Chapter 6

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Saturday morning and Harry awoke an hour later than usual, likely due to the lateness of the hour that he'd fallen asleep, and headed to the loo to get cleaned up before grabbing his Quidditch gear and heading down for breakfast.

He was tired, but he was also in a pretty good mood.

Despite how the night had ended off with he, Ron and Hermione getting yelled at by Ginny, it had been the three of them that had gotten in trouble.

Together, just like they always had through his first years of school.

And he was glad because Ron and Hermione now remembered everything!

It was just like old times except it wasn't a Troll or some other monster they'd encountered, it had been a fellow student that was pissed off with them and put their name up on some blacklist.

Big deal, he'd had way worse things occur in his life, and he'd slept in much worse places than a school classroom. Tonight, he would be sleeping in that classroom with his two best friends. No doubt they would just stay awake the whole night and share stories from the past three years, filling in each other on what they'd missed.

Well, he hoped that it would be them filling him in on what he'd missed. He'd told them some of what he'd been up to, sparing them the gruesome details.

After he'd showered, Harry went over to Ron's bed and nudged him awake. He couldn't be late for practice and risk the wrath of their Quidditch Captain over that on top of everything else. She was already pissed with them.

Ron didn't look very pleased with being woken up, though it wasn't more than a few seconds before Harry saw the light shine in his friends eye as he remembered what had transpired. "Mate," was all Ron said before getting up to get himself ready.

"I'll wait for you down in the Common Room, yeah?"

Ron waved his hand in acknowledgment and Harry carried his broom down the stairs with him.

The two that had been guarding the stairs last night had already packed up and gone back to their dorm rooms or down to breakfast, it was nearing seven now. There were a few people milling about and Harry's eyes automatically travelled over to the bulletin board and the three names gloriously shining there.

He frowned as he looked at his name there. It had been a long time since he'd seen his name in print.

Someone pushed passed him to get back up the stairs, ramming into him with their shoulder pretty hard as they went by. "Hey," he called out.

"Oh," the boy said in mock surprise. "Didn't see you there."

Harry's brow furrowed from the hostility he felt off the kid. The boy couldn't have been more than a fourth year. Harry was pretty sure they hadn't had any interactions before, so he didn't know what his problem was.

He moved over to take up in one of the armchairs by the fire while he waited for Ron. As soon as he sat down, the three girls that were sitting at the couch near him got up and immediately moved away, not before giving him a glare and a scoff.

He thought it curious but didn't pay it too much mind, still caught up in his own head. It wasn't more than five minutes before Hermione came down the stairs. She too looked first at the bulletin board with a frown, then her eyes scanned the room and landed on him. The smile she gave him when she saw him though, it didn't reach her eyes.

"What's happened?" Harry asked her as she came to sit down.

She gave a sigh first. "It's the girls in my dorm," she told him. "They've just been giving me these looks and snide remarks. It's only the first thing in the morning and already it's like every last one of them has been informed or noticed I was missing and has it out for me because we were back so late last night."

Harry shook his head. "I don't get it. So, we were out late," he shrugged. "We'll take the punishment they've assigned us. I don't see why we should be treated like we killed their dog or something."

"Then you've already noticed the behavior too?" she asked.

"Well, just a bit. I got down here and some kid basically shoulder checked me, then when I sat down a few girls got up and moved away so they wouldn't have to sit near me." It didn't really bother him. He was almost nostalgic about it, it was the way a lot of people had treated him in his second and fourth years.

Hermione just shook her head. "Hazing, that's what it is. Probably will happen until our names are removed from the board. I have to wonder if McGonagall knows about this? If she's given her approval for these 'student' house rules."

"Hermione," Harry warned, "don't go making things worse."

Everyone may have gotten used to her enforcing the school rules and her hand shooting into the air every time a professor asked a question, but questioning the way the true student leaders of Gryffindor were choosing to take care of their student body was something that his friend wouldn't be able to come back from if it was found out.

Her brow furrowed as she thought through the potential ramifications, and she nodded. "You're right. I'll leave it for now. It isn't like we weren't warned on our first day back." She heaved a big sigh. "Guess we'll just get a lot more private time to talk tonight about what's happened the past few years as well."

"That's the way I decided to look at it this morning too."

He wasn't sure exactly how much he should tell them though. He hoped to hear their side of things and gauge what stories he should share accordingly. If the two of them were holed up in one of the safe houses only assisting in planning missions and such then he'd only share that portion of his own adventures.

