Author's Note: After the unexpected response to the first chapter, I'm at a loss for words. My chief emotion is fear. I'm afraid that the simplicity of this story will prove to be a letdown when all is said and done. I should have known that this site boasted a sharper variety of reader than the site where I used to post (and for which this story was originally intended). I could have played it safe and left this story on the shelf; I may yet wish I had. Alas, it's too late now, isn't it? Well, I suppose there's nothing to do but press on and hope that the ending doesn't prove too disappointing. In my own defense, I was still feeling my way in semi-darkness back when I wrote this, and I had yet to discover how many truly gifted writers were out there, raising fanfic standards by leaps and bounds. I demand more of myself now than I did then, as is all too plain here. Still, maybe it'll be worth a smile or two. At least it'll be over quickly. Anyway, here's Chapter 2.
Hermione was very busy throughout the month of August, for which she was grateful, in that it allowed her no time to waste dwelling on the events that had taken place in Madam Cybele's shop in Diagon Alley.
Hermione's Hogwarts letter had been accompanied by a large pouch of documents pertaining to her duties as Head Girl, which were far more extensive than those she had shouldered as a prefect the previous two years. The pouch had been so heavy that, rather than trust its transport to an owl, or even two, Dumbledore had dispatched Fawkes, his pet phoenix, with not only Hermione's, but Harry's as well.
Harry's pouch was currently lying on his bed in Ron's room, still unopened. Whenever Hermione delicately pointed out that the interval separating them from the start of term was growing increasingly shorter, Harry merely shrugged it off and promised, "I'll get to it, Hermione! I'll get to it!"
The contents of Hermione's pouch was currently spread out all over her bed in Ginny's room, as well as covering much of Ginny's writing desk and most of the floor. Scroll upon scroll of parchment was stretched out, various heavy objects weighing down the curling ends so that they didn't snap back into the tight cylinders from which they had sprung. Hermione had arranged everything according to various categories, ranging from the minutae of her daily duties to the greater responsibility attendant to the regularly scheduled events which were the heart and soul of life at Hogwarts. There were class schedules, Quidditch matches, feasts, Hogsmeade weekends -- even two dress balls, one at Halloween and another in the Spring.
Hermione scowled down at the sea of parchment in the midst of which she stood like an island (an island with a very bushy palm tree at its center). So deep was her concentration that she almost didn't hear the light rap on the frame of the open bedroom door.
"Can I come in?" Ginny asked.
"It's your room," Hermione laughed, her sour mood broken in an instant.
"Yes," Ginny said, "but I know you're busy. I was afraid I'd -- "
Ginny paused, staring at the seemingly endless expanse of parchment spreading out in every direction. Hermione laughed again, though with measurably less humor than before.
"Bill and Percy were both Head Boy," Ginny said as she stared around her in something like horror. "But I never knew...I was too young when Bill graduated, and Percy was always so secretive -- always kept his door sealed with a Locking Charm when he was working. My gosh. If Errol had tried carrying this, he'd have snuffed it over Aberdeen."
"Ginny," Hermione said slowly, her eyes narrowing shrewdly, "I know there's a restriction against underage wizards practicing magic during the holidays. But how do they really know? I mean, your mum and dad must do magic all the time. How does the Ministry know if a spell is being done by an adult or a student?"
Ginny thought a moment before giving Hermione a helpless look.
"And Harry told me," Hermione continued, "that when Dobby used a Hover Charm at the Dursleys' the Summer before our second year, the Ministry sent him a warning, believing he'd done the magic."
Ginny nodded as Hermione paced the room, careful to walk only in the narrow aisles she had allowed between the parchment which covered the floor like a fresh snowfall.
"Is your mum making lunch now?" Hermione asked suddenly. Ginny nodded, not understanding where Hermione was going. "She typically uses magic in preparing meals, doesn't she?" Another nod. Hermione tapped her lips thoughtfully before drawing her wand. She nodded smilingly at Ginny, rolling her eyes toward the door. Catching on, Ginny closed the door and locked it.
With a swish of her wand, Hermione opened her school bag. Her new school supplies were all there, as well as some things she had bought earlier in a Muggle store near her home. A dozen fresh quills emerged from her bag (as Head Girl, she would not permit herself to be found without a sharp quill at a moment's need), along with a shiny new bottle of ink. As these hovered before her, Hermione directed her wand at the rolls of parchment straining at their weights all around her. She made a full sweep of the room with her arm, and the parchment, from first to last, stiffened as if they had been transformed into sheet steel. She used a Levitating Charm to remove the now-unnecessary weights, which were promptly returned to their original places throughout the room via a Banishing Charm.
"Now comes the tricky part," Hermione said. "I worked on this spell near the end of last term. I intended to use it when I got back to school, to simplify my studies. Now's as good a time as any to test it out."
Hermione pointed her wand at the various groupings of parchment, which were already arranged in pre-sorted categories. In less than a minute the floor was completely parchment-free. All that remained were a half-dozen neat piles sitting on Hermione's bed and on Ginny's desk. Hermione pointed her wand at her bag again, and a small rectangular block, roughly the size of a small brick, emerged and flew directly into her waiting hand.
