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Chapter Twenty

Harry wasn't happy, but that didn't matter. What mattered was that he only had a few friends, and he was going to make sure that he could hold onto them.

So he waited under his Cloak near the bottom of the stairs up to Gryffindor Tower, and he whipped it off when Ron and Hermione came down by themselves after the rest of the House had gone to breakfast, whispering busily to each other.

"Harry!"

"What are you doing here?"

Ron was standing between Harry and Hermione, and Harry took a long, deep breath. He didn't want to look as though he were trying to hurt anyone, but they were going to have this conversation. "I want to talk to you."

"You're a Parselmouth," Hermione whispered. "You didn't tell us."

"Much like you didn't tell me that you were going to try and sneak into the Slytherin common room under Disillusionment Charms after I refused to help you with the Polyjuice plan," Harry retorted. He watched as Hermione swallowed a little and kept his attention on her. She was the softer target. "We can keep secrets from each other, Hermione. And this was one I thought you would get upset about."

"Parselmouths are like You-Know-Who and Salazar Slytherin! They're Dark wizards!"

It seemed that he would have to deal with Ron after all. Harry shifted around and stared at him. "Name one terrible or evil thing you have ever seen me do."

"You didn't tell us you were a Parselmouth!"

"Because if I had, you would have reacted just like this!"

Hermione took a step forwards and got in between him and Ron. "Can we go somewhere private to talk about this?" she hissed, glancing from one face to another. "Somewhere not out in the open where anyone could find this out if they just happened to come along at the right time?"

Harry restrained his temper and nodded. He looked at Ron, who seemed as if he wanted to go on shouting. But after a long moment, he got his temper visibly under control and nodded, too.

"Good." Hermione turned on her heel with a little flip of her robes. "Come on. I know a place."

The "place" turned out to be the second-floor girls' bathroom where Harry had found Mrs. Norris Petrified. He wrinkled his nose but didn't say anything when Ron and Hermione turned to face him. Of course they would want to make sure that no other Gryffindors saw them talking to the nasty evil Slytherin.

Harry pushed that thought away. That was the sort of thing they might be thinking, but he wasn't going to indulge them. He didn't have so many friends that he wanted to lose any of them.

"Why didn't you tell us you were a Parselmouth and had a snake?" Hermione asked.

"Why didn't you tell me that you were going to sneak in under Disillusionment Charms when your Polyjuice plan failed?"

"It only failed because you refused to help!"

"You wanted me to take the blame from Snape, someone who already hates me. Of course I refused!"

"Okay!" Hermione thrust herself in between Harry and Ron, waving her hands around, as their voices echoed off the bathroom walls. "The important thing is that we get answers to our first questions. Harry, why didn't you tell us that you were a Parselmouth and had a snake?"

Harry took a deep breath. "You'll answer the one about the Disillusionment Charms?"

"Of course."

"I thought you would react badly. That you would decide I was Dark and evil without giving me a chance to defend myself."

"But you kept it a secret!"

"And you reacted like that anyway," Harry said, keeping his voice calm and even with an effort. "It seemed to me that I'd have to deal with this reaction no matter what, so I might as well take the course that gave me peace for a little while."

"Why do you have to talk to it?"

"Because it would have bitten a bunch of people otherwise and might have killed them."

"But then you could stop talking to it after that."

"Not when it won't let me get rid of it."

Harry stood staring at Ron, who stared back. Then Ron made a little angry noise and turned his head away. "Does Slytherin know all about this?"

"Yes, because Malfoy conjured the snake to attack me in the middle of the common room and I spoke to it because I thought it was a magical snake who could communicate with anybody. I didn't even realize that I was speaking a language other than English until the other Slytherins started to react to it."

That brought a reluctant laugh out of Ron. Harry perked up while trying to look as if he wasn't. This probably at least meant Ron could be brought around, although he wasn't sure about Hermione yet.

"Only you, Harry. I suppose you didn't know anything about Parseltongue because you grew up in the Muggle world?"

"Yeah. I only spoke to one snake before, and I thought that snake was magical, too. Or that I was just sort of understanding what it said to me because of my freakishness."

"It's awful that your relatives called it that," Hermione broke in.

"I agree. Your turn. Why didn't you tell me about the Disillusionment Charms plan?"

Hermione hesitated, long enough that Harry started to open his mouth. But then she took a breath and shook her head. "The Heir of Slytherin has to be a Slytherin, Harry. Nothing else makes sense. And Malfoy is the most prejudiced wanker in this school."

"Has it occurred to you that he might be the only one who expresses it that openly?"

From the way Hermione flushed, it hadn't. She opened her mouth, and then said weakly, "But it makes sense that it would be someone in our year, doesn't it?"

"Why?"

"Because—well, if you aren't the Heir, then it's probably an attempt to target you, and you said Malfoy hates you!"

"Given that he hated me last year, too, that doesn't make much sense." Harry rolled his eyes a little when Hermione crossed her arms. "You might as well say that it was a first-year since it only started after they were Sorted."

"You don't have a suspect, either, do you?"

"Neither do you!"

