Unofficial Portkey Archive

It was a close thing, but here's the final chapter. Time to turn J.K.'s world upside down. Levicorpus!

The atmosphere in the castle was as grim as Harry had ever seen. It surpassed even the last days of his fourth year, when everyone was mourning the death of Cedric Diggory. Students were rushing up to the owlry to tell their parents the sad news. Some had confided that they were asking to be withdrawn as soon as someone could come for them. If many more took that road, there would soon be more than enough chairs in the common room to accommodate everyone without the usual pushing and arguing.

Having breakfasted in silence, Harry and Hermione left the dining hall and mounted the grand staircase leading up toward Gryffindor Tower. Once inside the common room, they parted after a brief hug and ascended the stairs leading to their separate dormitories. Hermione had asked for some time alone to sort things out, which Harry granted without question. His own brain was still buzzing like a swarm of caged pixies, and he was grateful for the opportunity to lie back on his four-poster and open his thoughts with a clearer mind than he'd enjoyed last night.

Strictly speaking, he was not alone. Neville Longbottom was sitting on his bed when Harry came in, writing a letter, and Harry could see two feet protruding from the hangings at the end of Dean Thomas' bed. But unlike the student body in general, Harry's long-time dorm mates had learned to give Harry his space when the need arose. When Harry entered, Neville merely nodded once in acknowledgment of his friend's arrival and turned back to his letter. Harry hoped that Neville was not asking his grandmother to remove him at once, as so many others had already done. But in the end, what did it matter? Harry returned Neville's nod and lay down on his bed, drawing the hangings around him.

Despite the frantic racing of his thoughts, the sleep that had eluded him all last night overwhelmed him now. He fell into a shallow, fitful slumber, in which he felt as if he were a piece of flotsam being tossed about on a stormy sea. He awoke suddenly in a cold sweat, the image of Dumbledore's face filling his mind. He saw again the old wizard's pleading eyes as be begged, "Severus...please..."

Harry threw his bed curtains aside and walked down into the common room. To his relief, it was deserted. But he instantly revised that sentiment. He wished Hermione were here. On an impulse, he opened the door leading to the girls' staircase and called up, "Hermione?"

There was no guarantee that his voice would reach Hermione's dormitory. He had no way of knowing if her door were open or closed. He realized that he didn't even know on which level her sixth-year dorm lay (his own was at the topmost level of the tower, and that only by random selection). But after a few moments, a familiar voice called back, "Harry?"

"Yeah," Harry said, feeling his heart beat faster at the mere sound of Hermione's voice speaking his name. "Are you coming down soon?"

"In a bit," Hermione said. "But you can come up if you like. There's no one else here with me."

"Have you forgotten what happened the last time I tried to visit your dorm?" Harry reminded her. On that day not so long ago when he and Ron had attempted to visit Hermione in her dorm, they hadn't taken three steps when the stairs flattened into a smooth ramp down which they slid back into the common room in a tumble of arms and legs.

"It's okay," Hermione said. "I've fixed it for you."

Shrugging, Harry set his right foot on the bottom step, then his left. Nothing happened. He mounted to the second step, the third, the fourth, each time expecting the steps to disappear and precipitate him back the way he had come.

But the stairs did not collapse as they had done before. Harry walked up until he saw a door marked SIXTH YEARS standing ajar. He pushed the door open and stepped inside.

The girls' dormitory was much as Harry expected it would be, decorated in pastels, with lace curtains on the windows and vanity tables beside every bed. Hermione was sitting at her vanity, her eyes moving back and forth between two sheets of parchment. There was writing on each, and as Harry stepped closer to see better, Hermione turned and smiled up at him.

"What's that?" Harry asked, nodding at the parchment.

"I've made up two lists," Hermione said. "One is a record of all the times I acted oddly, going back nearly two years. The other shows everything I was doing just before I did those unusual things. I'm trying to find a pattern, but so far I've come up empty. I know that these incidents can't be coincidental. There has to be something I've done, or that's happened near me, that's consistent with those occurrences. But I can't see anything at all that isn't completely harmless."

"Have you considered the Imperius Curse?" Harry asked. "That's how Madam Rosmerta was being controlled when she poisoned the mead that Ron drank by mistake."

"I know what it feels like to be under the Imperius," Hermione said. "We all experienced it in Defense Against the Dark Arts two years ago, remember? And there are accounts of people who were being controlled by Voldemort during his first reign. When he was destroyed, they said they sort of came out of trances. But I never experienced anything like that. I wasn't acting under anyone's orders. I was thinking my own thoughts, but those thoughts kept jumping back and forth so that I kept acting, well, backwards. And I've ruled out the Confundus," she said before Harry could suggest it. "I wasn't confused when I acted as I did. I was thinking clearly, only in the opposite way I should have done. And while it could have been an enchantment, I don't know...It was too subtle - too much a part of me to be something as superficial as a spell. No, this has all the earmarks of a potion. But I haven't figured out how I would have ingested it. It would have to be introduced on a continuing basis to have the effect it had."

"If it was a potion," Harry said harshly, "that falls right into Snape's territory."

"Yes," Hermione said, "but as we already discussed, I don't think he considered me such a threat to his plans that he'd go to such bother to remove me from his path."

"Could someone have put something in your food?" Harry suggested. "You remember when Umbridge tried to get me to drink the tea that she'd dosed with Veritaserum. It wasn't really, but she didn't know that, and neither did I, so I only pretended to drink, and when I got the chance I emptied the cup into a potted plant. Someone could have slipped something in your pumpkin juice every morning. I wouldn't rule out Malfoy. Maybe Snape wasn't fussed over you, but you've been a thorn in Malfoy's side almost as long as I have. And he learnt more than once that he couldn't match you in magic."

"I thought of that," Hermione said. "At least, the part about something being added to my food. But some of the out-of-character things I did were nowhere near mealtimes. And I suppose we can't rule out Malfoy, knowing what he was up to all year. If he saw me as a potential threat to his success, he could have done any number of things to put me off my game. We all learnt about wordless spells this year. Who's to say that Malfoy didn't put a hex on me when I wasn't looking? But that doesn't explain the things that happened in our fifth year, before Voldemort engaged Draco to - "

Hermione stifled a shiver before straightening her shoulders.

"I'm convinced it isn't an enchantment," she resumed. "It's something more concrete. Spells can wear off too quickly, and it becomes more difficult to reapply them continuously. But a foreign agent in my system would linger a while before my body flushed it out. And if it were introduced on a regular basis, however erratic, there might be cumulative effect, carrying on even if there were gaps in its application."

"Can you test yourself for foreign substances?" Harry asked.

"I can try," Hermione said. "It would help if I knew what I was looking for, and how it got into my system. I can't remember ingesting anything recently that might have influenced my actions yesterday."

"Maybe it has a timed effect," Harry said. Hermione's eyes opened wide.

"I think you may have something, Harry!" she said with controlled excitement. "If I was given a dose of something that didn't go to work for days, I wouldn't know anything had happened until it was too late. I wouldn't suspect anything because there'd be no obvious pattern to spot. I should probably start a new list," she remarked, nodding at the parchment lying before her. "This one seems to be a dead end."

Harry picked up the list Hermione had said was composed of the things she had done which were out of character. One item caught his eye.

"You wrote down the times we all played Quidditch at the Burrow last year?" he said. "What was so odd about that?"

Harry was surprised when Hermione's eyes glazed over for a second.

"That's the one that has me confused most of all," Hermione said. When Harry questioned her with his eyes, she asked him, "Before the four of us played those games of Quidditch, when's the last time you saw me on a broom?"

Harry thought for a moment. "It was when we were going after the Sorcerer's Stone," he said. "We were trying to catch the key that would open the door to the next chamber - the one with the giant chessboard, though we didn't know that at the time. There were brooms in the chamber so someone could have a go at catching the key. Once we spotted the one we wanted, we all mounted brooms and you and Ron herded it toward me so I could grab it."

"I was terrified every moment I was on that broom," Hermione said with a small shudder. "That was my first time in the air. Remember, when Madam Hooch gave us our introduction to broomsticks, mine never responded to me the way yours did. It was telling me that I was better off staying on the ground, and I totally agreed. I only showed up for the lesson because it was on the schedule, and I hadn't yet developed my, I guess you'd call it my rebellious streak. When we were in the key chamber, I was so caught up in the desperation of the moment, I never gave a thought to what I was doing. We needed the key, and the brooms were the only way to catch it, so I acted without thinking. I think I must have subconsciously blocked out the fear so I could do what needed doing. But when we were done, I promised myself I'd never fly on a broom again."

Harry well remembered that first flying lesson Hermione had just referenced. How could he ever forget it? If he hadn't jumped on his broom, against Madam Hooch's orders, and gone after Malfoy to retrieve the Remembrall he'd stolen from Neville, Professor McGonagall never would have recruited him to be Gryffindor's Seeker.

