Official Fine Print: Nope. Not mine. The brainchildren of the mighty pen of JK Rowling. Just playing with them. Honest.
Here With Me
Chapter 18
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The return of the newly agreeable triumvirate of Gryffindors to the Great Hall for their mid-day meal after morning classes was not met with universal delight. While their housemates were reasonably appeased with a muttered apology and a quick check of the hourglass to determine that no further house points were lost, several other pairs of eyes registered emotions strong enough to draw Harry's attention from his soup.
And having missed breakfast to have it out with Ron, Harry would really have rather just gone on happily wolfing down his first meal of the day.
Professor McGonagall was the first he caught on to, probably because the hair on the back of his neck prickled with the electricity of her gaze. She appeared assessing rather than outright disapproving; Harry reckoned he was in some sort of trouble about Hermione with her, then, rather than the fight with Ron. Down the Gryffindor table he noticed Ginny Weasley was watching them as well. Word traveled fast within the houses and she knew him well enough to have expected that Harry would have told Ron when she didn't. A quick flick of his eyes across the room revealed her Slytherin cohort to be clearly unhappy about something himself and taking it out on Pansy Parkinson, who wasn't having any of it. If Malfoy didn't watch out he'd be wearing his lunch in another minute…
Or less. Except that Pansy Parkinson would never stoop to dirtying her hands with food.
"That's it. THAT IS IT. I've had it with you Draco Malfoy. Enough of your lies and excuses. You'd think you'd taken the dark mark on your dick from the way you've been whinging around. Or did your little pet Weasel forget about her teeth? We're through. For good this time."
"MISS PARKINSON!" Snape howled from the teacher's table. Harry had long ago noticed Snapes' face got paler the more furious he was, quite unlike your average human being who required blood to suffuse the area doing the work. (Vernon Dursley being a prime example and the opposite end of the spectrum, of course.) Harry didn't like to think about where else all that blood might be going, because it was him Snape was usually yelling at and the idea totally grossed him out.
"WHAT?" Parkinson howled back. Even her fellow Slytherins recoiled. Pansy usually played the perfect feminine counterpart to Malfoy; cool, sneering, starting it all but giving nothing away. She was obviously past some point of inner reserve.
"Go Pansy!" Seamus cheered softly across from him. "This ought to cost them a lot more than the eighty he docked us!"
"Sad when Pansy Parkinson makes us look good," Harry agreed just as softly, enjoying the chance to watch just for once, well out of the front lines.
Of course Harry was operating on something of a sleep deficit and his brain had taken rather a good shaking that morning, too.
"You take that back you Slytherin slut or I swear I'll…" Ron was climbing over Harry and across the table the better to launch himself at the Slytherins.
"Sit down you useless git. I can handle this myself!" Ginny snarled at him, nearly knocking Pavarti Patil off the bench in her attempt to extricate herself from her seat and beat Ron to his goal.
Harry made a grab for Ron and pulled him back onto the bench, motioning frantically to Dean to hang on to his other arm. "Silencio!" he cast quickly, utterly forgetting in his moment of panic that he ought to need a wand to do so. Dean and Ron's eyes both went round at the same moment as Ron's mouth flapped wordlessly. Harry missed their exchanged looks as he suddenly realized none of the Gryffindor girls were doing the same for Ginny.
"Gin…" he started, rising from his own place, and felt Hermione's hand clench rather painfully just above his knee.
"Sit, Harry."
Harry sat, but felt anger start to flare through him at her tone. 'I may love you, but I'm not your bloody lap dog!' flashed through his mind resentfully. And obviously right on to hers. He felt it go, like a ball slipping through his fingers he had no hope of retrieving before it hit a window.
He saw her eyes widen and then just as quickly narrow.
'Oh, shite.' he thought desperately. 'I've really got to get a handle on this stuff.'
Thankfully Ginny had at exactly that moment managed to hurl herself past the whole of the Ravenclaw table and reach the Slytherins.
"You promised!"
There was a moment's silence as the entire Slytherin table considered her like an exotic bird from a foreign land where it somehow wasn't clear that Slytherins never kept their promises, even to each other.
"Duh," laughed Millicent Bulstrode, who suddenly found herself wearing her soup bowl.