"Index cards," Hermione explained as she peeled away the wrapping to free the stack of five hundred lined cards. "Muggle students use them all the time, to keep notes. They're much easier to store and reference than rolls of parchment."
This said, Hermione tapped the cards in her open palm with the tip of her wand. The cards rose, divided themselves into smaller stacks, and hovered obediently as they awaited Hermione's next command. With a wave of her wand, she directed each small stack onto one of the sheafs of parchment until her hand lay empty before her. With a wink and a smile at Ginny, Hermione used her wand to dispatch the hovering quills so that one was suspended, quivering eagerly, over each individual grouping of parchment and cards. She paused before pointing her wand at her bag again. A second bottle of ink rose into view. Both bottles then made a soft popping sound as their stoppers came free and rose into the air.
"I don't think one bottle will be enough," Hermione told Ginny. "Better prepared than wanting, I always say. Now, watch."
As Hermione wove a complicated pattern in the air with her wand, the quills dipped themselves into whichever bottle of ink was nearer, waiting in line like patrons queuing up at the cinema. Each quill then darted back to its stack of index cards and began to write. Hermione leaned in toward the nearest pile and nodded with satisfaction.
"If we're lucky," she said with a twinkle in her eye, "every bit of information on those scrolls of parchment will have been transferred onto the index cards by the time your mum calls us for lunch."
Ginny's face was positively glowing with appreciation. "No wonder they made you Head Girl. Bloody brilliant! Can you teach me that spell, in case I make Head Girl next year?"
"Of course," Hermione beamed. "And now that I have a spot of time to kill, let's go over your duties as prefect, shall we?" Ginny's face glowed brighter still.
As the lowering sun began to lengthen the shadows in the Weasleys' back garden, Hermione and Ginny sat on their beds with looks of concentration on their faces. Ginny was reading her Advanced Transfiguration textbook, while Hermione flipped through her index cards as she familiarized herself with some of the details of her upcoming Head Girl duties.
"Have you seen Harry today?" Ginny asked idly as she peered over the edge of her textbook.
"What?" Hermione said absently as she shuffled a handful of cards rapidly. "Oh. No, I haven't."
"He was up early again today," Ginny said. "Off with Dad again, I think. I sure would like to know what they do all day."
Hermione stiffened. She had been concentrating so deeply on honing her Head Girl duties the last two weeks that she had given little thought to Harry. But something about Ginny's question brought an unwanted lurch to Hermione's stomach -- no doubt because she had asked herself that same question a hundred times or more since she had come to the Burrow. It usually haunted her thoughts in the quiet dark before she drifted off to sleep, or in the mornings when a trace of drowsiness still lingered in her sluggish mind following the ringing of the alarm clock. Where did Harry go with Arthur nearly every day?
And the more she thought about it, the more Hermione was sure that she knew the answer, at least in a general sense.
Harry had turned seventeen on July 31st. Though he still had another year to go at Hogwarts, he was nevertheless an adult in the eyes of the wizarding world. And while Harry had assured Hermione that Dumbledore would not pull him out of school to participate in missions for the Order of the Phoenix (of which Arthur was likewise a member), did that guarantee that he would not serve in some capacity before school began?
And what if, heaven forbid, some crisis arose before September first that would prevent Harry from returning to school altogether? Once a student turned seventeen, schooling was no longer compulsory. If Harry chose to forego his final year of school, he would receive no Ministry owl warning him of pending legal consequences, as he had when Dobby the house-elf had levitated a pudding at the Dursleys' five years ago. Would Harry do such a thing? Now that he had been admitted to the Order of the Phoenix, would he turn his back on Hogwarts and go off to join the fight against Voldemort?
It was along such lines that Hermione's worst fears were played out night after night, in chilling nightmares that always ended the same: with herself weeping bitter tears onto Harry's face as she cradled his cold, dead body in her arms.
"If Harry doesn't stop traipsing off with Dad all the time," Ginny was saying, "he won't be able to prepare himself for his Head Boy duties. And it's important that he does so. Bill told us that these appointments aren't engraved in stone. It's not like prefect, where you can just muddle through like Ron did two years ago. The Head Boy and Girl are only a step removed from McGonagall, you know. If they don't do their jobs properly, the whole school suffers."
"They wouldn't...take Harry's badge away, would they?" Hermione asked in mild alarm.
"It's been done before," Ginny said. "According to Bill, if one of the Heads isn't up to scratch, the seventh year prefect is promoted as a replacement. The demoted student usually takes over as prefect; but in some cases, he's washed out completely, goes back to being just another student. I don't want to see that happen with Harry. But the way he's been these last few weeks, it's like he doesn't care. He acts for all the world like he won't even be Head Boy this year, and doesn't care two shakes of a dragon's tail about it."