Ron came down a minute later and they all headed to the Great Hall for breakfast before he and Ron went out to the Quidditch Pitch for practice and Hermione headed off for the library.

They should have known what they were in for since the two of them were the reason their Captain was up until past midnight the night before and she didn't get a decent enough amount of sleep.

Ginny was neck and neck for how tyrannical Oliver Wood had been right before their last game of the season in Harry's third year. She kept making him and Ron do harder and harder trials and criticizing their every move. And it really was the two of them she was focusing more of her energy on as well; Harry's little shadow, Brennan, the reserve Seeker, she'd barely said two words to.

By the end of practice Harry was more sore than he ever remembered being. He'd wound up getting hit by a few Bludgers as well and he had a feeling they weren't entirely accidents.

"Fuck, I need some sort of numbing charm," Ron groaned and rubbed his shoulder. "Demelza barreled into me at one point, did you see that? Then Jimmy only just missed me with a Bludger several times. If you ask me, Ginny should have been sniping a bit more at the other guys."

Harry raised an eyebrow at his friend in question. Ron didn't seem to have caught on that they'd been targeted and Harry wasn't sure he wanted to point it out.

"I think I'm going to let the shower work out some of my kinks," Harry told him.

"Yeah, go on. I've told Hermione I'd meet up with her in the library and practice went an hour longer than I expected." Ron went to head for the door and stopped half-way there. "You're going to meet us there, right? After?"

If he wasn't so exhausted, he probably would have smiled. There would be some adjustment to how their lives had operated now that his and Hermione's memories had been returned. It had just been he and her for so long, Harry expected to be a bit of an afterthought for a while yet. Plus, they were a couple.

"Yeah, no worries mate. I'll catch up with you two later."

Try as he did, the water coming out of the shower head kept switching from hot to freezing cold. Again and again he kept having to apply a heating charm to the pipe to attempt a good soak of his sore shoulder muscles. He gave up after the tenth time he had to reapply it.

Then, when he went to leave the change room he found the door was locked. Which wouldn't have been a problem if there didn't seem to be someone, or someone's, on the other side reapplying a locking charm to keep him trapped in there.

Harry ground his teeth with every failed attempt at opening the door.

Three bloody years he'd been in the thick of it battling Death Eaters and now he was being bested by a bunch of school kids? He was starving as well! Three hours of practice, a shitty shower and if they kept this up for much longer then he was going to miss out on lunch in the Great Hall.

It wasn't like he couldn't make his way down to the kitchens and get food directly from the House Elf's, but still.

Two and a half hours after first getting into the changeroom and he was finally able to get out again without having to blast his way through a wall, which he was tempted to do.

He came out snarling and looking every which way for the culprits but didn't see anyone.

Too hungry to think properly about what kind of retaliation he was going to attempt, he simply made his way to the kitchens through the entrance that Hagrid had showed him the other day so he wouldn't have to run into more Gryffindors that were out to make his day worse.

The House Elves were more than happy to get him some lunch, thank Merlin. After a few bowls of hot soup and warm buttered biscuits that he chose to eat in the kitchen, he made his way up to his dorm to get his assignments and such, making sure not to look anyone in the eye and attempting to keep an air about him like he wasn't at all bothered by how they were all trying, and succeeding, in making his day hell.

Now, he knew that the Weasley Twins had been making clever inventions the entire time he'd known them, and of course he knew what a booby trap was; considering it was a Weasley that was part of leading the charge against anyone that broke the rules they'd put in place, he should have been expecting something to happen when he opened his trunk.

He hadn't though.

After stashing his broom under his bed and shucking his Quidditch gear, he pulled on his clothes and went to get his assignments out of his trunk.

He lifted the lid and heard a click and a bang. Not only had something shot out of his trunk and exploded a blue powder all over his face, there was also a stink bomb that went off and the stench of it attached to his clothing.

He stood there, tight lipped and still for a moment, his eyes closed tight. Rage coursed through his veins making him stand straight and clench his fists at his side while his jaw was shut tight and he breathed heavily through his nose. Harry only just managed to suppress the overwhelming desire to let out a roar of outrage.

It would have been so cathartic to just scream at the top of his lungs.

He didn't though.

Once more he went into the showers, this time in his dorm, fully dressed, and washed the blue and stink off of him.

