It Happens, Harry.

"It happens, Harry."

He frowned, staring at the frizzy-haired witch seated across from him. She had not looked up when she spoke, but kept her pink eyes looking resolutely at the parchment in front of her. The quill in her hands kept zooming across the page without rising.

Harry Potter had been by himself, as was his usual preference these days, searching for a book in the Restricted Section of the library to help him prepare for the next evening's training session with Dumbledore. His ears had barely stopped ringing from the last screaming volume he'd slammed shut when he heard some sniffling, and someone murmuring something quietly. He'd frowned when he'd recognized the voice as Ginny's.

"It's all right, Hermione...it was just some no-name Hufflepuff wanker, Ron's sorted him out..."

"I know."

Harry's eyebrows had gone up in surprise, and he frowned as he'd heard Hermione respond; her voice had been hushed and thick. It was when he heard her hiccup a moment later that he finally shook himself out of his shock, and rounded a corner out of the Restricted Section. There he saw Hermione and Ginny, sitting at one of the smaller wooden tables. Hermione had a parchment and quill sitting forgotten in front of her as she leaned forward on her elbows, face half-hidden in one of her ink-blotched hands. Ginny had been seated next to her, an arm around Hermione's shoulder, patting her free hand.

Hermione's eyes were red-rimmed, her face pale and her brown curls more mussed than usual. Ginny's expression had been somewhere in between anger and pity; her face, much the opposite of Hermione's sad, pale one, was flushed with fury.

"I'm being a child. I know, I'm being such a child…" sighed Hermione, squeezing her eyes shut as Ginny shook her head, reaching into her robe pocket and pulling out a handkerchief. Neither of them had noticed him standing there. Hermione hiccupped again, sitting up to swipe the white cloth under her eyes. Once more, she sighed.

“You'd just think I'd be used to it by—“

“Be used to what?”

Both of the girls had looked up in surprise. Hermione quickly pushed the handkerchief back to Ginny, shrugging her arm off before leaning back over the scroll. Ginny frowned up at Harry; Hermione might have been attempting to hide her expression from him, but Ginny certainly hadn't been going to bother, Harry could tell.

“What do you care, Harry?”

She'd sounded very angry then, not like when she had been trying to comfort Hermione. Harry's eyebrows had gone up in surprise. He'd sat down in the chair facing opposite them.

“I care a lot, you should know that—“

“Oh, yeah? Then why weren't you there, Harry, when yet another prat was torturing Hermione—“

“Ginny!” said Hermione, looking up at her warningly. She glanced to Harry and back, her still-pink eyes squinted slightly in apprehension. She had ink on her cheek from where she'd been leaning her head. “'Torture' isn't the right—let's not be drama-”

“What'd you mean, `torturing' Hermione?” Harry interrupted, his eyebrows knitted together. He knew he'd been rather absent lately, but this was the first time he was hearing anything of this sort. He wasn't sure he understood.

“What do you think I mean, Harry?” Ginny shot at him, putting a hand back on Hermione's shoulder; Hermione had buried her face back in her hands with a groan, so all he could see were the backs of her inky fingers. There was a slight pause when no one spoke, and Harry could see Ginny's anger starting to dissipate. She'd sighed, handing the handkerchief back to Hermione, who took it wordlessly. She'd taken her hands away from her face; Harry's heart had sunk when he saw her swipe at a few fresh tears. A couple traveled through a smudge of ink under her eye, leaving light black streaks down the side of her face. She'd missed them as she wiped under her eyelids.

Harry stared at the pair of them; there was a terrible, large knot in his throat. He could feel guilt bubbling up in his stomach, and he still wasn't even sure what had happened. Ginny caught his expression. She'd glanced to Hermione, who was looking very angry for the emotion she'd shown, and made a noise somewhere between frustration and compassion. She'd looked back over to Harry.

“A boy in the Great Hall called Hermione—“

“Ginny.”

Hermione sounded half-pleading and half-exasperated.

“…a name.”

“A name.” Harry repeated, looking between them, puzzled. Hermione had her eyes squeezed shut. She sighed, and nodded.

“Yes, Harry. A boy called me a name. That's all.”

“Bullocks, `that's all' indeed.” Ginny muttered. Hermione shot her another little look, and she sighed. Pushing up out of her chair, she shook her head. She'd turned back to look back at Harry.

“You have no idea what she goes through every day, Harry. You don't know, because you're never around.” Before Harry could reply, she looked down at Hermione. “I'm going and check on Ron. Make sure he didn't get himself killed trying to be all chivalrous again.”

