Disclaimer: See Part 1.
Author's Note: I'm so sorry for how long it's taken to post this chapter!! And even sorrier that I can't promise when the next chapter will be written as classes have started for me, severely cutting down on my free time to write (or even think about writing) fics. However, I will try…
Enjoy!
From My Soul
Part 5
Hermione studied Harry as he approached them. He looked subdued, but there was a certain added determination in his eyes, a renewed purpose and for a moment she wondered with an odd pang of loss where the boy she'd once known had gone. He'd grown up, gotten older-and something about this older, somewhat sadder Harry touched a chord deep inside her that the boy Harry hadn't…
Her lips parted to ask how he was but for once, Ron asked it for her.
"You okay, mate?" he asked, the words laconic enough but the tone filled with all the concern and loyalty of the friendship of years, the sort of concern that Ron would never actually say flat-out except in this sort of simple question.
"Yeah, I'm fine," Harry was quick to assure them, managing the ghost of a smile.
Ron nodded and then with an air of relief, asked, "Are we going to Apparate to Hogwarts now, then?"
"We have to Apparate to the edge of Hogsmeade and then walk to Hogwarts. Remember we can't Apparate in or out of Hogwarts grounds," Hermione pointed out, half-amused exasperation in her tone at having to remind him of this yet again.
"I forgot," Ron said rather sheepishly.
Harry smiled slightly. "So had I, to be honest," he admitted, glancing at Hermione. "But that's why we have Hermione to remind us and keep us from splinching ourselves by trying to Apparate onto the grounds."
He grinned at her-the same half-sheepish, half-grateful grin he'd given her when he'd pointed out that he should have worked on the First Task on his own too.
She blushed a little and smiled.
He blinked at her for a moment, distracted, as a random thought, a random memory, suddenly swam into his mind-seeing Hermione at the Yule Ball in their 4th year and thinking how pretty she was…
He blinked again and the moment was gone and he was left to wonder what that had been, why he'd thought of that moment of all moments, now when everything about balls and girls and other, normal things like that should be the furthest thing from his mind.
Ron glanced between the two of them with an odd, strained expression on his face before he said with what seemed like forced humor, "Well, come on then. You might think a graveyard's a perfect summer vacation spot but I, for one, want to get out of here. It's wigging me out."
Harry laughed, tucking that strange-whatever-that-had-been-between him and Hermione away into the back corner of his mind. "Meet you there," and closing his eyes, felt again that sensation of being squeezed through a keyhole, opening his eyes to find himself on the familiar platform of the Hogsmeade Station.
Beside him, he heard a pop and Hermione appeared, followed by another pop behind him and he turned to see Ron.
"Good, we're all here," he said and turning, started to walk rapidly in the direction of Hogwarts, suddenly filled with determination. In his mind, the litany of the locket, the cup, the snake, and something of Gryffindor's or Ravenclaw's ran, pausing on the cup and something of Gryffindor's or Ravenclaw's. It was there-in Hogwarts, in the Chamber of Secrets-it had to be. It was there… And once he found it, he would have found half the horcruxes he needed to find. And he would find a way to destroy them. Somehow.
Behind him, he heard Ron and Hermione hurrying to catch up with him and realized, with the first twinge of guilt, that he'd simply taken off without a word in his own hurry to get this next horcrux. Which was hardly fair, given that without Hermione, he would still be stuck in Grimmauld Place trying to destroy the locket and getting more frustrated at his failure by the minute.
He paused, letting them catch up to him and then falling in step with Ron on one side and Hermione on the other. "I- sorry," he finally said. "I just- I just want to find this other horcrux, soon-so I'll be that much closer to-to the end." He finished rather lamely. He'd been meaning to say, 'that much closer to being done' when he'd realized forcefully that having destroyed all the horcruxes meant facing Voldemort for the last time-which wasn't a guarantee of much, including his own survival.
"It's ok," Ron shrugged it off.
Hermione said nothing and he glanced at her, wondering if she could possibly be that annoyed at his having hurried ahead and remembering with an unpleasant twist of his stomach all the times she'd looked and spoken her displeasure at his continuing to use the Half-Blood Prince's textbook (he really hated having Hermione annoyed at him; it always gave him the nagging, uncomfortable certainty that he must be in the wrong). She had a small frown on her face as she walked, with her usual purposeful step, her gaze fixed ahead of them-and he realized she'd probably not even heard what she said or if she had, she'd dismissed it and was now thinking-planning?-something else.
He waited, watching her-and he could see when she'd decided to speak in the slight altering of her expression-and then he wondered when he'd started being sensitive to even the slightest changes in her expression like this.
"Harry, what do you plan to do?"