It took an hour to get the mess around his trunk and bed space cleaned up, there was no saving the completed assignments though. He'd had four essays for next week that had been rolled up and safely stored off to the side of his trunk and now the parchment was dripping with blue paint or something that had made its way through the entire role.

Casting a cleaning charm on it only made the substance dry so that he could unroll the parchment and not get it all over himself.

Harry had to sit back and allow himself a moment of meditation so he didn't explode in outrage.

All this because he'd been late coming back to the tower.

Who had he inconvenienced really? Besides Ginny.

And it seemed to him that Ginny had only been the one to stay up late because Ron had been with them. If it had been the other two that were asleep in the Common Room then he and Ron might not have been given such a hard time in practice this morning. Those other two had simply rolled over and gone back to sleep.

He blamed them for going to get Ginny in the first place.

He couldn't find the will power required to get up and head to the library now and see what else was in store for him. He was torn between crawling back into bed and trying to get a few hours of sleep before being shunned into a classroom where only discomfort awaited, or he could swallow his exhaustion and sit at his desk and copy out his assignments again.

Sleep won out, but only after he had done a thorough sweep of his area and disabled four more booby traps that would have made his day, and Ron's, all the worse.

Sirius would probably have been proud of whoever set this up. From the stories Harry had heard of the way the Marauders had pranked people, and each other, the only reaction Harry would expect from his Godfather, if he chose to complain to him right now, was laughter; and Harry couldn't take that at this moment, maybe he'd tell him when it wasn't so fresh.

The last thing he did before climbing into his bed and pulling the curtains closed was set up a ward around it so nothing else could befall him while he was trying to save his sanity.

It was dark by the time he woke up.

Checking his Tempus alarm he saw it was just after six in the evening.

He made it down to the Great Hall before the dinner dishes disappeared. Ron and Hermione were there at the end closest to the Head Table and looking to both be in a foul mood.

"What happened to you?" Ron asked miserably as Harry sat down.

"I don't want to talk about it," Harry muttered back to them.

"They are all being absolutely horrid," Hermione said, sounding like she was on the verge of tears.

"What did they do to you?" Harry asked, now concerned that some of what she'd encountered today truly wounded her spirit.

"Every single page of my textbooks were glued together," she said through gritted teeth. "It took me ages to get them separated without damaging it. Then there was itching powder put into my clothes; including my knickers." She blushed for that part. "And then when I was sitting in the library there was always someone close by that was making a constant tapping noise. It didn't matter where I moved to, there was always someone doing it. It was like Chinese Water Torture."

He did his best to keep a level expression. He couldn't possibly let her know that he found humor in how they chose to go about making her day horrible; they knew their target when it came to torturing Hermione Granger. And now he could understand exactly where Sirius would be coming from if he'd chosen to call his Godfather earlier and let him know what had been going on.

He bit his lip and looked over at Ron, raising a questioning eyebrow to see what had happened to him.

"I can't eat anything," Ron grumbled.

"What?" Harry asked. There was a plate of food in front of Ron, and utensils.

"I don't know how they're doing it," Ron shook his head. "I managed to eat breakfast just fine, but then when I went to grab some lunch, I had a drink of pumpkin juice before I started in on my sandwich, and it turned to dust in my mouth." He was starting to get louder but lowered it back down to a whisper when Hermione sent him a warning look. "It's the same thing right now. I take a bite of anything on this plate and it all turns to dust. Watch."

He took a forkful of mashed potatoes and put it into his mouth, then he turned his head and coughed, and a small plume of dust came out of his mouth.

"Holy shit," Harry said in awe.

"Language," Hermione scolded.

He couldn't help it. They were evil geniuses! Food was Ron's weakness, studying was Hermione's. Clearly they didn't know his, but what they'd come up with had been torturous enough and he couldn't think of what would have been done differently if they did know him better.

Carefully he turned back to his own plate and cast a detection spell on the meal before him, including the pumpkin juice, which concluded that it was all safe, then took a bite.

It was all edible and Ron whimpered at the sight of him eating.

After Harry finished, they all made their way back to Gryffindor Tower and into the common room.

"Oi," Ginny called out to them from the other side of the room where she'd been sat with a few other students playing Exploding Snap and came over to them. "I've been the one relegated to tell you that you'll each be expected here for eight-thirty so you can be escorted to your humble abodes for the night."