But if that memory was as sharp now as it ever was, so, too, was the scene Hermione had recounted wherein her broom had reacted in a radically different manner than his had done. When the first-year Gryffindors and Slytherins each stood before a broom and, with hands outstretched, commanded "Up!", Harry's broom had leapt straight into his hand like a faithful pet responding to its master's voice. By stark contrast, Hermione's broom had done nothing more than roll over on the ground. Brooms, it appeared, had a kind of sense about them, whereby they could detect who was meant to fly and who was better served remaining earthbound. Lacking a voice, Hermione's broom had nevertheless spoken clearly. Rather than rising up, it remained steadfast, as it to affirm that Hermione's feet, perhaps mirroring her innate sensibility, were best disposed to remain anchored on solid ground.

"When we were all flying about in the paddock last year," Harry said, "it was easy to see that you hadn't flown in a bit. But all the same, I could see you were giving it your best effort. There wasn't an ounce of fear in your eyes. I never gave it any thought then. I was too caught up in the match, I suppose."

Hermione's expression was intent, her eyes hard. There was no need for her to speak. Like the broom lying on the grass at Hogwarts, her silence spoke clearly.

"How could you have been affected the way you think you were if we hadn't gone back to Hogwarts yet?" Harry said. "You weren't threatening anyone at the Burrow. And even if you were, what could they gain by having you fly a broom in a Quidditch game against your nature?"

"That's what's got me all in knots," Hermione said. "What could the Burrow possibly have in common with Hogwarts that would explain it all? The only common denominator is us - you, me, Ron and Ginny. There's no way one of us would do something like that to the others. And for what purpose? It doesn't make any sense."

As if to underscore this statement, Hermione crumpled the parchment she'd been writing on and flung it across the room.

"You told me something once, when you were helping me with a homework assignment," Harry said. "It was from Sherlock Holmes. You said that after you've eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. If the four of us are the only common denominator, then that must be the answer. And since Ginny hasn't really been a part of our group all that much, until we all went to the Ministry together, that narrows it down to Ron and me. Somehow, one of us must be causing these changes in you."

"I don't want to believe that," Hermione said. "But I think I'd already come to that conclusion. I just - I wouldn't accept it until someone other than myself said it out loud."

"I have a lot of enemies," Harry said. "There isn't a day that goes by that I don't worry about someone close to me being hurt because of me. Cedric and I weren't friends in any sense, but he died because of me. And there isn't a single bad thing that's ever happened to you or Ron that didn't happen because of me. Do you think..." Harry swallowed hard. "Do you think Voldemort's making me do something to you? You said you were sure you weren't acting under the Imperius all those times. But what if I was being controlled? What if Voldemort - "

"No," Hermione said quickly. "You said Dumbledore told you that Voldemort had closed off his connection with you. He can't afford to have you see what he's planning, and the only way to do that was for him to completely sever his mind link with you. And we've already established that I'm not a big enough threat in Voldemort's eyes that he'd risk his plans being exposed by invading your mind again. There has to be another answer."

"I have to be the one," Harry said painfully. "It can't be Ron. If Voldemort isn't worried about you, I can't imagine he'd be all that fussed about Ron. And it goes without saying that Ron himself would never do anything to hurt you, especially the way he - "

Harry cut himself off, fearing he might have said more than was necessary. But Hermione seemed not to be listening. She was sitting with her hands over her eyes, oblivious to everything around her, including Harry. He immediately sensed that this was not a duplication of her miserable state in Hagrid's cabin. She was merely thinking, shutting out everything that might distract her from finding the answer that she so desperately needed to find. Harry thought it best to remain silent so as not to disturb Hermione's thoughts. He began to look around the dormitory, seeking something to occupy his own thoughts while Hermione was engaged. He saw Hermione's night table, and his eyes wandered over the items arranged neatly within the small square. An oil lamp sat squarely in the center, by which light Harry could imagine Hermione poring over textbooks and homework until the small hours of the night.

There was nothing on the table to interest Harry. Everything there was what Ron would call "girl stuff." Without knowing why, Harry was drawn to a small rectangular bottle of green glass, with a large stopper shaped like an egg. It was about 2/3 full of a colorless liquid (or maybe it was green; either way, the color of the bottle was not compromised by its contents). Turning it about, Harry saw that there was no label on the bottle, nothing to indicate what its contents might be.

"Hermione," Harry said absently, unmindful that he was breaking his vow not to disturb her meditation, "what's this?"

For a moment, neither moved. Hermione's hands dropped away and she turned slowly.

"Did you say something, Harry?"

"What's this bottle?" Harry asked, holding it out for Hermione to see. "There's no label on it. It isn't something dangerous, is it? Something someone slipped onto your table without your knowing? I mean, you said you thought someone had been dosing you with something. Only if there's no markings on it - "

"No," Hermione smiled, seeing the bottle in Harry's hand. "It's nothing like that. It's only..."

A change came over Hermione that was so sudden that Harry felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle. Very slowly, Hermione took the bottle from Harry and stared at it, her eyes growing round with something like astonishment, mixed with a touch of horror.

"No," she whispered. "I can't believe it. He'd never."

"Hermione?" Harry said, his fear rising. "What is it? What's in that bottle?"

"But this has to be the answer," Hermione said, as if she had not heard Harry's question. Her whole manner seemed to be turned inward. Nodding to herself, she said, "This is when it all began. How could I not have seen? It was right there under my nose all along...right under..."

A small laugh escaped Hermione's lips. Turning her head, she saw Harry staring at her uncomprehendingly, almost fearfully.

"Hermione!" Harry said forcefully. "What is it? What's in that bloody bottle?"

Composing herself, Hermione nodded at the bottle and said, "Don't you recognize it? You've seen it before. At Sirius' house. Go on, have a look. Better yet, take the stopper off and have a sniff."

Keeping one eye on Hermione, Harry removed the egg-shaped stopper and held it under his nose. At first his expression did not change. He inhaled again. Now that he thought on it, there was something familiar about that oddly pungent aroma. Where had he smelt it before?

And all at once, he remembered. His face assumed an aspect of disbelief, along with a measure of the horror he'd seen in Hermione's eyes.

"No!" he said. "He can't have done! I mean - he'd never!"

"You're right," Hermione said, her manner oddly composed now. "He wouldn't. Not ever."

"But if he didn't," Harry said, "then who - " Harry felt his lightning scar begin to pulse, in such manner as it had not done for more than a year. "I was right! It was Voldemort, or more likely one of his Death Eaters. They put a girl here at the school under the Imperius, like they did Madam Rosmerta - there were loads of Hogsmeade trips when they could have done - and she came in one day when you were in class - "

But Hermione shook her head.

"No, it's no one here at the school."

"Are you saying you know who did this?" Harry asked, for there was now a conviction in Hermione's voice, in her whole manner, that had not been present only a moment ago.

"I'm 99% certain," Hermione said. "But in deference to that one per cent, I'm going to give things a nudge with a spell I learnt in Advanced Charms this year."

Hermione drew her wand and waved it over the bottle. The green glass glowed pink for a few seconds before resuming its natural color.

"Harry," Hermione asked in a calm voice, "do you have your dad's cloak handy?"

"The Invisibility Cloak?" Harry said. "Yeah, it's in my trunk."

"Would you please bring it here?"

Knowing that further discussion was profitless, Harry descended the staircase and went up to his own dormitory. Neville was gone, probably to the owlry to post his letter. Dean's feet were still sticking out at the end of his bed, motionless. Harry opened his trunk and took out the Invisibility Cloak. Closing the trunk lid noiselessly so as not to awaken Dean, Harry went down and again mounted the stairs to Hermione's dormitory. As before, the steps did not collapse, but allowed him to complete his journey without incident. Hermione smiled when she saw the silvery cloak draped over Harry's arm.

"I don't know if we're allowed to leave the school grounds," Hermione said as she ran her hand over the watery fabric gently. "If I were Professor McGonagall, I wouldn't let anyone go, given what's just happened."

"But we're going," Harry said, divining Hermione's meaning. "Where?"

"First, to Hogsmeade," Hermione said. This was no more than Harry expected. But her next words surprised him. "Then to Diagon Alley."

"Is that wise?" Harry asked as Hermione continued to run her hand along the cloak idly. "You said it yourself, after what just happened - "

"When you went off to the Department of Mysteries a year ago," Hermione said, "you knew there was danger, but you went anyway, because it was something you had to do. This is something I have to do."

Harry nodded. "What do you think Professor McGonagall will do if she finds out?" he asked.

"No telling," Hermione said. "But there's an old saying I heard somewhere," she added, a razor-thin smile appearing on her face. "It's easier to ask forgiveness after than get permission before."