Hermione's stomach gave another, more violent, lurch. What if -- what if Harry didn't care if he were Head Boy or not? What if he knew, or suspected, that he would be unable to fulfill his duties during the coming year? What if Harry was ignoring his pouch from Hogwarts not out of carelessness, but because he did not expect to be filling the post to which he had been appointed when September first rolled around?
In fact, Hermione realized with a sudden chill, how did she even know that the pouch delivered to Harry by Fawkes was filled with Head Boy paraphernalia at all? It could be anything! It could be something having to do with the Order, a battle plan to use against Voldemort, or even weapons -- spells and magical objects to be used against the Dark Forces.
Suddenly Hermione had to know. She had to know for certain that Harry was Head Boy. He had told her so the day their pouches arrived, both of them laughing as they recalled Fawkes swooping down with the heavy bags clutched in his talons and narrowly missing Ron (who'd leaped aside just in time, only to fall directly into the frog pond). But did he tell her that merely to allay her fears? All she knew for certain was that the pouch Harry had brought with him to the Burrow bore the Hogwarts crest. It was still on his bed, unopened, its contents unrevealed.
Hermione felt her body make an involuntary movement in the direction of the bedroom door. She stopped herself almost immediately. Harry's pouch would be sealed by magic, as hers had been. The bag would be Charmed to open only at the touch of Harry's wand. She could probably break through the spell, but not without setting off some sort of alarm; she was a clever witch in her own right, but not clever enough to outfox the likes of Albus Dumbledore. There was no way she could think of to open Harry's pouch to see if it contained Head Boy material, or...something else...
But Hermione's face suddenly brightened. She did not need to look in Harry's bag to see if he were Head Boy. She had all the information she needed at her very fingertips.
Hermione began to sift frantically through her carefully sorted index cards, which she had bundled up with ordinary rubber bands. One such grouping contained the entire student body of Hogwarts. There was, in fact, more than one list. There was the general enrollment parchment, bearing the name of every student at Hogwarts. Then there were smaller parchments denoting each individual House. Each name was followed by one or more abbreviated designations.
Falling prey to a small twinge of vanity, Hermione had Charmed her own enrollment cards so that she could call them forth from their alphabetical decks with a wave of her wand and return them in similar fashion. There was ample space beneath each name for personal information to be added. She intended to keep a record of certain students, noting offenses and points taken away, as well as positive comments which might be used in consideration of a student's possible appointment as prefect the following year. She had been practicing on her own card, scribbling down reminders which she hoped would enable her to slide smoothly into her duties once term commenced.
Her card was in front of her now. Her name appeared as Granger, Hermione, and it was followed by three abbreviated marks: A number 7, indicating that she was a seventh year; a letter G, denoting her as being in Gryffindor house; and a letter H, signifying that she was Head Girl. Harry's card should bear that same letter H -- if he were Head Boy.
Hermione found the enrollment cards and began to flip through them hurriedly. She found the P's quickly and jerked them rapidly across her eyes: Parkinson, Pansy, 7, S; Patil, Padma, 7, R, P; Patil, Parvati, 7, G; Pemberton, Sylvester, 2, G; Piggot-Smith, Timothy, 6, R; Pritchard, Graham, 4, S.
Hermione's heart leaped into her throat. Where was "Potter, Harry"? She flipped through the cards again, thinking that she had mis-ordered them. She checked to either side of the P's, sorting through dozens of cards. In desperation, she checked three letters in either direction, without success. The truth was manifest and inescapable. There was no "Potter."
Hermione felt an icy hand clutch at her heart. She was certain that she had cast a spell over the cards so as to cause them to assemble themselves in alphabetical order. She had used that spell any number of times; it had never failed her.
Hermione tossed the general enrollment cards aside and caught up the smaller stack containing only Gryffindors. There was Pemberton, Sylvester, second year. He was followed by Patil, Parvati, and she by Sandhurst, Brighton, a third year.
On the verge of panic, Hermione tossed the index cards aside and pulled out the original enrollment parchments she had taken from her Hogwarts pouch. The names written thereon would be final proof, one way or the other. Slowly and carefully she scanned the P's, first on the general roll, then on the Gryffindor roll. When at last she released the scroll and sank down on her bed, her face was paler than the parchment lying across her lap.
"He's not here," Hermione squeaked, her hands quivering as the scroll slipped away and fell softly to the floor.
"What's that?" Ginny said absently, still thumbing through her Transfiguration textbook. "Did you say something, Hermione?" Ginny looked up, and she was startled to see that Hermione was crying silently, tears streaming down her cheeks. She leaped up and fell onto the bed, her hands cupping Hermione's shoulders as she stared questioningly into the older girl's reddening eyes.
"H-Harry's -- not here," Hermione said in a faint, trembling sob. "He -- he's not enrolled at Hogwarts -- "
Hermione fell into Ginny's arms and wept openly. Ginny held her comfortingly, and though she did not yet understand
the implication of Hermione's words, she felt a cold lump of dread form in her stomach which made her shudder in
spite of the August heat.