Harry bit his tongue, Ron didn't. "You think this is funny?" he snarled at his sister.

"No. I think its retribution. These are the consequences of breaking the rules," she shrugged, seemingly unbothered. "And the worst of it will be over if the three of you are here, ready to go, at eight-thirty." She didn't sound like she was threatening them, and she didn't have to. The silence in the common room then had Harry taking notice of how everyone there was staring at them.

It was creepy, like something from a horror movie that was a precursor to an attack. It made the three of them take her at her word and simply nod in response.

At eight-thirty the three of them were back in the common room again after getting changed into something more comfortable to spend the night in and prepared only with their wands.

Harry anticipated they'd get locked in a classroom and wind up chatting all night long. So, when a sixth year named Brian led him away from where two others were leading Ron and Hermione he was surprised.

"I thought we'd be all stuck together," Harry told Brian.

"What the hell kind of punishment is that?" Brian scoffed. "Not like we're going to stick Weasley and Granger together so they can just shag all night, and who knows what you're into, so watching them go at it might not be much of a punishment for you."

The expression that brought to Harry's face made Brian laugh. "Sweet dreams," he grinned as he shut the door on Harry, leaving him alone in what might have once been a study.

There was a lone window, a desk that looked like it hadn't been used in several decades and a single chair. There were empty shelves on one wall that were all covered with a layer of dust and grime. That was it.

If he'd known they weren't all going to be together he would have brought his assignments to work on, now this was just going to be time wasted in a space that was much too uncomfortable to sleep in.

Harry ground his teeth together and decided he might as well try to get comfortable. He took up on the chair and leaned back, putting his feet up on the desk. Then the chair legs buckled and gave out underneath him and he went crashing to the floor.

He just lay there for a moment, staring up at the stone ceiling and feeling a draft coming in from the window.

It was going to be a long night.

And it was.

He moved from one spot to another in the room attempting to find somewhere comfortable enough for him to close his eyes and get some sleep. He lay on the desk, in the corner on the floor, propped up against the wall while sitting. Here, there, and everywhere he tried, and the hours just stretched on and on until finally dawn broke over the forest and his punishment was up.

His Tempus read out that it was late enough in the morning that he could get into the Gryffindor common room again without the student police blocking the stairwell.

The door of the study was unlocked, he poked his head out into the corridor to see if anyone had been assigned to keep guard; there wasn't. So, he trudged his way back to Gryffindor, his eyes barely able to stay open, and made it to his bed, throwing up a ward around his bed once more and pulling his curtains closed.

By the time he awoke again it was two in the afternoon and he needed a shower, food and a quiet place to finish working on all of his assignments that had been ruined the day before.

The shower was mercifully scalding hot and his trunk was devoid of more booby traps, his spare parchment in the bottom of the trunk was not contaminated by the blue substance. After changing and packing his bag with the days supplies he went down to the kitchen and stocked up on food from the House Elves once more and then went back to the seventh floor to find an empty classroom to do his work in so he wouldn't have to deal with anymore sideways looks or the incessant tapping that had driven Hermione mad in the library yesterday.

He hadn't run into Ron or Hermione yet, Ron hadn't been in his bed when Harry got back to the dorm this morning and he wasn't there when he'd left after his all-morning nap. He supposed they went off somewhere to commiserate and hide as well. He didn't bother checking the Marauder's Map, he felt like he could use more alone time.

It was late in the evening by the time he had caught up with everything that he needed to get done. It was already past the school mandated curfew, but not the Gryffindor mandated one.

As he packed the last of his belongings away he heard some voices coming down the corridor, voices belonging to three people that burst into the room he was using that were snickering and had slight slurs indicating they'd all been drinking.

"Oh, this is the wrong classroom," Brian, the sixth year that was his guide the previous night, said. "Bugger. I can't remember which room I stashed it in."

"I don't know if I could drink anymore right now anyway," Romilda told him, she had been the brown haired girl on the steps beside Ginny the first night back. "Wouldn't want to start my school week with a hangover and I haven't got any potion done up."

Ginny was the third person with them, and she stayed quiet until then because her eyes had landed on Harry as soon as they came into the room. "Hey look! It's Potter," Ginny announced for her friends with a smile. "What brings you to this empty classroom? Last night wasn't enough for you? Wanted to be afforded the same privacy again?"