Hermione pocketed the green bottle, then opened the top right-hand drawer of her vanity. She took out a small pouch, and Harry did not have to ask its contents as he had done the bottle. Hermione tucked the pouch into another pocket and closed the drawer. Harry thought she was done, but she proceeded to open another drawer and reach inside probingly. When her hand emerged, Harry noted with curiosity the object held between her thumb and first finger.

"Spellotape? What do you need that for?"

But Hermione's only reply was a cryptic smile as she tucked the tape into the same pocket as the pouch and stood, closing the drawer smoothly as she rose. Nodding her readiness, Hermione bent her head slightly as Harry threw the cloak over the two of them. As they had both grown a bit since the last time they'd shared the cloak, they had to stand very close to avoid their feet showing. Harry didn't mind at all.

"There's one thing you still haven't told me," Harry said as they moved toward the door, Hermione preceding him so that Harry, who was taller, could look over the top of her head. "How did you manage to get the staircase to let me climb up here without collapsing under me?"

"Oh," Hermione said, and though Harry could not see her face, he knew from the way that her cheeks suddenly went round that she was smiling. "I cast a special Charm on the stairs. I nicked a lock of your hair when you weren't looking. The spell wouldn't have worked without it."

"What did the spell do?" Harry asked. Immediately he saw Hermione's cheeks go pink.

"There's one way to get around the no-boys enchantment," she said. "The only way the stairs will let a male walk up is - is if he's married to the girl at the top. According to Hogwarts, A History, that's happened a few times - seventh-year students are of age - even some sixth-years, as I demonstrated this year - and though the school doesn't encourage students to marry before they complete their training, there's no rule against it. That would be an abridgement of personal freedom, something the wizarding world embraces to the fullest degree."

"How does the spell work?" Harry asked.

"When a wizard couple gets married," Hermione explained, "the ceremony commonly includes a spell that harmonizes their bio-signatures. That way they can pass through the same wards and such, almost as if they were the same person - that's a bit of what marriage is about, you know, the 'two becoming one' - I imagine Bill and Fleur will do something like that during their ceremony. I've always thought..."

Hermione paused, and Harry almost thought he could feel the added heat from the blush that he sensed was spreading across her face.

"The Weasleys probably use a similar spell to allow the family to Apparate into and out of the Burrow," she resumed in a more casual voice. "The spell I cast won't last long, but while it does, the stairs will be fooled into thinking that you and I are, well..."

Harry was speechless as they walked down the stairs and into the common room. Two first-year girls were sitting on the hearth, staring expectantly into the empty grate. Harry supposed that they were waiting for a fire communication from a parent, much as he had sat waiting for the face of Sirius to appear during the Triwizard Tournament. Easing Hermione ahead of him, Harry reached out and pushed open the portrait. They stepped through the hole and let the painting of the Fat Lady swing closed.

"Is - is someone there?" the Fat Lady said in a slightly slurred voice. Turning his head, Harry saw several empty boxes scattered around the Fat Lady, boxes that had once held chocolate liqueurs. Confident that she was so tipsy that she would not remember this moment five minutes from now, Harry turned his face forward without another thought.

The corridors were nearly deserted. Harry and Hermione walked down the marble staircase, through the Entrance Hall and out through the great oak doors. With slow, rhythmic steps, they walked the path to Hogsmeade, arriving in the little wizarding village some twenty minutes later. There were scarcely more people on the streets than had been in the castle. Nevertheless, Harry and Hermione remained under the cloak, lest a teacher (most likely Hagrid) appear and order them - perhaps even escort them - back to school.

They entered the Three Broomsticks, finding it sparsely filled with witches and wizards deep in their cups. A quick surveillance assured them that none of the patrons was from Hogwarts. Removing the cloak in a shadowed corner, they walked up to the fireplace unchallenged, Harry tucking his cloak into his robes. Hermione took out her pouch and opened it, holding it out to Harry. He dipped inside and came out with a pinch of silvery powder. With a last look at the patrons (none of whom seemed to care about anything but how full their glasses were), Harry tossed the powder into the grate. Emerald flames erupted, and, linking arms, Harry and Hermione leapt into them with a shout of "Diagon Alley!"

They emerged from a fireplace in a shop they did not recognize. For a moment, Harry feared that they had come out in Knockturn Alley, as he had done four years ago. But there was nothing sinister about the proprietor, a bent old witch with a kindly face now marked with the unmistakable brand of fear. She regarded Harry and Hermione with trepidation, and they left quickly, lest the old woman faint dead away.

After a quick tidying up (courtesy of Hermione's Cleansing Spell), they gained their bearings and made their way unerringly to a shop that, if not exactly overflowing with customers, was yet not as empty as the other shops. While they waited for the last customer to be served, Harry saw Hermione fumbling with something inside her pocket. Perhaps the drawstring on her Floo pouch had come loose, he speculated, and she was tightening it to avoid the powder spilling out. It wouldn't do for them to be stranded in Diagon Alley with an empty pouch. Bad enough they had left the school without permission without adding unlicensed Apparation to their transgressions.

At last the shop was empty of all save the two proprietors standing behind the counter. Glancing casually up and down the narrow street, Harry and Hermione entered, closing the door behind them. Harry was only a little surprised when Hermione took the sign in the window reading OPEN and turned it around so that the other side, reading CLOSED, was facing the street. Taking no chances, she drew her wand and pointed it at the door handle, muttering, "Colloportis!" The lock clicked, and Hermione pocketed her wand.

The two wizards standing behind the counter had not yet spoken. They, like the rest of the inhabitants of Diagon Alley, showed signs of lost sleep. But they smiled as best they could when Harry and Hermione walked up to them.

"Harry," Fred Weasley said. "Hermione. What are you doing here? Don't tell me you two did a runner like George and I did last year?" His smile faded as he asked cautiously, "They didn't close the school, did they?"

"No," Harry said. "It's still open, for now. The Board of Governors might want to close it, but McGonagall is confident that she and the other teachers can convince them to keep it open."

"That's good," George said. "It wouldn't be the same without Hogwarts, would it? Had some of our best times there, didn't we, Fred?"

"So," Fred said, returning to his original question, "why are you here?"

Harry wasn't sure, but he thought he detected a note of panic underneath Fred's casual manner. Though Hermione had as yet said nothing to him about the purpose of their visit, Harry was beginning to formulate a theory, though the full story, he knew, was a long way from the telling. But if his suspicions held even a gram of truth -

"I've come to ask you something," Hermione said. She dipped her hand into her pocket and set the featureless green bottle on the counter. "Have you ever seen this before?"

"Dunno," Fred said, giving the bottle a passing glance. "How about you, George?"

George looked at the bottle and shrugged. "I've seen loads of bottles like it. There's a shop around the corner that sells them. They sell every sort of bottle you can think of. People who brew their own potions need something to keep them in, don't they?"

"Yes," Hermione agreed placidly. "They do. Do you know what's in this bottle?"

"Well, there's no label on it, is there?" Fred said. "Could be anything."

"It's perfume," Hermione said. "Do you know where I got it?"

"I will as soon as you tell me," Fred said with a jaunty smile.

"Ron gave it to me Christmas before last," Hermione said. "It was when we were staying at Grimmauld place, just after your dad had been attacked by Voldemort's snake. You remember, Harry saved your dad's life when he saw the attack in his mind and told Dumbledore."

"Never forget that night," Fred said, and his brother nodded heavily.

"It was very sweet of Ron to give me a present like this, wasn't it?" Hermione said. "I imagine he wanted me to know that he knew I was a girl, something I accused him of overlooking when he was trying to find a date for the Yule Ball."

"That's our Ronnikins," Fred grinned. "Romantic to a fault."

"I never thought to wonder," Hermione said thoughtfully, her eyes drifting over the bottle, "where Ron found the money to buy me this. What do you suppose?"

"Well," George said casually, "I expect he saved his pocket money, didn't he?"

"Well, now, that's the odd thing, isn't it?" Hermione said, her eyes still caressing the bottle. "When I was handing out the fake Galleons we used to signal each other when to come to the next D.A. meeting, Harry said our only worry was that we'd get them mixed in with real Galleons and spend them accidentally." Looking up now, she asked, "Do you know what Ron said to that?" When Fred and George responded with a bemused expression, Hermione returned her eyes to the bottle and replied, "He said there was no danger he'd do that, because he didn't have any real Galleons to confuse it with. That was before Christmas. If Ron hadn't any money then, how did he manage to buy me this splendid Christmas present?"

Fred and George looked at Hermione, then at each other.