Draco had sat quite still through all of this as far as Harry could tell, his eyes shifting from Pansy to Ginny, calculating. He seemed to reach a decision just as Ginny reached his end of the table.
Unfortunately, the teachers had obviously recovered from their moment of shock and managed at last to intervene. Snape had reached the Slytherin table at exactly the same moment McGonagall got to Ginny.
"Miss Parkinson, my office. This INSTANT!"
"Miss Weasley, likewise." McGonagall said firmly, although her grip on Ginny's shoulders was gentle and her arm curved around her as she turned her toward the door. "I would also like Mr. Weasley as well, please. And perhaps Mr. Potter and Miss Granger while I'm at it."
Harry wondered what Draco had been about to say.
"Come on, Rover," Hermione whispered in his ear before rising and following McGonagall and Ginny. Thankfully she didn't sound all that angry. Yet. Harry kept Ron in front of him so he'd have no chance to double back for Malfoy. As soon as the door to the Hall closed behind them he removed the hasty silencio that had kept Ron wordless through most of the action.
"What the hell was that, Harry?"
"My guess is Parkinson's had enough of Draco. I'm no fan of hers either, but who could really blame her? On the plus side, it's seemed to take some of the shine off him for Ginny, hasn't it?"
"No, Harry. I mean, yes, I hope so for Gin's sake, but I was talking about the silencio. Right strong little spell there. I'm sort of an expert on those with five older brothers, you know."
"Sorry. If someone was going to lose Gryffindor more points I thought it ought not to be one of us for change."
They had almost reached McGonagall's office and Ron grabbed hold of Harry's arm to slow his progress.
"You forgot your wand, Harry."
Harry stared at Ron for a moment and ran back over their altercation that morning. Nope, no blows to the head for Ron. Hadn't hit him once. "Unh, Ron?" he produced it from his pocket and held it up.
"The silencio, Harry. You, unh, "forgot" to use your wand. Thought you should know. How long have you been doing that, then?"
McGonagall's head poked back through the door to her office. "Anytime now would be fine, gentlemen."
They sat in a row before her. She had conjured stools rather than chairs. Harry figured they were in for it.
"Miss Weasley? Would you care to begin?"
"That was a very rude thing Pansy was suggesting. And not very nice to have involved a fifth year in it." Hermione stated. Harry could barely believe his ears. Hermione loved McGonagall.
"Not at all nice. And shockingly creative for Parkinson, who probably isn't clever enough by half to have come up with it on her own." Professor McGonagall countered.
The terms of the battle were set, then. He'd happily leave them to it.
"I believe I asked Miss Weasley for her thoughts on the matter, however."
Ginny's eyes overflowed. For the first time since the whole thing began Harry found he could feel more than disbelief and impatience for her. Sitting on a stool in her Head of House's office with Ron right there beside her she had finally had all her escapes cut off and the enormity of what she had been doing seemed to be sinking in. Ron was staring at her as if she needed a bath and Harry, who had accumulated rather a lot of experience with self loathing over the years, found himself wishing it would be that easy for Ginny to rid herself of those thoughts.
McGonagall handed her a handkerchief. Hermione supplied the next. Ron and Harry exchanged glances and felt uselessly through their pockets.
Finally resigned to the fact that Ginny wouldn't be telling anyone what she thought anytime soon, Professor McGonagall turned to the remaining three.
"Mr. Weasley, I quite understand and admire the impulse to defend your sister, so no house points will be deducted for your outburst. However, in an effort to remind you to curb your colorful and descriptive language you will be polishing the trophies tonight for as long as it takes to get a nice shine on each and every one."
Ron said, "Yes, Ma'am." He knew it could have been considerably worse.
"Perhaps you will take your sister to Madam Pomfrey now. Please give her this note. Ginny, you are excused from your classes this afternoon, and I've asked Madam Pomfrey to see that you have a nice undisturbed nap. We'll finish our discussion later."
Ginny continued to sob silently but nodded her head. She got up to follow Ron but after a step or two turned back and threw herself at Harry, who found himself once again in possession of an armful of exceedingly tearful girl. He managed not to fall off his stool. Just.
"I'm sorry, Harry," she choked out. "I never should have said those things to you. I don't know why I did."
