought up the fact that you were at the ball with us,' she continued. 'I asked her what she was trying to say, and she suddenly started getting impatient. She told me that she was "just asking a question" and that I could just "give her a simple answer" if I knew. Then Daphne…she asked what Pansy was getting angry for, and then Pansy told her to not fight with her in public! It's like she thinks she's our boss or something!'
'It doesn't even end there! I finally told her that it was us who had invited you, and that you were staying with us over the summer, and Pansy started getting angry with me again. She started accusing me of abandoning her for you and "forgetting" who my true friends were. Which…well…I mean, Daphne was in Austria and then Denmark for much of the summer, and I didn't really want to spend time with Pansy on our own…but that's still a lot to say, isn't it? Especially the part about forgetting my true friends. It's not even the accusation, but the fact that Pansy thinks that she can treat us the way she's been treating us these last few months and then claim that she's my true friend!'
Harry nodded, having not yet processed the drama that was playing out, but supposed that he should lend Tracey some support anyway. 'It sounds unreasonable.'
'Exactly!' Tracey exclaimed. 'Daphne tried to talk Pansy down. She said something like it would look bad if I went to see Pansy alone and left you in the house, and that it would've been mad of me to invite her over with you around given the way she acted last year – both of which are true – but Pansy didn't want to listen to even her. She got angrier, said that her parents tasked her with getting to know you – which is a ridiculous motivation if you ask me – and after everything she tried last year, it would've been basic decency to let her know that you were staying with us.'
'Wait, Pansy's parents tasked her with getting to know me?' Harry asked.
Tracey nodded. 'I have no idea why, but that's what she told us last summer when she told us to help her.'
Harry raised his eyebrows. 'And you did?'
Tracey suddenly looked scared. 'I…I…yeah…it wasn't like I had any other choices… I know I shouldn't have – '
'It's fine,' Harry interrupted, not wishing for her to feel bad about what happened in the past. 'I just mean…if Pansy got you to help her, why did she…fail so terribly at making herself seem like a nice person?'
Tracey shrugged. 'Because that's just Pansy. She's…she's forgotten how to act any other way.'
There was a pause. 'Did Pansy apologise for it, then?' Harry asked.
Tracey sighed. 'No. I tried to tell her that you probably wouldn't appreciate me telling everyone that you were staying with us, but that just made things even worse. Daphne got her to calm down in the end, thankfully. She told her that if I can make friends with you, then maybe Pansy could have a second chance.'
'That was what got her to calm down,' she snapped, pounding the bed with her fist. 'Not me trying to tell her about how unreasonable she was being, not Daphne or I trying to reason with her about how it wouldn't have been possible for me to see her earlier. No, it was her seeing an opportunity for herself. Do you see how much she's changed?'
'Well…it's not like I knew how she was before.'
'She was never like this before,' Tracey said. 'She's been becoming worse for some time now, but nothing like this. Never treated me like a stranger, never got angry with us for nothing, never thought that we should listen to every word she says, never thought only about what she wanted without caring for anything else. It's almost like I really don't know her anymore, Harry. How could someone change so much so quickly?'
'What do I do?' Tracey breathed into her cup.
Harry stared out the window, thinking carefully about what he should say before saying anything. 'So you don't want to be friends with Pansy anymore?' he asked.
Tracey laughed almost derisively. 'It doesn't matter if I want to or don't want to. I don't think I even can anymore.'
'So don't be,' Harry said. 'Isn't it simple?'
'But what would Daphne think?'
'What do you mean?'
'Daphne's friends with Pansy.'
'What does that mean?'
'That means if I leave Pansy…she'll leave me. I can't have that happen! I've known her for so long! She's my…my best friend!' Tracey said desperately.
'But…but if she's your best friend…' Harry said awkwardly, struggling to translate what he was thinking into words. 'I mean…if she's already sticking up for you when she knows Pansy's being unreasonable… It seems like she knows who she'd rather be friends with.'
'But she and Pansy…'
'What does that have to do with you, though?'
'What if Pansy tells her that she has to make a choice between her and me, and she chooses Pansy?'
'Do you think she would?'
'No…' she breathed. 'But…but what if she did? I'll still have lost my best friend and have nobody else.'
Harry gulped and weighed the first thing that popped into his mind to say. It was obvious that he should say it, given Tracey's anguish, but at the same time, it sounded presumptuous, even to him. After some deliberation, he decided to say it anyway. Maybe it would give Tracey some comfort.
'I mean…you could…I don't know…you could always just spend time with us,' he stumbled nervously. 'I mean, me, Neville, Hermione. I'd be happy to. I'm sure they would be fine with it, too.'
Harry did not know what he expected from having said that, but Tracey's face slowly shifting into a smile was more than he had hoped. 'Thanks, Harry,' she answered. 'I…I appreciate it.'
Harry nodded, smiling back. 'But I'm sure that it won't happen,' he said. 'Losing her, I mean. If you and Daphne are really as good friends as you say, I'm sure she wouldn't abandon you.'
Tracey still looked rather doubtful at that statement, but when she stood up and hugged a surprised Harry, he could tell that she had been much reassured.