"I had a few assignments that needed to get redone thanks to the new Gryffindor way of dealing with things," he said bitterly. "You'll all want to hurry now," Harry said bitterly, "It's nearly ten, wouldn't want to have to spend your next night in a cold classroom."

"Awe, someone's a bit sore about the rules around here being followed," Ginny taunted him.

"We warned you your first night here," Romilda told him. "We need everyone to follow that rule of ours so they know."

"Know what?" Harry asked. "How bloody uncomfortable it is?!" He was still sour about it. It wasn't like he could have fought back against them and their childish antics from yesterday. Some of them may have been legal adults now in the Wizarding World but they weren't Death Eaters that he could use his all to get back at them or stop their terrorizing.

"You know what," Ginny said to her friends. "Why don't you guys go on ahead and I'll give our little grumpy friend here some enlightening."

Harry couldn't fight back his scoff. Ginny was going to enlighten him? Really? She was drunk right now! The other two may have looked up to her, Romilda seemed to revere her for some reason, and he knew that Ginny played a part in the war, he'd seen her right after the battle, but everyone had played a part! So she can't blame her narcissistic behavior on that. She kept flipping back and forth between being a fun-loving popular girl and a stern dictator with a dangerous side. It was annoying him.

She had the respect and admiration of her fellow students and teachers that had been here with her the last few years so he knew that it must have been earned but he didn't like it being thrown in his face all the time that he had missed out on his Hogwarts experience and her flipping back and forth like this made him realize all the more that he had missed something.

"Are you sure?" Brian asked her. "You don't really know him."

"I know him enough. If we're not back by curfew feel free to come and get us," Ginny told him easily while not taking her eyes off Harry.

Romilda took Brian's hand and pulled him out of the room.

The door closed and Ginny crossed her arms, still staring at him and he felt like he was being examined for weaknesses.

"Are you just planning on staring at me for the next twenty minutes?" he snarked.

"You're a wizard, did you realize that?"

He blinked at her, "what?"

She held out a fist and started listing things off on unfolding fingers. "Cushioning charms, conjuring fire, transfiguring objects into something else. It should be pretty rudimentary to someone your age," she told him.

Harry stared at her as he tried to figure out what she was saying.

The study.

She meant that his stay in the study he'd been locked in hadn't needed to be as big a punishment as it was. Inside he let out a growl of frustration with himself. When Sirius and he had been staking out places they had been sure not to use magic in case there was a ward or something that would alert their targets of their presence. It hadn't occurred to Harry that using his magic during his seclusion wouldn't have been an issue.

From the smirk that came to her face Ginny had seen Harry's disappointment with himself over his stupid mistake.

"Awe, you are capable of humility," she cooed.

Geez, she really liked to rub salt into the wound there, didn't she?

"Right, well I shouldn't need to tell you again, but these last few years have been a little hard. Now that times are better does not mean that these habits and protocols that we've all worked very hard to keep in place are just going to be dropped. You have one year to suffer here with us, it isn't too much to ask that you follow them. We are still giving you one hour more than school rules after all."

"I just don't understand-"

"No, you don't," Ginny cut him off sharply, a dark look coming to her eyes and her anger seemed to have sobered her up quite a bit too. "We've had students found strung up in the dungeons, being molested in classrooms, young children too, and not just girls that are 'women now', boys too. These little annoyances of yours with the way we've decided to run things have saved a soul here and there. We older students have more Healer training than we had ever wanted, and we are going to keep ensuring that every one of our Gryffindor's are warm and snug in their beds at night because it lets us sleep better. Do you have any idea the panic that ensued with you being the one missing the other night when we all weren't entirely sure who the third person was that was missing?"

He felt the blood drain from his face as she spoke.

It really was true; Things had gotten much worse at Hogwarts than he had realized. Girls and boys were getting molested? Raped? Tortured?

Why hadn't that been told to the Professors like Flitwick and McGonagall? They wouldn't have stood for that. They would have shared this information with the Order.

Oh.

Oh no.

Things turning out the way they did could have just as easily been blamed on he and Sirius not finding all the horcruxes sooner.

It was his fault.

He couldn't reflect on all of that right now though. Not with her standing there in front of him, her eyes were still a bit glassy from the drinks she'd had with her friends. Those drinks were likely the only reason she had divulged that information to him.

"I'm sorry." It was all he could really offer her.

"I know," she told him evenly.