He blinked, frowning at this seemingly ridiculous question from Hermione. "What do you mean, what do I plan to do? I plan to go back into the Chamber of Secrets and find the other horcrux, of course."
Hermione sighed. "Don't treat me like an idiot, Harry," she said rather sharply. "I asked because I know you and I knew you'd do this."
He wondered for a moment when he'd suddenly become dense in the past few minutes; he hadn't felt dense as of a couple minutes ago… "Do what?"
"Just rush into action without thinking or planning ahead. Harry, you're a great wizard and the bravest person I know," she said, not as if she was complimenting him but more as if she was simply stating a fact that was sometimes surprising and he waited for the 'but' which was just hovering on the tip of her tongue. And sure enough… "But you really need to learn to think ahead a little. You can't always count on your luck and thinking on your feet to get you out of things."
"I don't," he protested, a little stung, in spite of the small voice in his head that spoke in her voice, saying she was right and he really should listen. If he had only listened to her at the end of 5th year, Sirius might still be alive… If he had listened to her about not trusting the Half-Blood Prince… "And my luck and thinking on my feet's allowed me to survive facing Voldemort four times now so it can't be all wrong." He was uncomfortably aware that he was beginning to sound increasingly defensive.
She sighed again. "But Dumbledore was there too, to save you, on at least two of those times," she reminded him gently, her tone softening.
The mention of Dumbledore ensured that his flicker of annoyance died as quickly as it had been born.
"You'll leap back down the pipes to get to the Chamber of Secrets and then, when you've found the horcrux--" she paused meaningfully, before finishing, "you'll realize you hadn't given the slightest thought as to how you're going to get back out through the pipes since you don't have Fawkes to count on."
He deflated. He should have known that Hermione would be right. Again. She was almost always right, the voice of reason. His voice of reason. "You're right," he admitted. "Sorry. I was being a prat."
"No, you weren't," she responded and he was relieved to hear a slight smile in her voice. "It's okay."
He managed a small, grateful smile at her. "I guess that's why I have you, to remind me when I'm being reckless."
She smiled back and thought how-different-it was to disagree with Harry, to tell him when she thought he was doing something wrong, than to disagree with Ron. Harry was (with the exception of their 5th year-but given that he'd spent the year having to carve 'I will not tell lies' into his hand for telling the truth, he could hardly be blamed for not wanting to admit he was wrong given that, for the most part, he'd been right) willing to admit mistakes, to acknowledge she'd been right or, at the very least, respect her opinion. She was suddenly reminded how he had been the one to approach her first after 'the Firebolt incident' as she'd taken to calling it; he'd been the one to at least accept that she'd had his own good in mind when Ron had not.
But then when was Ron ever willing to admit he'd been wrong or even try to understand her opinion? She couldn't remember a time. It was why their arguments never seemed to really end; for the most part, they'd simply been brushed aside because of other, more important, life-and-death sort of matters without managing to reach any sort of conclusion or compromise. It had worked up until then because so far, there had always been something-usually Harry-related-that completely overshadowed any argument they had but how long could they continue to rely on that? And she suddenly wondered if maybe that was the reason why their relationship- such as it had been- had never really had the chance to begin. He had comforted her at Dumbledore's funeral, been really surprisingly sweet and supportive (and she'd begun to think he really had grown, that maybe this tension between them had only been a sign of their being meant to be more than just friends-but once the initial burst of sorrow and shock and grief over Dumbledore's death had been over, and they'd found themselves back at the Burrow for Bill and Fleur's wedding, they had slipped back into their usual bickering. The tension hadn't gone or lessened in any way, only seemed to be worse than it had been-and instead of feeling happy to be at the Burrow, with Ron, she'd spent her time with him feeling angry or hurt-and disappointed that, after all, he really hadn't changed or grown, was still just Ron, albeit a Ron more willing to be serious when times called for it. The same Ron she'd always known and cared for, simply because it was Ron and he was her best friend too… But nothing more.
She stifled a sigh and glanced at Ron before looking at Harry, who seemed to be mulling over the problem of how to get out of the Chamber of Secrets.
"Just going from what you told me about it, I think a rope might be the only way," she ventured to say.
"It would need to be a really long rope," Harry said rather dubiously.
"I can put an Extendability Charm on it so the robe will extend to however long we need it to be. And then when we've found the Horcrux and are ready to come out, we can be pulled out."
"We?" Harry asked, his voice rising slightly. "I was planning to go alone."
"I'm coming with you," she said firmly. "You don't really know what other kinds of protective spells Voldemort might have placed around the horcrux; you might need help."
"It- it could be dangerous," Harry warned.