With that, she'd stalked out of the library, giving Harry a fleeting look. He'd watched her as she left, the bubbles in his stomach growing larger than ever. He'd looked back to Hermione; she had picked her quill back up while he'd been looking the other way and was writing at top speed. He could see now why her fingers had been splattered with ink; it was flying everywhere was she wrote. She had stopped crying, but her eyes were as pink as ever, and a flush had crept up from her neck; there were still dark tear stains down one of her cheeks. She'd seemed resolute not to look up at Harry again.

“…Hermione?” he'd said tentatively, watching as she attacked the parchment with such vigor. She hadn't looked up, or responded. He'd wished he'd known what to say…this whole thing had caught him off guard. What he had known, though, was that he was sorry he hadn't been aware of any of it before then. It was just that he'd been very…distracted, of late. So many changes had occurred since the end of their fifth year…the end of their fifth year had been a change in itself, in fact.

“Look, I…”

“Just never mind, Harry,” she interrupted, still not taking her eyes from her paper. Harry was doubtful she even knew what she was writing anymore. “Don't worry about it, I've gotten used to it. I just…over-reacted. I'm fine, don't trouble yourself.”

“Hermione, no,” said Harry, the pit of his stomach clenching. His insides were twisting with guilt and something else entirely—it had been a very, very long time since Harry had last seen Hermione made so upset by what people said about her. The last was their first year, in fact. The thought of people doing it to her then had not stirred the kind of emotion in him that it did now, however.

“It's just…I don't…I'm afraid I don't really understand what…what happened,” he'd said rather lamely; he still hadn't been sure what to say to her. She had been trying so hard, he could see, to keep a calm face and make everything seem normal. This last statement did make her pause, though, but only for a moment. She'd started up writing again a second later, leaning her head back on her free hand. When she'd shifted Harry could see fresh ink marks on her forehead.

“There's not much to understand, Harry. I was walking through the Great Hall, and a boy from the Hufflepuff table called me a name.”

“…What did he call you?” he'd asked quietly, a wave of prickling anger making his face hot.

“A name.”

Harry raised his eyebrows.

Hermione waited through a few beats of silence, save for the scratching of her quill, before she'd sighed and spoken again.

“I'd really rather not repeat it. It did actually take me a few moments to recognize the phrasing, though…the boy must have spent some time in America, we don't usually use that sort of terminology here.”

Harry's expression had darkened, but he couldn't help his anger giving way (not completely, of course) to what he could only suppose was pity, and something else. He actually found himself in between emotions; he wanted to find this Hufflepuff-wanker and shove a wand up his nose. He wanted to kick his own head in for not being there to do something about it when it had happened. And most of all he wanted to…there was no other way to put it…vault over the table, and gather Hermione up in his arms. And, Gods, how he'd hated the way she'd refused to look at him. But still, something puzzled him.

“...Why?”

That, again, was something that had made Hermione pause. She hadn't looked up at him, but her quill did leave the page for a moment. There were a few beats of absolute silence, then finally she'd made an effortless, tired noise in her throat.

“'Why' what, Harry?”

“Why'd he call you a name?”

It wasn't that Harry couldn't understand the concept; he'd been called more names, both creative and not, in his lifetime than he could count. But it hadn't been happening…well, at all lately. It was a very big change, but Harry had started to get used to it, so there was something very surprising in hearing that Hermione was having things called at her. Really, what could the reason for it have been?

For the first time in several minutes, Hermione looked up at him. And, for the first time since he had sat down, she looked into his eyes. From just looking at her face before, he'd registered that something had upset her greatly and that she'd been, for a time at least, resolute in not talking about it. But when she'd made eye contact with Harry he realized, all at once, how very, very long it had been since he'd even had a mere conversation with Hermione, much less inquired about the things going on in her life. Minutes before, he'd seen her trying to keep her expression calm and normal. Like everything was all right, like nothing had upset her. But in doing so, she'd looked strained and…sad. Not sobbing and upset, but a lingering sort of sadness that just sat in her facial expression. Harry had been sure, at the moment, that it was the attempting to seem calm that had made Hermione seem depressed like that - but as he looked at her, her face unguarded of all things for a moment as she watched him, bemused, he saw the same things looking back at him. This was not a happy person he was seeing, not the girl he had been so close to the year before. For that moment, she wasn't trying to look like the normal Hermione he'd been so close to the year before. It was with a pang that he realized that, lately, the sad, strained look of her eyes was what was normal for her now.