"Dunno," Fred said, his smile fixed firmly in place. "Maybe he found some Skiving Snackboxes in our old dormitory and sold them. We left in a bit of a hurry, as you recall. Didn't have time to pack up, as it were. I expect Ronnikins was having a look through our trunks before having them sent home to Mum and Dad, and he saw an opportunity to make a bit of money. I mean, there was no sense letting them sit there going to waste after we did our runner, was there? Not exactly sporting of him, capitalizing on our hard work that way, but I suppose we can't fault him for his ingenuity. In fact, I reckon it does a bloke proud to think that his little brother's taken a leaf from his book, right, George?"

"Couldn't have put it better myself," George said.

"I suppose that's possible," Hermione said placidly. "But I think it's more likely that Ron confided his dilemma to someone he thought could help him. He told this person - or persons - that he wanted to buy me something that would show he appreciated my, shall we say, 'girlishness.' He thought a bottle of perfume would be just the thing, but unfortunately he hadn't the price of such a gift, and wouldn't it be grand if this someone - or someones - would see their way clear to help him out - say, brother helping brother?"

"An interesting notion," Fred said, and George nodded his agreement. "But little brother knows that we have a strict policy never to lend money to anyone."

"And that applies double to family members," George said.

"Yes," Hermione agreed. "If I learnt anything from your embryonic business endeavors at Hogwarts two years ago, it's that there's no profit in giving something for nothing."

"Well said, Hermione," Fred smiled, and George nodded.

"But I also recall," Hermione went on, "that you never missed a chance to test some new creation on an unsuspecting student so you could monitor the results with an eye toward future sales. Before I put a stop to it, you plied dozens of unwary students with Fainting Fancies, Nosebleed Nougats, Puking Pastilles - and who can forget the Ton-Tongue Toffee you maneuvered Dudley Dursley into eating?"

"One of our finest moments, that was," George glowed reminiscently.

"I only wish we'd hung around long enough to see it for ourselves," Fred said. "All we ever had was Dad's description, and Harry's, of course. Blimey, if we could have got just one photo to hang on this wall..."

"But that was only the beginning for Weasleys' Wizarding Wheezes, wasn't it?" Hermione said. "Who'd have dreamed then you'd have a marvelous shop like this one less than two years later?"

"Hard work," Fred said with satisfaction, his eyes wandering around the shop.

"And, of course, a fair bit of ingenuity," George said.

"But ingenuity doesn't bear fruit overnight," Hermione said. "You knew you weren't the only joke shop around, and the only way you were going to compete with established firms like Zonko's was through innovation. You'd make your mark not by selling the same old items as the others, but by creating new and better ones, conjured from your own twisted but admittedly brilliant minds."

"You're making us blush, Hermione," Fred grinned.

"But," Hermione continued, "before you can dazzle the wizarding world with these new wonders, first you have to develop them. You have to experiment with various combinations of spells and potions. And when you've come up with something that looks promising, the next step is to test it. I remember you did a lot of testing at Hogwarts, using First Years as your subjects."

"Until you waved your prefect badge under our noses and shut us down," George said with an unabashed grin.

"But we're not in school now, are we?" Fred said, his smug expression a mirror of his twin's.

"But you still have to test whatever you create before you're entitled to market it, don't you?" Hermione said. "I remember when we came to visit you a year ago, you were doing a smashing business with a new item. What was it, now? Oh, yes, I remember. It was a love potion."

Harry, standing mutely at Hermione's side, saw Fred's and George's smiles retreat slightly.

"I imagine you had to do a lot of testing before you got the formula just right and could get the Ministry's approval to sell it to the public," Hermione said, her eyes narrowing in concert with a hard smile that seemed to grow in direct proportion to the ones slowly vanishing from Fred's and George's faces. "Who was your test subject then? Anyone we know?"

Fred and George were trying desperately to smile, but Harry saw that it was becoming more and more difficult as the seconds dragged by.

"When Ron told you what he wanted," Hermione said, her smile becoming more like the grimace of a shark, "you saw the perfect chance to test your new concoction. You gave Ron this bottle, probably telling him that one of you had bought it as a Christmas present for some girl, but you'd gladly give it to Ron to give to me - brother helping brother, and all that. Ron had no idea that there was anything but perfume in here, did he? He'd never have given it to me if he thought you were using him to use me as a test subject for an experimental potion."

Fred's smile was now back in place, though Harry thought it was hanging by a thread. George was attempting to imitate his brother, but with limited success.

"There's only one thing wrong with that theory, luv," Fred said. "We already told we've never seen that bottle before, didn't we?"

"Are you absolutely sure?" Hermione asked. "You said yourself that it's a common bottle that the shop around the corner sells by the hundreds. But no two objects are precisely alike, are they? Maybe you've seen it without realizing it. Have a closer look. That way we can remove all doubt."

With a glance at his brother, Fred shrugged and picked up the bottle, making a show of peering at it closely.

"Nope," he said at last. "Sorry. How about you, George?"

Leaning close to the bottle in his brother's hand, George said a bit too quickly, "Looks like just another bottle to me."

"Right," Hermione said in a slightly defeated voice. "I'll have it back, then."

Harry was amazed that Hermione had abandoned her crusade so meekly. She'd been positively on fire at Hogwarts, convinced beyond doubt that she was dead-on. Harry watched as Fred made to hand the bottle back to Hermione.

But he couldn't. The thread holding his smile in place snapped. George eyed his brother with a bemused expression, his own fragile smile melting away.

"What's wrong, Fred?" George said. "Hand it back."

"I can't," Fred said. "It's stuck to my hand." His eyes swerved away from his brother as he said, "What are you playing at, Hermione? Did you put a delayed Sticking Charm on this ruddy thing?"

"No," Hermione said through a hard smile. "It's a Biomagnetic Charm, actually. Before leaving Hogwarts, I Charmed the bottle to be magnetically attracted to anyone who had touched it, no matter how long ago. I activated the spell just before I came in. I wouldn't have been able to release it from my own hand if not for this."

Hermione presented her hand palm-up, her fingers spread. Bending slightly, Harry saw that the tips of her fingers were wrapped in clear Spellotape. Now he knew what she was doing when her hand was fumbling inside her pocket outside the shop. She methodically pulled the tape from her fingers, crumpled it and tossed it unerringly into a waste bin sitting at the end of the counter, never taking her eyes off Fred and George. Harry couldn't help but wonder if, but for her fear of flying, she might have made a passable Chaser.

Her normally soft eyes now hard as flint, Hermione said very softly, "The only way that bottle could be sticking to your hand is if you'd touched it sometime in the past. But how could you have touched it when you just told me you'd never seen it before?"

"We, uh..." Fred stammered.

"We helped Ron wrap it," George said, nearly stumbling over the words as they spilled out. "That's right, I forgot, we helped him wrap it after he bought it. You know Ron, he's useless at that sort of thing."

"Where did he buy it?" Hermione said in a low, venomous voice. "The shops in Hogsmeade never extend credit to students. If he hadn't any money, how was he able to buy it?"

Harry watched as Fred and George began to deflate, much as Harry imagined his Aunt Marge diminishing after the Ministry undid his unintentional magic at the Dursleys four years ago.

"It's no good, Fred," George said. "I knew this day would come. Ron always said Hermione was the cleverest witch at Hogwarts. Leave it to us not to pay attention the one time in his life he got something right."

Hermione drew her wand and waved it over Fred's hand. The bottle began to glow softly, and Fred set in down on the counter with a look that Harry had only ever seen on Ron's face when Barty Crouch, in his guise of Mad-Eye Moody, had enlarged a spider to the size of a dinner plate just under Ron's nose.

"What's in that bottle?" Hermione asked. "I've a good notion, but I want to hear it from you."

"It's not a love potion," Fred said. "Not in the sense of the stuff you saw us selling here in the shop last year."

"It's based on something we were working on just before we left Hogwarts in such spectacular fashion," George said. "We could have made a fortune on it at exam time if we could've got it to work properly."

"When we were studying for our O.W.L.'s three years ago," Fred said, ignoring the sardonic look that suddenly appeared on Hermione's face, "we noticed that everyone seemed to have at least one subject they were good at, and one other they were bleedin' horrible at. So we reckoned we might do well to create something that would sort of turn their brains around for a couple of hours."

"The formula was designed to make the drinker's brain do a turnaround," George elaborated. "Observation had taught us that everyone's brain functions differently in regard to the things they do well and those they do poorly. Like that mate of yours, the one who turned the boggart into Snape wearing his gran's dress - the whole school was talking about that for weeks. Anyway, we heard that while he was bugger-all at Potions, he was a ruddy genius in Herbology. But one sip of our formula before exams, his brain would suddenly turn arse over and he'd get his best Potions grade ever. Of course, during that time, he wouldn't know a bubotuber from a mimbulus mimbletonia, so he had to be careful not to take the formula too close to his next exam. But quick as the dose wore off, he'd back in form as if nothing had happened. Fred and I reckoned that, between O.W.L.'s and N.E.W.T.'s, we'd make a fortune."