She couldn't know the extent of just how sorry he was though. Those two words simply didn't cover it.

"You come off as a pretty decent bloke, Potter," she said stepping closer to him. "I wouldn't let you hang around my brother if you weren't a decent bloke." Her tone was rather sweet as she kept stepping in closer. "Now do you understand why we will keep locking you in a cold and uncomfortable classroom when you are out late?"

"I do," he nodded. "I'm sorry. I... I should have read into it more, your reasoning."

"Mmkay," she said softly. She was close enough that he could smell a bit of the sweet liqueur that was on her breath. It wasn't until he caught the slight scent of it that he realized just how close she was. He tensed up over how they were nearly touching now.

Why? Why was she coming this close to him? Why were her eyes looking at him like they were? Did she always have those freckles there across her nose like that? They were cute. She is cute. No, cute didn't cut it.

She's Ron's sister and she is reprimanding you right now and telling you how shite things were last year, why are you thinking she's cute?

She came even closer to him and the edges of the fabric on their clothes were touching now. It was very clear through the glassiness of her eyes that she was properly intoxicated but Harry couldn't find the ability to move her back away from him. That would involve touching her, placing his hands on her hips. No! Not hips! Arms. Hips are too… intimate.

"Do me a favor," she said in barely a whisper. "Don't read into this."

He didn't have time to question what that was supposed to have meant, because no sooner had she said it then her lips were on him. A shock wave went through his whole body. Ginny was kissing him! Her soft lips were against his own and his eyes grew wide at the feel of it.

He couldn't move. It felt so lovely, but he couldn't move. Ginny was doing all the moving that was necessary. Her hands were at his shoulder and one behind his head, her fingers splayed through his hair and gently massaging his scalp, and her lips were coaxing his own to react exactly how he should have if he had control of his body.

It felt amazing. If he weren't so stunned, he would have thoroughly been enjoying himself right then.

His eyes slipped closed.

For a few years now he'd wondered what it would feel like to kiss a girl and here it was happening, but he couldn't quite wrap his brain around what was happening.

She really knew what she was doing though.

He gave over to the sensations and responded to her, his stance relaxing and his hands moving to grab hold of her and encourage more of this amazing feeling he was experiencing. The sigh that came from her was all the more encouragement to continue joining her in this horrible mistake they were making by snogging in a deserted classroom.

Her hands started wandering, his hands started wandering. He had no idea what he was doing, he just kept following her lead and in the back of his mind he was concerned that she might feel just how much he was enjoying this.

Reality came crashing back to him when she pulled away, holding herself back from him an arm's length distance between them.

"Curfew is in a few minutes now," she said as she caught her breath. "I suggest you follow me back."

He could do no more than blink at her in response.

That was it?

She'd just kissed him! Really kissed him. They'd been kissing for quite a bit of time. That meant they were snogging.

Now it was just time to head back to Gryffindor? Just like that?

She had already started walking out by the time his mental faculties had resumed their regular operation.

"Hey!" He just remembered to grab his backpack before he caught up to her. "What the hell was that?"

Ginny gave him a shrug, "I told you before it happened not to read into it. I just wanted to."

"You just wanted to?! One minute you're telling me kids were getting molested and then you-"

She rounded on him hard then and forced him to stop in his tracks. "Don't you DARE draw parallels there."

He froze again. That was not at all what he was trying to say! He certainly didn't feel like he'd just been victimized, he was just confused about what had just happened.

"I snogged you, yeah, because I wanted to, not to get some villainous rocks off. You seemed to have enjoyed it," she cast a pointed glance down between his legs where the evidence of his enjoyment had not worn off. "You certainly didn't put up any kind of protest either. I'm a little tipsy and I kissed you. Now it's done. Thanks." She gave him a fake tight-lipped smile and turned back around.

Thanks? That was it? That had been his first kiss and he got a 'thanks' for it? Not a heartfelt one either. That 'thanks' had been to indicate that their conversation was done, nothing more.

Ginny continued walking back to the tower and Harry stared after her, mouth agape.

"I was serious about shutting you in the classroom again, by the way," she called back when she was quite far ahead.

He swallowed his questions and sped up to catch up with her and they made it back to Gryffindor Tower with two minutes to spare. She said nothing more to him before heading over to Romilda and Brian. He couldn't tell what they were saying and didn't pause to listen, he just continued on his way back up to his dorm room, completely confused.

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