"It's okay, Gin," he whispered, stroking her back gently and hoping that it was. That she would be. The hurt of being called a murderer if he took Voldemort's life seemed to have subsided greatly since the ties that bound him to Hermione had altered as well. It felt a different issue altogether; not just that she would miss him, or he her, if Voldemort proved the victor but that he would willingly, knowingly, use every power within him and then some to remain with her now, and always. He had no intention of seeking Voldemort out for himself, but if fate or his enemy's intentions brought them together Harry was pretty sure he knew at last how he felt about taking that final step.
Her arms convulsed wetly around his neck a final time and she fled. Harry heard Ron call, "Wait up, Gin!" and the door closed behind them.
Professor McGonagall sighed and conjured a steaming tea pot and three cups and saucers on her desk. She poured out and prepared a cup for Hermione and himself, two sugars in his, honey and lemon in Hermione's. She looked very much as if she were wishing for a rather different type of additive for her own.
"There have been far too many instances requiring a bracing cup of tea over the last five and half years with you two," she said at last. "I don't suppose either of you would care to share your thoughts with me?"
Harry thought sharing their thoughts about Ginny having a thing for Draco Malfoy was an infinitely superior idea to having to do the same about anything closer to home. He snuck a look at Hermione, who seemed to be deliberating.
"Which matter exactly, Professor McGonagall?"
No, no, no! You're giving her a choice!
"I went looking for you both last evening. Not for curfew, just to check and make sure all was well after Mr. Potter's earlier incident. When queried, the house elves told me that the dinner basket they had provided the three of you returned quite depleted. Mr. Weasley was accounted for in the sixth year dormitory, although Mr. Finnigan reported that he was in something of a mood and if I wanted a pleasant word with him he wished me luck. No one, however, could point me in the right direction to find the two of you."
Given the state of things in Gryffindor and the imminent fear of losing yet more enchanted rubies from the top of the hourglass Harry rather imagined she'd been pointed in all sorts of directions. For all it was designed to help modulate behavior the house point system tended to have its own negative impact as well.
"We were certainly back for curfew." Hermione mused, as if where exactly they had been before that had somehow slipped her mind.
"Indeed," said Professor McGonagall. "You were."
Harry's eyes shifted from the watchful countenance of his Head of House to the calm, self-possessed Hermione. Neither woman blinked.
If he hadn't felt that her tears were genuine he would have said Ginny knew what she was doing breaking down quickly and getting well away from this office.
"Sixth is something of a difficult year for most Hogwarts students," McGonagall said slowly. "Some of you have reached your maturity, some have not. Some are planning to go on to highly specialized training…"
"Some are worried if they'll live that long. Or if their best friends will. Or if there'll be a need for specialized training if their best friends don't." Hermione cut in quietly.
"Miss Granger, I am no Dolores Umbridge. I am in no way pretending that the danger facing Harry is neither great nor real…"
"Then why pretend anything at all? Why make us pretend?"
"Because fear of death is not a reason to throw standards to the wind! To do so would award those who seek to wield it as a weapon victors before the battle has even begun!" McGonagall told her heatedly.
"I think I can speak for Harry when I say neither of us is trying to do that. But Professor McGonagall, the one-set-of-rules-fits-all approach only works if everyone is also equally invested in the ultimate effort. That's not the case here. Some of us are trying to go on with our whole lives at stake while others are arguing technicalities and house loyalties or pretending if they just keep their heads down the ill wind will blow right by them and they'll still be able to get that ministry job at the end of it. It's not fair. It's also not fair that the majority of the professors here were more willing to let Harry lay alone and paralyzed with Voldemort inside his head than change one stupid rule that could at least give him a fighting chance. We're not asking for special dispensation to flaunt the rules, but I turned in my prefects' badge for a reason. I respect you greatly, Professor, more than you can know, but I won't be obeying any rule that tries to penalize Harry for trying to fight for his life and defend ours as well...."
Go Hermione...
"or any that try to stop me from loving him."
Except there. Maybe don't go there just yet. Because I don't think I can stand it if they separate us now, so maybe we should just… Harry thought for a moment. What? Run? Hide? What the hell could they do? Clearly Hermione had been down this road before him and already seen the view he was just glimpsing now. Fighting for it was all he saw, no matter where he looked.
"I wish she'd speak for me more often, she's so much better at it. But I feel the same way, Professor. Please, please don't make us choose," he said.