"But there was a problem," Fred took over the narrative from George, whom Hermione was now regarding with an almost palpable abhorrence. "We both tested it on ourselves, because you wouldn't let us carry on using students as test subjects as we had been. What with all the projects we had going then, we'd been slipping a bit in Transfiguration, so we took a dose before class, and it was like everything McGonagall had been saying all month suddenly made sense."

"Only while we were riding the crest of the wave in Transfiguration," George put in, "we realized that we'd forgotten nearly everything we'd learned that term in Charms class, which was always our best subject. We expected that to happen, so we weren't fussed, since we knew we'd be back to normal once the dose wore off. Except - "

"Except it didn't wear off when we calculated it should have done," Fred resumed. "It should have gone through our systems in no more than two hours, which would have carried us through a double class if need be. Only it took nearly two days before the effects wore off completely. Good job we had McGonagall's class on Friday. If it had taken any longer, we'd have looked a right pair of twits in Flitwick's class on Monday, wouldn't we?"

Hermione's eyes narrowed as if to imply that they had always been a pair of twits in her judgment, but rather than give voice to this observation, she merely asked, "When did Ron enter the equation?"

"Well," George said, "when the formula didn't work out the way we reckoned, we just put it aside and redirected our energies toward other, more profitable goals. I mean, the Skiving Snackboxes were doing smashingly, and we had to keep turning them out. Didn't want to disappoint our clientele, did we? We'd completely forgotten about it when Ron started going on at Sirius' house about wanting to buy you something for Christmas that would show that he appreciated your feminine qualities, as it were. It was like a light went on in our heads. We - "

George looked at his brother, who turned to Harry and Hermione with a deeply haunted look in his eyes.

"Like George said, observation is one of our strongest assets. We can look at people and judge what their wants are so we can hopefully fulfill those wants to our profit. We'd been watching the two of you in relation to Ron, and we both saw clear signs that Ron was developing a fancy for Hermione. But it was just as clear," and he looked straight at Hermione, "that you were beginning to fancy Harry. As for you, mate," and his eyes shifted to Harry, "you were a ruddy mystery. It was no surprise when you took a fancy to Cho. We'd played against her before, remember. She was always a smashing bird, and anyone who didn't see it was either blind or stupid. But through it all, we kept seeing little things that made us think you'd eventually turn to Hermione. I mean, blimey, we heard what Dad said during the Quidditch World Cup about not going for looks alone. What in the bleeding hell did you think he was talking about? After that, we thought sure you'd ask Hermione to the Yule Ball, especially after we heard that Cho was going with Diggory."

"But when you didn't," George took up where Fred left off, "it seemed to us that all bets were off. Ron is our brother, and just because we take the mickey out of him every chance we get, that doesn't mean we're not spot-on for him when the potion starts to boil over. It seemed like a simple equation, really. Our brother fancies a bird who also fancies a bit of him, but there's this other bloke she fancies more, only - "

"Only this other bloke hasn't given her the slightest sign that he fancies her," Fred said, his eyes fixing pointedly on Harry.

"So," George said, "all things considered, we thought it was time to give things a push in Ron's direction."

Fred regarded Hermione with an uncommon earnestness as he said, "It had nothing to do with making a profit. It was all about Ron. When he came to us with his problem, we didn't have to talk it over, George and I. We just looked at each other and we knew what we had to do."

"We'd never have considered it if we didn't know you did fancy Ron just a bit," George said. "I know you and he had some terrible rows, but it was obvious that all you ever wanted was what was best for Ron. And the more we looked at it, the more it seemed to us that the best thing for Ron was you. And if you didn't see it, it was up to Fred and me to, well, sort of help things along."

"When we looked at the whole picture," Fred said, "it seemed that Harry - sorry, mate - that whether he knew it or not, Harry was standing in the way of you and Ron being together, where we reckoned you belonged. I mean, if Harry wasn't going to take his ruddy head out of his arse and see what a smashing bird you were..."

"One thing we spotted about you straight off," George said, "is that you make the best use of your time, and you can't bear to see it wasted. So why should you waste all those months, maybe years, waiting for a bloke who didn't fancy you, when there was someone else right in front of you who'd do anything to make you happy?"

"Well, not anything," Fred said with a crooked smile. "He never did make a bash out of his prefecture, did he? I reckon it's true that you can't make a silk purse out of a dragon's - "

"Anyway," George said, "when Ron came to us that day, we took one look at each other, and it's like we could read each other's mind."

"We do that a lot, actually," Fred said.

"We never really bin anything we create," George said. "If something doesn't work the way it should, we just set it aside and come back to it later. Time lends a fresh perspective to everything. Something that's useless for one thing might be dead-on for something else. So when Ron told us what he wanted, we realized that the time had come to blow the dust off our old formula."

"We reckoned that, by making a few changes in the basic chemistry," Fred said, "we might be able to turn it into something that would work on the emotion centers of the brain rather than the logic centers."

"And we found that the new formula worked just as well if it were absorbed into the skin rather than drunk," George said. "We had to thin it out a bit to do that, but it worked out better that way, actually. Being absorbed into the system gradually, it would become more a part of the subject's physiology."

"And," Fred said, "we realized that the change would seem more natural if it happened slowly rather than just exploding in the subject's face like a dung bomb."

"Ron had no idea what was in that bottle," George said unnecessarily. "When he told us what he wanted., we realized that we could add our formula to a bottle of real perfume without altering the basic properties. You're right about one thing, we had a bottle of perfume that was going to be a present for a bird down at the pub. We couldn't use the original bottle, it was too small. We calculated how much of both parts we had to mix, and in the end we took an empty bottle," his eyes fell onto the bottle sitting on the counter between himself and Hermione, "and mixed the two portions together. You probably spotted that the result was a bit, well, unusual."

Hermione's face twitched, and Harry suddenly remembered when she'd come down on Christmas morning to thank Harry for the book he'd given her, thereafter telling Ron in regard to his present, "That perfume is really unusual."

"To sum up, then," Fred said as he stared soberly at the innocent-looking bottle in front of him, "the formula still works pretty much the way it always did, by turning a weakness into a strength and vice-versa. In this case, it dampened your feelings for Harry while increasing the fancy you already had for Ron. That's all there is to it, really."

Fred fell silent, and George, having nothing to add, remained mute as the statue of the one-eyed witch at Hogwarts whose humped back concealed the secret passage leading to the cellar under Honeydukes Sweet Shop. All eyes now rested on the bottle on the counter. Hermione picked it up and stared at it intently.

"When I was going over the list of all the things I've done that I didn't understand," Hermione said, her eyes fixed unblinkingly on the bottle in her hand, "I realized that everything started at Christmas. Before then, everything was going along more or less normally. You're right when you described it as unusual. That's exactly what I told Ron when he gave it to me. It was like nothing I'd ever smelt before. To be honest, I didn't really care for it, but I didn't want to hurt Ron's feelings by not using it." A curious smile tugged unexpectedly at the corners of her mouth. "Whenever Ron and I had a row and I wanted to make it up to him without actually apologizing, I'd get this bottle out and splash a dab on my neck. That way, quick as he got a whiff, he'd know I wasn't as angry as I'd been and he could take the next step toward making peace, his pride salved by the fact that I'd made the first effort. It was an odd sort of dance, that," she smiled wanly, "but it managed to keep the peace between us when words never seemed to work.

"After a bit," she went on, "I began to use it any time I thought Ron needed some cheering up, like when he was nervous about trying out for Seeker. I figured it would boost his confidence to know that his gift was still appreciated after all that time."

Harry remembered the "helping hand" Hermione had given Ron last year by casting a Confundus Charm on Cormac McLaggen, who threatened to win the Seeker job from Ron in the preseason tryouts. With his mind Confunded, McLaggen had flown the wrong way on his final attempt, removing himself from the competition and virtually handing the Seeker's position to Ron. Harry had wondered then what had prompted Hermione to do something so unethical. He remembered, too, seeing that incident on the list in Hermione's dormitory less than an hour ago. That puzzling action, along with the others inscribed on Hermione's parchment, was a mystery no longer.

"I wore it at the party celebrating Gryffindor's Quidditch victory over Hufflepuff," she said, her throat tightening momentarily. This required no elaboration for Harry. He knew now why Hermione had reacted so strongly to Ron kissing Lavender in the common room. "And I wore it on his birthday," she said, "as a sort of extra present, you might say, to make him feel extra special on his special day."

Neither was this a surprise to Harry, though he'd not given the matter any thought until now. It was a confession that spoke volumes. He recalled Hermione's aspect in the hours following Ron's brush with death when he drank poisoned mead intended for Dumbledore. When she finally spoke after a distraught silence lasting hours, she had sounded very much like someone with a bad head cold. It was clear that she had been crying over Ron, her heart torn asunder at the thought of losing him. It was not unlike how she had cried over Harry following his first encounter with Voldemort at the end of their first year, which had nearly cost him his life.