"We haven't proved that Malfoy isn't the Heir," Ron said. He had calmed down, but he was still watching Harry in a shrewd way that made him uncomfortable. "Just that you don't think so."

"I told you why I don't think so."

"You have as much evidence excluding him as we do including him," Ron said, and rolled his eyes when Harry glared at him. "Come on, you have to admit that he's the one prancing around whinging about Mudbloods and how he hopes the Heir finishes his work."

"Yeah," Harry said, because he did have to admit that, and talking about how some of his other Housemates felt would probably involve him in an argument about how he could listen to that kind of thing and not talk back. And then he would have to explain about how tired he felt all the time.

"So help us think of another plan to exclude him from consideration."

"As soon as Hermione keeps her promise and tells me why you didn't tell me about the Disillusionment Charms plan."

"I did, Harry!"

"No, you just said that Malfoy was prejudiced and it has to be him. Which is something I already knew you thought and not an answer to the question."

Hermione turned a slow, bright red that made Harry think he'd never really seen her blush before. She looked at Ron. Ron looked at her. Harry leaned on the wall with his arms folded and sort of wished he'd brought the snake, so there would be someone here who was fully on his side.

Hermione finally swallowed and said, "We thought you would try to stop us, the way you did with the potion."

"Do you know why I stopped you then?"

"No."

"Because you would have blamed it on me and made Snape hate me even more than he does. Not to mention that doing it in the middle of his class, even if you didn't blame me, would probably make him suspect me just because that's the way he does things. I shouldn't have to get in trouble because you can't think of a better plan."

"The Polyjuice would have worked."

"Are you listening to a single word I said, Hermione?"

She stared at him. Harry folded his arms harder. He could feel his heart aching in his chest again, but this time, he didn't have a snake to rest his chin on. "It doesn't matter whether it would have worked or not. The problem is that you thought I should get in trouble instead of coming up with something else."

"There was nothing else!"

"You thought of the Disillusionment Charms after the Polyjuice, right?"

"Yes, but at the time I talked to you about the Polyjuice, I didn't know I would think of another plan!"

"In the future," Harry said, as carefully and precisely as he could, "I would really appreciate if you tried to think of a plan that didn't involve throwing blame on me and making a professor hate me. Okay?'

"Oh." Hermione blinked. "I didn't—I didn't think you would mind, Harry."

"Why?"

"Because you're always involved in something," she said with a little shrug. "Running away from You-Know-Who last year and finding the cat that the Heir of Slytherin Petrified and now this Parseltongue thing."

Harry thought of several responses he could say, and discarded them all. In the end, he just shook his head. "I mind a lot, Hermione. Please don't ever come up with something that casts blame on me again."

"I won't. I promise."

From her wide eyes and earnest voice, Harry thought it would probably be a promise she would keep. He turned to Ron. "And are you so angry about me being a Parselmouth that you're not going to be my friend anymore?"

"No." Ron gave him a shaky grin. "As long as you don't speak it around me, and you won't, right?"

"No."

No. I can trust Ron and Hermione with things like freeing house-elves that I would never trust Theo and Blaise with. And it's more than clear that there are things I can trust Theo and Blaise with that I would never trust Ron and Hermione with.

"Potter."

Harry looked warily at Malfoy. It was the last night of the Christmas holidays, and the other students would be coming back tomorrow. Harry could admit that he was looking forward to it, and not just because he had missed Theo and Blaise. Being the only other boy in the dormitories with Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle had been awkward as hell.

"Yeah, Malfoy?" Harry asked, when the flurry of insults he'd expected about his blood status and his friends didn't come.

"I didn't report your Gryffindor friends being in the common room to Professor Snape."

"Okay. Why?"

Malfoy paused a long moment. Harry drew his wand, but kept it down near the side of his leg so that Malfoy wouldn't know he'd done it.

"You're scary," Malfoy whispered at last. "No one else in our year could have won that duel with Flint. And I don't want to get on your bad side."

Harry again thought of several responses, the way he had when he was talking with Ron and Hermione, and threw them away. He nodded. "That's fine. Just continue not reporting me for things like that, when I didn't even know they were going to do it anyway and I exposed them, and we'll get along fine."

"Are we allies?"

"I wouldn't go that far, Malfoy," Harry said, bluffing a little, since he didn't really know where Malfoy drew the line between allies and friends. But he certainly wasn't going to be friendly to Malfoy, even a little bit. "But maybe we can be something other than enemies in the future if you play your car—Gobstones right." It was a saying he had heard the other students use, so he thought it was real and not just something they might have done to confuse the Muggle-raised ones.

Malfoy nodded, looking relieved, and turned back to his own trunk as if he had never spoken to Harry in the first place.

Harry stared at the wall for a moment, and then shook his head. Well, at least he would have plenty to tell Theo and Blaise when they asked how his holidays had been.

"I deserve a rat."

"Why?"

"Because I am hungry."

Harry went to get one of the rats that he'd caught earlier that week and put under a Preservation Charm, reflecting as he did that things would be simpler if all his friends were as straightforward as snakes.