McGonagall's eyes appeared suspiciously bright, but even Harry's somewhat benumbed emotional barometer could read genuine affection and something that seemed painfully like sadness along with the anger, which had to at least mean the anger wasn't entirely aimed their way.
"I told Albus this would happen," she said after a moment. "He 'now, now Minerva''d me. Yet if you told me he'd sat the two of you down and told you just how to go about it I wouldn't be the least surprised."
Harry carefully set down the tea he'd been holding all this time. "No, Ma'am," he said, feeling a bit like Ron.
"I can not in any official manner tell you I condone what I suspect you have been doing. Nor can I give you any sort of dispensation if you are caught at it, although you can count on your Headmaster hearing my thoughts on the subject. I suppose I must at least applaud your judgment for finding somewhere else and not flaunting the clear bend in the rules that allows Hermione to stay with you as your dreamkeeper, Harry. But as one who has come to respect and care for you both a great deal, I must beg you to be careful of each other as well. You were both Muggle raised, so perhaps the best advice I can offer you is this: the physics and biology of what you are doing can be achieved by even the simplest of organisms. It is in the rest of it that the magic truly resides. Never forget that if you can. You are both excused."
"Thank you, Professor," they both said at once. Harry turned back as he held the door open for Hermione, but Professor McGonagall was looking out her window, staring in the direction Dumbledore had gone.
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"It would be extremely disrespectful of us to go and have ourselves a nice cold snog down by the lake about now, wouldn't it?" Harry wondered.
"I'm in a really disrespectful mood," Hermione countered. "Why not?"
"I'll get our cloaks and meet you at the top of the stairs, shall I?"
"Yes, please." Hermione handed him her book bag
She wandered down to the entry hall lost in thought. She wondered about Ginny, wondered if she'd asked for dreamless sleep or if her dreams were the only place Malfoy wouldn't cross her. She hoped Ron had been patient with her, thought again that Ron needed a girlfriend. She understood what Harry had meant about leaving it for Ron to work out, but there was still a part of Hermione that wanted to believe she could make a world of difference for Harry and that someone could do the same for Ron. Luna Lovegood had always had a bit of a thing for Ron last year… She annoyed Hermione in a mild way with her vague non sequitors but she also knew that Harry liked her. She'd have to be prepared to nudge Ron if the right opportunity came along.
When Harry found Hermione with their cloaks she was sitting on the top step of the stairway down to the entry hall staring intently at the rose window. The sun had passed over the front of the castle and the window was in shade now, its colors still brilliant but deeper, no longer glowing and projecting rainbow shadows on the wall. He settled her cloak around her shoulders and sat next to her.
"It's just not right that there's no pattern to this window, Harry. That was the whole point of building them that way, they were meant to tell stories. If there were pictures that bore no obvious relation to each other I'd believe we'd just got the wrong thing and we should keep looking. This window is like a riddle in itself, it just doesn't make sense anyone would fashion all that tedious stone work and then just fill it with random bits of glass. It must have taken ages just to design and carve the shapes, let alone piece the glass together."
"Two thoughts. You're thinking like a Muggle. Hogwarts is magical. It wouldn't take a wizard like Dumbledore too long to make something like that once he'd figured what he wanted it to look like and the properties of the stone he was using. Maybe it was just a copy of a Muggle one they'd seen and liked the effect of, not knowing or caring about what Muggles used them for. Circles are powerful shapes in and of themselves."
She grinned at him and he grinned back completely involuntarily, without even realizing he had.
"I can't give you house points, but you've just earned yourself twenty snog points for that brilliant answer, Mr. Potter. What's your second thought?"
"I think I may have forgotten it in my joy at the discovery of snog points. How exactly do those work?"
"I'm not sure yet. We'll just have to work it out as we go along. Twenty points ought to be enough for something good, shouldn't they?"
Harry agreed. Harry rather thought it was time they were going, actually.
"Maybe it's a code, or a pattern. It seems entirely random, but the juxtaposition of colors could be significant…" she mused.
"Maybe there was a Quidditch accident and a bludger bludgeoned it and no one knew how to put it back." Harry guessed. "Maybe that's why it was covered over."
"But then we'd never figure it out!" Hermione seemed horrified by the very idea. Harry shrugged. "I have a feeling about this, Harry. We're meant to figure it out."