Hermione lifted her eyes from the bottle and stared at Fred and George, who cringed slightly.

"I always put it away when I went home for the Summer holidays," she said. "I only wore it for Ron's sake, and as I said, I never really fancied it. Quick as I put it away, my mind would clear up and I'd start thinking normally again. That's what kept throwing me off when I was trying to find some common thread linking all the odd events that were adding up bit by bit. At first I thought it was only at Hogwarts that I'd acted out of character. But when I came to the Burrow last year, I splashed a bit of perfume on first thing, just so Ron would know I hadn't stopped using it. When I went up on that broom, that was the first odd thing I'd done someplace other than Hogwarts, and the first I'd done since leaving school. That's when I should have realized at once that there was something wrong."

"What do you mean?" Fred asked, exchanging a confused look with his brother.

"Ron wanted to have a Quidditch practice in the paddock," Hermione said. "Harry and me against Ginny and him. And without a moment's hesitation, I got on a broom and flew it like it was the most natural thing in the world. And not just the once, mind, but day after day, and never giving it the slightest thought." She shuddered slightly, as if a cold breeze had swept through the shop.

"What's unusual about that?" Fred said blankly.

"I'm afraid to fly," Hermione said simply. "Just the thought of my feet leaving the ground makes me shiver." Staring fixedly at the bottle again, she said, "I can see it all so plainly now. Every day I'd start out by dabbing on some of Ron's perfume. Ginny'd seen me do it the first time, and she reckoned it was a sweet gesture and I should keep on doing it. Looking back, I think she was doing a bit of matchmaking, but in the end I kept on, knowing how much it would please Ron. And every day we went out to the paddock to play Quidditch, and I got bolder and bolder, even if I couldn't fly worth a hippogriff's backside."

Harry expected another smile to appear on Hermione's face. Instead, her aspect became even darker.

"Do you understand what I'm saying?" she demanded softly, her gaze lancing Fred and George over the top of the bottle hovering before her face.

Fred and George both shook their heads.

"It means," Hermione said slowly, forming every word with utmost care, "that this concoction of yours - this bloody emotional pendulum you mixed up - does more than reverse love. It also reverses fear. I should have been afraid all those times, but I wasn't. And if that was the first time it happened, it wasn't the last."

Harry's heart skipped a beat as the full impact of Hermione's words hit him like a charging skrewt. If her fear of flying had been reversed into fearlessness, then it also held that, in situations where Hermione would normally be fearless, she would instead fall prey to doubts and indecision. But was there more to it? Fred and George had said that the original formula was designed to work on the part of the brain devoted to logic and reason, being modified only later to instead affect emotions. But by their own admission, the formula was still in the testing stage. What if it were affecting both reason and emotion? What if it had done just that during the attack on Hogwarts?

By Hermione's own account (Harry had not been present), she, along with Ron and Ginny, had done brilliantly against the Death Eaters when under the sway of the Felix Felicis. But when the potion wore off during Hermione's vigil outside Snape's office, the power in that innocuous-looking green bottle now cradled in her palm had quickly asserted its control over her. When she should have acted with razor-sharp decisiveness, she displayed, by her own admission, utter foolishness. When she should have been fearless -

A sudden thought flashed in Harry's brain, as if a window long closed had suddenly burst open to let in an illuminating light. Fear. What was it? Was it not different things to different people? Surely the fears that were Harry's constant companions were not the same ones that haunted his friends. What would Hermione's greatest fear be? To a mind as ordered and disciplined as Hermione's, surely there could be no greater demon than a fear of failure. Harry remembered Hermione bursting wild-eyed and screaming from the trunk containing the boggart in their third-year Defense Against the Dark Arts exam. When asked by Professor Lupin what had frightened her, she'd pointed to the trunk and gasped, "P - P - Professor McGonagall! Sh - she said I'd failed everything!" Hermione's greatest fear, more terrible, perhaps, than that of death itself, was failure. Down in the dungeons, when Hermione sought do draw upon the courage that had served her so often in the past, the chemicals permeating her brain flipped a switch and transmuted that courage into raw, naked fear.

But not ordinary fear. Nothing about Hermione was ordinary. In reversing her brain, the twins' potion had taken her calm decisiveness and replaced it with vacillation. The cleverness that had been her weapon against Dolores Umbridge a year earlier was become a blunt sword, its once keen edge dull and useless. Uncertain how to proceed, she had allowed herself to be duped by Snape, who then went off to keep his terrible rendezvous with Dumbledore. Was Hermione right when she said that her foolishness in allowing Snape to flee unchallenged had cost Dumbledore his life? And as he thought thus, another, more chilling question leapt like a ravening shadow through the newly-opened window in Harry's brain:

Would Hermione say anything of this to Fred and George?

She did not. Instead, she said, "You were spot-on when you said the effects of this formula are cumulative. If my actions are any measure, they seem to increase mathematically. Even used sporadically, it builds up in the system until the user starts to slip over the edge. There was a time last year when I was so jealous of Ron for kissing Lavender Brown, I was on the verge of becoming a raving lunatic. If Harry hadn't found me when he did..."

"That's the one thing we never reckoned on," Fred said. "We never imagined Ron would be such a berk. It was obvious he fancied you, and it was just as obvious that you had at least some fancy for him. Why in the bleedin' hell didn't he say something? I mean, blimey, couldn't he see what was right in front of him? He should have told you how he feels ages ago, the stupid prat."

"I dunno how he ever managed to get into Gryffindor," George said to his brother. "Maybe the Sorting Hat felt sorry for him. Maybe it reckoned he couldn't make it without the rest of his family in the same House to keep him from making an arse of himself. That sure seems right enough, given all the chances he had over the last two years to tell Hermione how he feels about her. If he'd just shown some bollocks and stepped forward - "

"I know you thought you were helping Ron." Hermione said in a controlled voice. "Maybe you even thought you were helping me in the bargain. But that's no excuse for what you did."

Fred and George hung their heads in shame, unable to look at Hermione. Finally, George raised his eyes to the bottle in her hand and said, "We'll throw this rubbish in the dustbin and never make it again. We promise."

"If you ever break that promise," Hermione said quietly, "I'll have you up before the Ministry so fast you'll - you'll think your knickers have been Charmed into portkeys. As for this..."

Hermione returned the bottle to the pocket whence it had come.

"Maybe you'd bin it as you said you would," Hermione said, tilting her head symbolically toward the dustbin into which she had tossed the discarded Spellotape. "But I prefer to remove the temptation."

When Fred and George nodded, Hermione turned without a word and walked to the door. She did not look back as she left the shop, closing the door with utmost care. Fred and George looked as if they'd expected her to slam it so hard that the glass shattered, as Ron had once done to a compartment door on the Hogwarts Express. Harry was surprised himself that she hadn't. He didn't know if he'd have managed that degree of self-control under similar circumstances. He likewise took no offense at being left behind as he had been. Hermione's self-control must have been so intense as to blind her to everything around her, even unto Harry himself. He could not but admire her, wishing he could subject his own inner fury to such control. It would have gone far toward helping him master Occlumency, as was Dumbledore's wish for him.

He was still staring at the door, oblivious to his surroundings, when a voice spoke from behind him, reminding him that he was not alone.

"I'm sorry, Harry," Fred said.

"Me, too," said George.

"I know," Harry said, wanting to smile reassuringly, but failing. "I suppose I'll see you later."

Harry left the joke shop. He found Hermione standing on the curb, staring out at the variety of magical folk walking up and down the cobbled street. He stood next to her, waiting for her to acknowledge his presence. He was afraid to speak, not wanting to interrupt the silence that seemed to enfold Hermione like a cloak. A scream was building inside him, one that would have shook the tiles from the roofs on either side of the street had he allowed it to escape. When Hermione's aspect did not alter, Harry stepped behind her and slowly slipped his arms around her waist. He feared she would stiffen in his embrace, perhaps even pull away. Instead she expelled a quiet breath that seemed to carry an anguish that a library full of words could not convey. Harry pulled her against him, and he felt some of the tenseness in her body relax.

"I'm sorry, Harry," she murmured into his robes. "I'm sorry."

"What are you talking about?" Harry said. "What do you have to be sorry for? It was all their doing - theirs and mine. You heard them. If I hadn't been so blind and stupid - "

"I was just as stupid," Hermione said, tilting her head so she could look into Harry's eyes. "If Fred and George indicted you just now, they indicted me as well." Harry looked at Hermione quizzically, and she smiled even as her eyes began to fill with tears. "They were right when the said that a part of me fancied Ron. But it was more than that. When I believed that my last chance of being with you had gone, I turned my fancy toward Ron."