At any other time she might have rolled her eyes at this statement of the obvious-but this was Harry and she knew that, somehow, even now, he still wanted all the danger and all the risk to be his; it was as if he simply couldn't accept or understand that other people cared enough about him that the risk didn't matter… "If I were going to be scared away from helping you in anything because of the danger, I'd have avoided you after first year, Harry." She knew she sounded rather impatient but couldn't help it. How many times was she going to have to tell him that she cared more about him than about the risk? How many times was she going to have to argue with him about staying with him despite any risk there might be?
But even as she thought it, she knew the answer: as many times as she needed to. She couldn't even feel irritated at him; it was just part of who he was, his protective streak-and she loved him for it.
They had finally arrived at the front entrance to the castle and they all paused, looking up at the silent castle, and though neither of them said anything, they all knew they were thinking the same thing-that the castle seemed so strangely silent and still during the summer.
After a moment, Harry stepped forward and pulled open the door and they both stepped into the equally silent Great Hall.
Ron turned to head towards the stairs to go to Moaning Myrtle's bathroom but Harry stopped him by saying, "I- I want to go visit Hagrid for a bit."
Ron nodded and glanced at Hermione who nodded back and then said, "I'll come with you."
"I'm going to go talk to Professor McGonagall," Hermione said, putting a hand on Harry's arm. "I want to tell her in person that I won't be coming back this year-and stuff."
He nodded. "Yeah, you go do that. We'll meet you outside of Moaning Myrtle's bathroom-and I'm sure Hagrid will have rope we can borrow."
"Okay, I'll see you there."
And they separated, Hermione to head towards the Headmaster-that is, the Headmistress's office, she mentally corrected herself with a pang of grief for Headmaster Dumbledore-and Harry and Ron heading outside towards Hagrid's hut.
The atmosphere in McGonagall's office was tense.
Hermione looked down at her hands. She'd felt that she had to see Professor McGonagall in person, had to explain, somehow, why she couldn't accept the Head Girl position, why she wouldn't be returning to Hogwarts this year.
Harry and Ron might have been content just to send return owls as they had this morning but she couldn't, not when they needed to come to Hogwarts anyway.
She knew she'd be disappointing McGonagall, who'd always been her favorite teacher, and she just needed to explain.
Now, she could only wait, feeling awkward and uncomfortable, for McGonagall's reaction.
"Very well, Miss Granger," McGonagall finally said. "You are of age and certainly mature enough to make decisions of this sort for yourself. I will say that I hope, when all this is over, you will return to Hogwarts to finish your schooling and take your N.E.W.T's-although I rather believe you could take them now and still pass," she added, in an uncharacteristically generous compliment.
Hermione flushed and smiled, looking up. "Thank you, Professor. I appreciate your confidence."
McGonagall paused, studying Hermione and then glancing up momentarily at the sleeping portrait of Dumbledore, before seeming to make up her mind. "Miss Granger, will you tell me at least something of what you and Mr. Potter and Mr. Weasley will be doing? I understand if you do not feel comfortable explaining it all but some. I am sure you know, for instance, where Professor Dumbledore and Mr. Potter went that last evening. I feel, as your professor and as a member of the Order, leaderless as it might presently be, that I am entitled to know."
Hermione's smile slipped but she never hesitated. "I'm sorry, Professor, but I can't tell you what Harry wouldn't. I may not have promised Harry absolute secrecy on what we're doing in so many words but I know he meant it and I won't-I can't-betray him, not even to you. I'm sorry."
She stopped, her gaze lowering to the rug beneath her feet, feeling somehow disloyal to Professor McGonagall for refusing what was, really, quite a reasonable request but at the same time, never doubting that her loyalty to Harry and his trust in her, had to come first. She couldn't have said anything different, didn't regret her refusal. Harry trusted her; she wouldn't betray his trust.
The silence in the office stretched until finally, she had to look up to see McGonagall's expression and was surprised to see something rather like a smile softening her former professor's usually strict expression.
"I suppose I should have known better than to ask such a thing of you, Miss Granger. And I admire your loyalty to Mr. Potter." She paused and then added, more softly, "I hope Mr. Potter realizes how fortunate he is to have you for a friend."
Hermione met Professor McGonagall's gaze seriously. "He would do the same for me," she said quietly. It was why Harry inspired friendship and loyalty in others, because they always knew that he'd do the same for them.
"Thank you for understanding," Hermione said. "This is what I need to do."
McGonagall nodded, slowly, thoughtfully. "I know. Good luck, Miss Granger."
Hermione managed a smile as she left the office, feeling as if she'd officially closed one chapter of her life now.
But there was no uncertainty in her heart or in her step as she headed towards Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. This was what she needed to do…