She'd been telling him more in that moment than he'd even thought to ask in Merlin knew how long. And she hadn't even known she was doing it; she just kept looking at him as if she couldn't believe he'd just asked that question.

“Because I walked by him, Harry,” she'd shrugged rather feebly, “and he didn't like it.”

Harry couldn't respond. All of these realizations and the emotions he was feeling were becoming too much for him. He'd felt the corners of his eyes prickling, and he'd had to press a hand under his glasses. Along with everything else, he'd then understood what Ginny had meant when she'd been asking him why, if he cared, hadn't he been there when yet another prat was torturing Hermione. Hermione's reaction, her face when he saw her; those were not that of a person who'd just been insulted for the first time in ages. While Harry had been looking the other way, `dealing' with the recent occurrences in his life `the way he needed to,' Hermione'd been thrown to the dogs. Harry couldn't believe he'd had to ask “why” before; people didn't need a reason to torture someone who they could tell was all alone and getting weaker all the time.

Hermione really didn't have that many friends, Harry realized. She'd been one third of the Power Trio, as he'd heard people call them, and that had been where most of her companionship had come from. …Hell, it had been were mostly all of her companionship had come from, now that he actually thought about it. Sure, she still had Ron and Ginny, but really…Ginny had her own friends and was a year younger. It wasn't like she was someone Hermione could sit with in lessons or meals all the time.

And it couldn't have been much different with Ron…Ron had always treated Hermione like a sister, sure, and would never leave her completely, but…now that Harry came to think of it, they'd never been terribly close when he wasn't a part of their day-to-day lives. Plus, Ron was still on the Quidditch team, where Hermione supported him, but never had much interest in. Ron wasn't taking many of the same classes as Hermione, and he had been spending much of his time, Harry knew, with his girlfriend Luna, who she had never gotten on with all that well.

Harry had been able to tell from another comment Ginny had made that Ron did still seem to come to Hermione's rescue when she (or perhaps when he just felt that she) needed it. He was probably having to be pulled off of the Hufflepuff boy at that very moment. Harry had also been able to tell from the moment he'd sat down that Ginny'd been trying to offer Hermione as much emotional support as possible whenever she could. But, in the end, Ginny had to go back to her own life, and Ron…yes, he seemed to be very good at flying off the handle, at least at some of Hermione's tormentors, but in the end really did have the emotional range of a teaspoon.

So at the end of the day, Hermione really was left alone. A little weaker each time, and very much alone. While Harry, with his requested private lessons, in his requested private dormitory, eating what little he felt like down in the kitchens with Dobby, immersed himself in his voluntary isolation; he'd told Ron and Hermione about the accursed Prophecy not too long after he'd heard it from Dumbledore. He hadn't been able to keep it to himself any longer, and when he'd told it to both of them, he'd hoped it would bring them closer together and that he'd be able to accept the support they both had readily offered. But he'd only ended up feeling more separated from them than ever. Ron and Hermione could never really help share his burden; the entire point of the Prophecy, the burden, was that in the end it was meant to be just between himself and Voldemort. So, after all was said and done, all he'd felt he had managed to do was weigh his already drained and battered friends down with more worry. Not able to handle the guilt or feelings of separation, he scarcely saw his friends again.

And he very honestly hadn't considered what that would do to them.

And now, moving his hand from his swelling eyes to look at the girl he could barely recognize, he understood, all at once, that it was his fault. Every bit of what she had gone through was because of what he had done to her first.

He had abandoned her, all because he couldn't live with the fact that, in the end, she wasn't going to be able to stick by him through everything. Neither of them would be able to, by no fault of their own. But Gods, Hermione had wanted to, Harry remembered. And by pulling away from her, he'd taken an essential part of who she was—or who she had been—with him. And she'd been dying a little bit each day since, helped along by their ever-eager classmates. The Hufflepuffs included.

A groan had emerged from Harry's throat as he'd looked at Hermione, his vision very close to being obstructed by a swell of unwelcome tears. She'd stopped looking at him; she'd looked back down at her parchment, she'd started writing again, her face back to being closed off.

“I'm sorry,” he'd breathed, his voice a low croak. “God, Hermione, I'm so...”

“Don't be, Harry. Don't trouble yourself.”

Which had brought them to this point. This had all brought them here, Harry sitting across from the broken shell of the clever, caring, beautiful girl he'd once known. He could only gape at her, his over-bright eyes red and watering. Gods, he thought desperately, I've killed Hermione.

"It happens, Harry."

The quill in her hands kept zooming across the page without rising.

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