"There's nothing wrong with that," Harry said. "The way I see it, you did a better job choosing Ron than I did acting the berk over Cho."

"But that's just it!" Hermione said painfully. "I didn't choose Ron! I just transferred my feelings for you onto him! That's why I was always on his wick to make himself over into someone better. I was trying to turn Ron into another you! And that was a horrible thing to do. Rita Skeeter was right about me! I'm contemptible! I don't know why anyone would ever fancy me. I don't wonder that you never looked at me that way. Viktor never would have done if he'd known. I don't deserve - "

Harry wrapped Hermione tightly in his arms. He felt her trembling in the grip of her inner misery, and it pained him that she should be in such agony - agony that he could have prevented if only he hadn't been so thick. He wanted to say something that would take her pain away. If only he could think clearly! This, he realized, was what real love was. It was hurting along with the one you loved, but more than that, it was wanting desperately to take all of that pain onto yourself.

"I don't believe for a moment that you never had real feelings for Ron," Harry said at last. "All you ever did was let those feelings take their natural course. Don't you remember the patronus you conjured in the D.A. class? That was before Ron gave you the perfume with the formula in it. You were still thinking clearly then. You couldn't have conjured the patronus you did if you hadn't felt something for Ron."

One of Hermione's hands moved to cover Harry's, and he loosed his hold around her middle to sandwich her hand between both of his.

"That was the night I gave up on us," Hermione said quietly. "I saw that you only had eyes for Cho. I knew there was nothing for it. It must have been something in my brain that flipped a switch, because all at once there was that otter-patronus scampering around the Room of Requirement. But even then, there was still a bit of hope inside me. Until..."

"Until you learnt that I'd kissed Cho," Harry finished, feeling a dagger plunge into his heart.

"When I went to the meeting that night," Hermione said in a voice soft as a breath of wind, "I still had a tiny bit of hope left that I could...that I could make you see me as more than just your best friend who only 'happened' to be a girl. I knew there'd be Christmas decorations, and that meant mistletoe. It was stupid, really. I thought if I could somehow maneuver us into the right spot, it would give you an excuse to - to kiss me. I was going to pour everything I had into that kiss. It would have shown you exactly how I felt without my actually coming out and saying it. After that, what happened next would fall to you. But I never got the chance. So I just tucked those feelings away where no one could see them and carried on. After all, as someone once said, tomorrow was another day. But then, when I was back in the common room - "

Hermione's voice caught. Acting without thought, Harry threaded the fingers of his left hand through Hermione's, lacing them together as their palms pressed firmly against each other.

"When I learnt that you'd got Cho under the mistletoe, where I'd hoped you and I would be, it was as if - as if you'd taken something precious - something that should have been mine - and given it to someone else. So when I finished my letter to Viktor that night, I told him what had happened. When he wrote back, he told me that it was time for me to move on, to find someone who appreciated what I had to offer, the way he'd done. I didn't have to look very far, did I? That someone was right there in the common room with us. But even then..."

The ragged sigh that escaped Hermione's lips resounded in Harry's heart like a boom of thunder. He wanted to cry, but he wouldn't permit himself the luxury. His strength was the only thing holding Hermione together. After all the times she had given him of her strength when he needed it, he could not do less for her now. As he held Hermione against him, he felt her relax all at once, as if some spell had suddenly removed her bones as Lockhart had once removed the bones in Harry's right arm. When she spoke, in was in a quiet, weary voice that was scarce an octave removed from a whisper.

"I feel tired," she said. "I feel like I could sleep for a week."

Harry knew exactly how Hermione felt. He said nothing, but walked them back toward the Leaky Cauldron, his arm steering her as it remained around her waist. The rhythm of their footsteps seemed to act as a tonic for Hermione. Harry felt something of her old motive force return, her steps becoming more driven by her own will than merely following Harry's impetus. They were just coming within sight of the wooden sign hanging above the pub when Harry broke the silence with a question he must ask at once, before his own resolution faltered.

"Hermione," he said, bending close so that his words fell on her ears alone, "there's something I thought I understood - something that happened a bit ago - something we talked about before - but now, after everything that was just said, I don't know what it means."

Turning her head so she could see Harry's face, Hermione said, "What's that, Harry?"

"When you kissed me in the classroom that time," he said, " - you know, when the birds were flying around your head - I know it was just to get back at Ron. But when we kissed at the victory party after Gryffindor won the Quidditch Cup, it felt like you really meant it."

"I did," Hermione said.

"But why did the perfume stop working all at once?" Harry puzzled. "I mean, you said you'd been using it all year, even using extra doses to draw Ron's attention from Lavender - that explains why you reacted the way you did in the classroom. And since you were cheering Ron on in the championship match, I expect you must have dabbed some on before leaving the castle, as a gesture of support. Am I right?"

Hermione nodded wordlessly.

"And I know you carried on using it after we got together," Harry said. "I mean, we both saw how shocked Ron was when we kissed in front of everyone. You probably kept using it to show Ron that, after everything that had happened, he was still important to you, right?"

Again Hermione replied with a short nod.

"You told Fred and George that you reckoned they'd mucked up the formula so that it worked on more than the love centers, but on the fear centers as well. That's why you got all turned around when you were down in the dungeons with Snape. You didn't say that to Fred and George, but I know that's what you'd concluded. That's the final proof that the formula was still working. But if that's so, then..."

Harry hesitated, and Hermione, remaining silent, gently prompted him with her eyes.

"If the perfume was still working the way it had all year," Harry said, "affecting your mind so that you let Snape go instead of stopping him, then why didn't it turn your feelings back around toward Ron? How could it carry on working one way and not the other?"

"I've thought about that," Hermione said, and even through his puzzlement, Harry's spirits rose when he heard the crisp, clear voice of the Hermione he'd known so long, and saw again the blazing light of logic and reason in her deep brown eyes, of late obscured by the dark clouds of confusion and doubt. "And there's only one answer I can come up with that makes any sense.

"Most people aren't aware that what we feel as emotions are really only byproducts of chemicals in our brains, called endorphins. They're very powerful. They're why people do such crazy things when they're in love. Fred and George altered their formula so it would act on those chemicals in my brain and turn them around. It created an imbalance that was partly responsible for the extremes of emotion I felt toward Ron. But through it all, those weren't my real feelings coming out, just the product of the potion's magical influence.

"Remember what Professor Slughorn said about Amortentia? He said it doesn't create love, just the illusion of love. The twins' potion worked in the same way, though by different means. But in the end, it was still only smoke and mirrors. My real feelings were still there, just suppressed by the potion's influence. They were always just below the surface, waiting to reassert themselves."

"But why didn't those feelings get turned around again when you kept using the perfume?" Harry said bewilderedly.

"Because," Hermione smiled, "when push comes to shove, nothing artificial can stand up to what's real inside us. When I felt the love in your kiss there in the common room, it reached down inside me and triggered my own love for you, the love that had never really gone away...And the combination sent a surge through my brain that completely flushed out the potion's influence. The love I felt for you was so powerful that it completely cleared my brain of everything that wasn't part of me all along. And my love for you was always a part of me. The very best part. No potion could ever hold it in for long. When real love goes up against the artificial, it's no contest."

Harry realized all at once that Hermione had inadvertently answered two questions for him. He'd wondered for a long time why he hadn't been affected by Fleur Delacour's veela magic as Ron had been. The answer was now plain, and its truth buoyed Harry until he knew what his Aunt Marge must have felt when she was bobbing off the ceiling on Privet Drive. The feelings inspired by veela magic were false ones, not unlike the ones created by Fred's and George's formula had been - and, indeed, like the Amortentia they had smelt in Professor Slughorn's classroom last year. The only reason that Harry would not have been affected by Fleur was because his brain was already flooded with the chemicals Hermione had just described, the ones created only by true love. For most of two years, Harry had imagined that he loved Cho Chang. But that had proven to be nothing more than a fancy based on physical attraction - smoke and mirrors, to use Hermione's term. If the genuine love inside Harry had not come from Cho, there was only one other place it could have come from. And Fred and George had confirmed it themselves. They'd seen the truth inside Harry all along, marveling that Harry himself had never seen it. But now he had.

"I've always loved you, Hermione," Harry said softly, almost disbelievingly, into Hermione's concealed ear. Pressing his lips against her hair, he repeated, "I've always loved you."

"I know," Hermione said. "I've always known."

"I should have seen sooner," Harry lamented. "So much could have been avoided if I'd - "

"The human heart doesn't come with a built-in clock," Hermione said. "No two people fall in love at the same moment. One is always first, and the other has to catch up. Your dad loved your mum before she loved him. The first one to love has to be patient and trust that the other will see the truth. That's why I never pressed you. I knew we could never be together unless we reached the same place on our own. No one can be pushed into loving someone. Not the twins' formula, nor Amortentia, nor all the magic in the world can do that. It either happens on its own or it doesn't happen at all."

