Chapter 63: Guilty

Hagrid was already waiting for us.

"All right, Hagrid!" I said cheerfully. "Suppose you want to hear about Saturday night, do you?"

"I've already heard all abou' it," said Hagrid, opening the front doors and leading us outside.

"Oh." I said. Harry laughed, and I elbowed him in the side.

The first thing we saw on entering Hagrid's cabin was Buckbeak, who was stretched out on top of Hagrid's patchwork quilt, eating a large plate of dead ferrets. Hanging over Hagrid's wardrobe was a gigantic, hairy brown suit and a very horrible yellow-and-orange tie hanging from the top of Hagrid's wardrobe door.

"What are they for, Hagrid?" said Harry.

"Buckbeak's case against the Committee fer the Disposal o' Dangerous Creatures," said Hagrid. "This Friday. Him an' me'll be goin' down ter London together. I've booked two beds on the Knight Bus."

I instantly felt guilty, and I could tell by the look on Harry's face, so did he. We had both forgotten our promise about helping Hagrid prepare Buckbeak's defense. The arrival of the Firebolt had driven it clean out of our minds.

"I got somethin' ter discuss with you two," said Hagrid, sitting himself between us and looking uncharacteristically serious.

"What?" said Harry.

"Hermione." said Hagrid.

"What about her?" I scoffed.

"She's in a righ' state, that's what. She's bin comin' down ter visit me a lot since Chris'mas. Bin feelin' lonely. Firs' yeh weren' talking to her because o' the Firebolt, now yer not talkin' to her because her cat -"

"Ate Scabbers!" Ron interjected angrily.

"Because her cat acted like all cats do," Hagrid continued. "She's cried a fair few times, yeh know. Goin' through a rough time at the moment. Bitten off more'n she can chew, if yeh ask me, all the work she's tryin' ter do. Still found time ter help me with Buckbeak's case, mind...She's found some really good stuff fer me...reckon he'll stand a good chance now..."

"Hagrid, we should've helped as well...sorry -" Harry began awkwardly.

"I'm not blamin' yeh!" said Hagrid, waving Harry's apology aside. "Gawd knows yeh've had enough ter be getting' on with. I've seen yeh practicin' Quidditch ev'ry hour o' the day an' night - but I gotta tell yeh, I thought you two'd value yer friend more'n broomsticks or rats. Tha's all."

Harry and I exchanged uncomfortable looks. For the first time in days, I was starting to feel bad.

"Really upset, she was, when Black nearly stabbed yeh, Ron. She's got her heart in the right place, Hermione has, an' you two not talkin' to her -"

"If she'd just get rid of that cat, I'd speak to her again!" I said angrily, not really thinking. "But she's still sticking up for it! It's a maniac, and she won't hear a word against it!"

"Ah, well, people can be a bit stupid abou' their pets," said Hagrid wisely. Behind him, Buckbeak spat a few ferret bones onto Hagrid's pillow.

As we spent the rest of the time in conversation, I stayed mostly quiet, thinking. True, Hermione did not do what she should have to keep Crookshanks away, I couldn't help but miss her. I missed her a lot actually. The nagging, the scolding, the jokes that we shared, the conversations that we would have.

But she needed to know that for once, she was in the wrong. Not everything is the way it is because she says it to be. And the fact that she hadn't came to apologize made me believe that she honestly and truly didn't care.

A large group of people was bunched around the bulletin board when we returned to the common room.

"Hogsmeade, next weekend!" I said, craning over the heads to read the new notice.

"What d'you reckon?" I said quietly to Harry as we went to sit down.

"Well, Filch hasn't done anything about the passage into Honeydukes..." Harry said, even more quietly.

"Harry!" said Hermione, who was sitting at the table right behind us and clearing a space in the wall of books that had been hiding her.

"Harry, if you go into Hogsmeade again...I'll tell Professor McGonagall about that map!" said Hermione.

Harry glares harshly at Hermione.

"Can you hear someone talking, Harry?" I growled, not looking at her.

"Ron, how can you let him go with you? After what Sirius Black nearly did to you! I mean it, I'll tell -"

"So now you're trying to get Harry expelled!" I sneered furiously. "Haven't you done enough damage this year?"

Hermione opened her mouth to respond, but with a soft hiss, Crookshanks leapt onto her lap.

Fucking cat. I stared daggers at it. Hermione took one frightened look at the expression on my face, gathered up Crookshanks, and hurried away toward the girls' dorm.

"So how about it?" I said to Harry as though there had been no interruption. "Come on, last time we went you didn't see anything. You haven't even been inside Zonko's yet!"

Harry looked around to check that Hermione was well out of earshot.

"Okay," he said. "But I'm taking the Invisibility Cloak this time."

On Saturday morning, I watched grinning as Harry packed his Invisibility Cloak in his bag, slipped the Marauder's Map into his pocket, and went down to breakfast with everyone else. Hermione kept shooting suspicious looks down the table at him, but he made sure to avoid her eye and was careful to let her see him walking back up the marble staircase in the entrance hall as everybody else proceeded to the front doors.

"Bye!" Harry said to me, laughing. "See you when you get back!"

I grinned and winked back, heading towards the carriages. Instead of taking one, I decided to walk, as I needed to clear my head.

It felt weird going to Hogsmeade by myself. I felt completely alone, a feeling that I hadn't had since before Egypt. True, I was going to see Harry in a few minutes, but I couldn't shake my feeling of incompletion.

Harry and I had started out as a dynamic duo, so one would have thought that it was all I needed, going back to what used to be the norm. But Hermione had made more of an impact on my life than I thought. She wasn't there anymore, and it was really bugging me.

It was now both our faults. We were both being extremely stubborn. Her not wanting to apologize, and me only wanting that from her. Neither of us were getting anywhere.

Would it really last? Was this the very end of our friendship?

And did I care about losing her as a best friend more than I thought I did?