Hermione paced back and forth in the middle of the library trying not to look at Harry. She knew that if she did she would scream at him. Harry had done some seriously stupid things in the past, but this almost topped all of them.

"Did you even think about what you were doing?" she asked hysterically. "You told me that you had solved the egg puzzle a month ago. And now you're telling me that I have to help you find a way to breathe underwater?"

"That was the reason I asked you Hermione," he said.

She sat down, still willing herself to keep her eyes off her friend, and ran a hand through her hair. "Harry, I love you dearly, but you make it very hard to like you all the time," she mumbled. "What am I going to do with you?"

"Help me?" he said with what she was sure was a shrug even though she wouldn't look at him.

"What's going on here?" Neville asked.

Hermione looked up at Neville grateful that he was standing in the opposite direction of Harry. She was going to avoid yelling at him as much as she could. And Neville might be able to help her.

"Harry just figured out what the riddle in the egg was," Hermione huffed. "Now we have to figure out a way for him to breathe underwater for an hour."

"Have you thought of gillyweed?" Neville asked.

Hermione jumped up and hugged Neville. "I could kiss you right now."

"I hope you don't," Neville said. "I would hate to get hit by your boyfriend. He seriously has some muscles on him."

Hermione laughed. She knew that Viktor wouldn't hurt Neville. He wasn't all that fond of Ron, but he actually liked Neville.

"That's all well and good," Harry said awkwardly, "but maybe we could focus on where to get some gillyweed. I've never heard of it."

"You wouldn't have," Neville said. "We haven't learnt about it in herbology yet…"

"Then how do you know about it?" Harry asked.

Neville shrugged. "I like herbology. And it's in that book that Professor Moody gave me. But I don't know where we would get some. It grows in the Mediterranean."

Hermione looked thoughtful as she processed the information. She hadn't known any of the properties of gillyweed, but she had come across it in a book once.

"Isn't it a valuable potions ingredient?" she asked.

Neville nodded. "Snape probably has some. But I don't know how you would get him to agree to give you some. He hates Harry. Probably more than he hates anyone."

"It's not my fault," Harry protested. "But you are right. I'm going to need some help for this one."

"If you'll excuse me, I've got some other work to be done. If I think of anything, I'll let you know," Hermione said as she hoisted her bag onto her shoulder.

She walked out of the library and up to Ravenclaw tower. She was meeting Padma to go over transfiguration homework, and the debate that usually accompanied such things.

After answering the question to get in the door, a practice she thought was most unwise, she climbed the stairs until she found Padma sitting on her bed, scratching furiously on some parchment.

"Something wrong with your essay?" Hermione asked.

Padma looked up at Hermione, and then at the clock on her nightstand. "Nothing in particular, since this is a rough draft, but I just changed my mind on the direction I want to take this. And I guess I lost track of time."

"Same here." Hermione sat her bag down on the floor and pulled out her transfiguration textbook and homework. "But I will be blaming half of that on Harry."

"What did he do this time?" Padma laughed.

"He put off figuring out the clue for the tournament until the last minute. He only has about a week left to figure things out. I swear I need to teach him better time management."

"If you ever figure out a way to do that, let me know. I think I'd like to use it on Pavarti. We might be twins, but that didn't stop us from feeling like opposites."

Hermione shook her head. "I don't know much about siblings, but I guess it feels the way that I feel about Ron. He drives me crazy, but I would still step in front of a bus for him."

They settled down to work on homework, talking about friends and Hermione's wish that she could have had a brother or sister. She supposed it would be weird now, but she still wanted one.

Even after their homework was finished they stayed talking. They had moved on from family to household spells.

"I know that knitting goes so much faster when it's spelled, but I love to do it myself," Hermione confessed. "I'm still not very good at it yet."

"You'll get there," Padma assured her. "It's just going to take some time for your muscles to remember what their supposed to do without you thinking about it. And you have to do that. Your problem is that you keep getting distracted."

"And how am I supposed to not get distracted?" Hermione asked. "Between homework, helping Harry, and Viktor, I feel like I hardly have enough time to breathe."

Padma smiled. She knew her friend sometimes had the tendency to spread herself in more directions than necessary. And she knew that it was only when someone intervened that she even realized she had been doing it.

"You could always pull back a little with the extra study," she commented offhandedly.

Hermione shook her head. "No. I'd get bored. And I feel like I have to study even harder now that I'm dating Viktor."

She stood up and shook her legs out, trying to get the circulation to start up again. She knew that she would have to return to her dorm soon, and cold feet wouldn't help her at all.

"He likes you the way that you are," Padma said. "You don't have to prove anything."

Hermione bit her lip. "It's not him I feel like I have to prove myself to. Part of it's me, that he even sees something in me worth liking. And part of it's everyone else. I don't think they'd understand. I don't think they do understand."

"For the brightest witch in our year, you do have a tendency to overthink things," Padma said.

"It comes with the territory."

"Have you thought that maybe you aren't supposed to understand it? Maybe no one's supposed to understand it. But if you asked Viktor, he might be able to tell you why he likes you."

"I already know part of the reason. It's really hard to not like your soulmate," Hermione said nonchalantly.

Padma jumped up from her bed and grabbed Hermione's hands. "You didn't tell me he was your soulmate!" she screamed. "How did you even know?"

"That's a long story," Hermione sat back down and told her essentially the same story she had told Neville. There were a few more details involved since Padma demanded to know everything.

"Could you show me?" she asked.

Hermione rolled up her arm, and pulled the pen out of her pocket. She paused for a moment, thinking about the words she wanted to say.

Hi Viktor. Padma's here and she was wondering if you could say something to her, she wrote in English. She didn't really want Padma to see Bulgarian on her arm.

Hello Padma.

Padma squealed in excitement. Hermione covered her ears to save them from pain at the high pitched noise.

"What are you doing?" Hermione asked.

"My friend is soulmates with Viktor Krum!" Padma hugged her.

"Not so loud," Hermione hissed. "People will hear you."