"Thanks for being so patient with me," Harry said.

"I always knew you were worth the wait," Hermione smiled.

Harry set the bottle back in its place on Hermione's crowded table and turned around. Hermione was just putting away a tin that no doubt contained some ingredient she had just added to her cauldron. He walked over to her and put his arms around her waist.

"Answer something for me?" he said, pressing close. "You once said that the Sorting Hat considered putting you in Ravenclaw. What made it choose Gryffindor?"

"What made you think to ask that?" Hermione inquired.

"When I put the Hat on," Harry said, "it tried to put me in Slytherin. I might not have known much back then, but I knew I didn't want to be in the same stinking House as Malfoy, and I told the Hat so. So it put me in Gryffindor. But I think there was another reason that had nothing to do with Slytherin. I think..."

"What?" Hermione pressed gently.

"We know the Sorting Hat has its own brain," Harry said. "It looks inside people's heads and reads what's inside them. It told me I was destined for greatness - which I thought was a load of rubbish - and it said that Slytherin would - what were its words - help me on the way to greatness. But I wanted nothing to do with Slytherin, so it had to choose another House for me. But why Gryffindor? I mean, Gryffindors are supposed to be brave, and I sure didn't feel brave when I was sitting there on that stool with an old hat pulled down around my ears and everyone in the Great Hall looking me like I was some sort of, I dunno, circus freak. I ruddy well didn't feel clever enough to be put in Ravenclaw. The best place for me probably would have been Hufflepuff, where at least no one would expect that much from me. But the Hat put me in Gryffindor. Why? Because it was the House my parents were in? Maybe, but I don't think that's how the Hat works. It put Parvati and Padma Patil in different Houses, even though they're identical twins. And it put Sirius in Gryffindor when everyone in his whole family had only ever been in Slytherin. So I ask again, why did it put me in Gryffindor?"

Harry took Hermione's face in his hands and looked into her deep brown eyes.

"It was because of you."

"Because of me?" Hermione said in a very small voice.

"The Hat had already sorted you into Gryffindor," Harry said. "You remember the song it sang in our fourth year? It said something like, 'I'll have a look inside your head and tell where you belong.' Well, it looked inside my head and it knew exactly where I belonged. With you. It had already told me that I had some sort of greatness to fulfill, and when I wouldn't let it sort me into Slytherin, it put me together with the one person who could help me become the best wizard I could be. And more important, the best man. It put me with you."

Hermione's eyes were now glowing with an almost liquid softness. She placed her hand atop Harry's as he continued to caress her face.

"You remember I told you once that the Sorting Hat wanted to put me in Ravenclaw?" she said. "Do you know why it didn't? The moment I put the Hat on, I was thinking one thing over and over. I was thinking that I wanted to be in the same House as Harry Potter. And the more I thought about it, the more I reckoned that the only place the Boy Who Lived could ever go was Gryffindor. So when the Hat said I belonged in Ravenclaw, where I could 'realize my full potential,' I just kept thinking over and over, 'I want to be in the same House as Harry Potter.' And the next thing I knew, I heard the Hat shout out, 'GRYFFINDOR!'"

Harry wrapped Hermione in a gentle embrace. The only sound in the room was the bubbling of the potions, mingled with the soft hiss of the bluebell flames under the cauldrons.

"I wonder if this isn't the first time the Sorting Hat's done something like this," Harry mused.

"What do you mean?" Hermione asked.

"Maybe it does this all the time," Harry said. "Maybe - maybe it put my dad in Gryffindor because it had already sorted my mum there - I mean, from what I saw in Dumbledore's Pensieve, my dad was easily smart enough to be in Ravenclaw. And the way Lupin tells it, the pranks the Marauders used to pull had Slytherin stamped all over them. But in the end, he was sorted into Gryffindor, where my mum was."

"The Sorting Hat as matchmaker?" Hermione giggled, her face glowing brighter than the sunlight streaming through Ginny's window.

"Why not?" Harry smiled. "It's like I said, it promised that it would tell us where we belonged. Maybe it looked inside both our heads and knew that we belonged with each other."

"I love you," Hermione said softly, her eyes going misty.

Harry tightened his hold on Hermione. She snuggled against him, then quickly recoiled. Harry looked at her curiously.

"Something in your robes just poked me," she said, her cheeks going red when she realized how her words would have sounded to Mrs. Weasley had she chosen to enter the room at that moment.

Laughing, Harry released Hermione and pulled Neville's birthday card out of his pocket, sliding it out of its envelope while taking care not to let it fall open. He explained the card's enchantment to Hermione, who nodded.

"I need to send it off today, and I want all of us to sign it, Ginny included," Harry said. "We need to do it together so the spell on the card doesn't lose any of its magic being opened too often."

"Oh, I can fix that," Hermione said. She pulled out her wand and tapped the card. "You can open it now. I placed an Inhibitor Spell on it so the enchantment won't engage when it's opened. It'll wear off in a minute, but that's plenty of time for both of us to sign it. I can do the same again when we give it over for Ron and Ginny to sign."

They signed the card, and Harry tucked it back in its envelope and stood it upright between two of Hermione's potion bottles, admiring both the card and Hermione's spellwork.

"It's sweet of you to think of Neville this way," Hermione said. "One more thing to add to the list."

"What list?" Harry asked, his thoughts turning back to the list Hermione had compiled in her efforts to trace the origin of her erratic behavior. But her answer quickly swept away his apprehensions.

"The list of reasons why I love you. It's all in my head, but I can see every one as if it were ink on parchment, and it only grows longer every day."

They shared a gentle kiss, parting slowly.

"If we do much more of that," Hermione said, "I'll be lucky to remember what ingredient to add to which potion."

Knowing that he was being tactfully dismissed, Harry caught up Neville's card and turned toward the door. But just as he was about to grasp the handle, he cast a final glance over his shoulder at Hermione, and as he watched her tending her cauldron, something clicked in his head, something he should have thought to ask long ago.

"There's something I never thought to ask you," he said, standing beside Hermione and looking intently at the contents of her cauldron. "When we were in our first Advanced Potions class, we all got a whiff of the fumes from the Amortentia. I already told you what I was thinking of, but when you were going on about what it made you think about, you never finished. You said it made you think of new-mown grass and fresh parchment, but then you stopped yourself from going on. What was the other scent it made you think of that you never told?"

Looking slightly embarrassed, Hermione said haltingly, "Hippogriff feathers."

Harry looked incredulous, and Hermione blushed.

"It was from when we were riding on Buckbeak, you know, to rescue Sirius from Flitwick's office."

"But," Harry said with dawning realization, "you must have been terrified. I never gave it a thought then, but if you couldn't bear to fly on a broom..."

In fact, Harry now remembered with startling clarity how frightened Hermione had been while clinging to him atop Buckbeak.

"I was petrified," Hermione said. "But through it all, whenever I felt a fresh surge of fear go through me, I just clung more tightly to you, and I knew inside that everything would be alright. I think - "

"What?" Harry asked, noting the pinkness now spreading across Hermione's cheeks.

"I think that was the night I knew I loved you. That together, we could do anything."

Harry hugged Hermione, burying his face in her thick hair and inhaling her intoxicating scent. They parted at last, and Hermione, her cheeks still glowing, pushed him toward the door, telling him that if he didn't leave she would never get her potions finished. In the wink of an eye, he was standing in the corridor as the door clicked shut behind him.

Harry stood for a moment with Neville's card in his hand, then turned toward the stairs, his feet hardly seeming to touch the floorboards. He felt that he was surely the luckiest wizard in the world. So what if Lord Voldemort was even now plotting a hundred different ways to kill him, using Dark magic and fiendish tortures too hideous to describe? What was that next to all the good things in his life? He was surrounded by friends, all but adopted into a family whose members had embraced him as if he were one of their own, and who were preparing to fete him with his first-ever birthday party. And not just any birthday. His seventeenth!

And if that weren't enough, he was in love with - and more, loved by - the most incredible witch in the world.

Looking down at the envelope in his hand, he wondered absently what Professor McGonagall would say if he owled a party invitation to Hogwarts - addressed to the Sorting Hat!

And what will Mrs. Weasley say if it turns up?

Stuffing the card back into his pocket, Harry crossed the landing, only to halt with his foot poised at the topmost step as an even more absurd thought struck him.

Can you put a party hat on a guest that is a hat?

Laughing out loud, Harry swept down the stairs, thinking that prolonged exposure to Fred and George was surely turning him mental.

So ends the story for now. I'll try to write more as time allows. At least I got my explanation for Hermione's behavior out before my deadline (with a few extra canon questions answered for good measure). Thanks to everyone for reading.