"Since when does Hermione "divination is such a woolly subject" Granger have feelings about things?" Harry teased, hauling her to her feet in an effort to get her moving toward the lake. Classes were due to change in ten minutes and he wanted to be well clear of the castle so no one got the inspired idea to join them. Hermione was done for the day but he had to be back for remedial DADA in an hours' time. He was rather hoping Dumbledore had remembered about Tonks before he left. The idea of Snape post-Pansy was terribly unappealing.
"Since my heart overruled my head and I fell for you." Hermione told him, and started down the stairs.
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Snog points turned out to be a bit of genius on Hermione's part. They decided between them they could be redeemed for the exact number of the point earner's favorite things, but could be broken down into units no smaller than five. ("It'd be too hard to keep track of twenty different places and ways to kiss you," Hermione decided. "Five of the same type in four different places is much easier.") They could also be saved and the total accumulated for other, more involved things. Particularly good performance fulfilling them could earn points as well. Just trying to agree on the amount required for various activities was making Hermione feel like a hundred points right then and there. They also agreed on the importance of inspiration and not keeping count on each other too closely. Hermione had actually made that suggestion when Harry deviated from her proscribed path in a particularly enjoyable manner. He'd never been that good with rules, anyway.
The sun had warmed the flat rock they had chosen before it had moved on, so that it was at least not cold to the touch. Hermione had settled into Harry's lap, and with his cloak encircling them both as well as her own beneath it she was comfortably warm. Her fingers traced numbers and added point totals against his chest as they constructed their own private game and Harry was having a progressively harder time remembering what things were worth. And that wasn't the only thing getting progressively harder, either.
"Can I use my points to get to do things to you if I want?" she asked.
He just loved the way her mind worked.
"I sup…pose that would be hmmmokay by me," was the best he could manage before her hands had finished work on his zipper. When they found what they were looking for he had to lean back against the outcropping of rock behind them, jutting into his shoulder blades.
"D'you know what I thought when I first touched you here?" Hermione asked softly leaning forward and resting her cheek against his chest.
Harry sincerely hoped this wasn't a trick question. "What?"
"I thought you were lovely. And then I thought I shouldn't tell you because it didn't sound very, I don't know, manly I suppose. But you are, it's just the same this time. Friendly and warm and…"
Harry kissed her; all the description was making her overly enthusiastic and he needed her to slow down just a bit. By the time he'd regained some control and letting her talk seemed safe again, she appeared to have lost the inclination. And possibly the mental capacity. Harry noticed an almost mesmerizing connection between the movement of his tongue in her mouth and her hand on him. He played with it; first slower, then deeper, then faster… Just when he knew he was lost she pulled back from him, watching, eyes intent. It was too late to feel self conscious. Harry had only ever been to the ocean once as a child, brought grudgingly on a trip meant for Dudley. He'd played alone at the water's edge, thrilling to the power of the waves over his small frame and learning to read their rhythm. The stronger the pull toward the ocean, the greater the force of the next wave. He struggled to gasp out her name at the crest of it.
Hermione was still watching him when he opened his eyes again. Her gaze was somehow less predatory and more possessive in its gleam; Harry realized he'd seen that look before. She was learning him.
"Er..thank you," he managed a little shakily, uncertain of the etiquette involved.
She relaxed and snuggled closer against him; Harry fought a wince. The rock behind his shoulder felt like it was about to come right through.
Hermione fumbled for her wand and cast a cushioning charm. "You use the same one on your broom, silly."
Comfort flooded Harry's already satiated mind. Hermione's head nestled back into the crook of his shoulder again. "What would you give that?" she asked curiously.
It took him a moment to figure what she was asking. "Oh! Oh…like mmmm one million, eight hundred and twenty-five thousand points."
She laughed, pleased. "That's very nice, but suspiciously specific for someone in your present frame of mind."
"One hundred points a day for three hundred and sixty-five days a year for the next fifty years," he explained. "Don't look too closely at the math, just go with the idea, okay?"
She smiled his very favorite smile. "Okay. I'd like to cash some in. What did we say this was worth?" she asked, taking his hand and guiding it beneath her school skirt.
"No idea, but it'll be free if you'll just invent some knickerless wool tights for winter. You'd make your fortune marketing them round the castle, I'm sure."
And he set about helping her find the waves for herself.
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