You can block curses like Hara Kiri and Cruciatus. I told Professor Moody to introduce the idea
of blocking pain into the curriculum. I wanted to see whether any of you were so suggestible
that you could do it, just because you were told first that it was possible. And I wasn’t a bit
surprised to learn that you’d mastered it.”
“So Moody was lying to us when he said we would master it by the end of the term? He
couldn’t do it himself? It isn’t something Aurors usually learn?”
He shook his head. “No, Harry. If it were, Neville Longbottom’s parents wouldn’t be in St.
Mungo’s.”
Harry furrowed his brow. “About Neville; is that why he did so well dueling when he was on
the Eutharsos Potion?”
“Do you know what that potion does?”
“It makes you feel safe whether you are or not.”
“Exactly. It’s another case of mind over matter. That’s all that much magic is, Harry. Those of
us who are witches and wizards do have magic in us, but the training you receive here teaches
you to focus and put your mind to a spell, to believe that it will work the way you want it to.
You are very good at putting mind over matter, Harry, and I see you getting better at it year by
year. Hermione has better study habits, it’s undeniable. And Evan Davies has far better
grades--as do several other fifth-year Ravenclaws and a couple of Hufflepuffs. As for the other
Gryffindor students in your year, besides Hermione...compared to them, you admittedly look
rather good. Although Ron Weasley has undergone quite an improvement this year. But grades
are not everything; your inner focus is more pronounced than in any wizard I have seen come
through here for a long time. As such, your greatest deficiency is also your mind--when you let it
convince you that you are incapable of something. Your greatest strength is also your greatest
weakness. Do you understand what I’m saying, Harry?”
Harry nodded, thinking about his duel with Voldemort, forcing the bead of light into his wand,
forcing it to regurgitate the previous spells it had cast.
“And Voldemort?”
“Voldemort? When he was a student here, he was very, very much like you. Better grades,
though. And he put on more of a show of following the rules.” He looked at Harry over his
spectacles. “Sometimes you don’t even bother about that, Harry.”
Harry felt his face grow warm. “I remember when I met the young Tom Riddle. He said we
were a lot alike, too. When we were in the forest...when I offered to become a Death Eater if
they would let Ron and Hermione go, I thought about that. About whether I was going to
become just like him.”
Now Dumbledore smiled. “That is something you do not have to worry about, Harry. No
proper Death Eater ever did it to protect people they cared about. If you go into that with the
intention of doing good, don’t you think it rather defeats the whole purpose?”
Harry hadn’t thought about that before. “But why do they threaten the recruits with hurting
people they care about?”
“That’s just until they’re in. Then they have to hurt--really hurt--someone. You would never
have been able to do that, Harry.” Harry remembered Draco Malfoy cursing Karkaroff. He
remembered Ron cursing him. Ron was hoping Harry could do pain blockage, but still...
“You are too self-sacrificing to make a proper Death Eater, Harry. As much as Pettigrew
seems to have convinced Voldemort to recruit you to repay his debt to you, I think Voldemort
has agreed to that plan for a different reason...”
“What?”
Dumbledore sighed. “It took him years to achieve the level of power he had attained when the
killing curse rebounded on him, giving you that scar. I believe that in the last year, he has come
to realize that it will take years and years again for him to climb back to that level of power.
Unless he finds a shortcut. Unless he finds a very powerful wizard who will become his servant,
and let him absorb his power...You have in you a great deal of the power he lost when he
cursed you, more than he has right now, I daresay. He has realized that he needs you alive, to
draw on that power.”
Harry looked at his hands. “I still don’t want anything to happen to Ron or Hermione. They can
still be used against me. I’d rather give him all my magical power than see them hurt--or see
anyone else hurt.”
Dumbledore smiled. “But it’s precisely because of that that you can’t possibly give up your
power to him, even if you wanted to. I’m guessing that he doesn’t understand that yet. It’s alien
to him. That’s why your mother’s sacrifice protected you, Harry. And that’s why I trust you.”
Harry looked at Dumbledore, trying to understand consciously everything he’d said, but he gave
up on that and decided that perhaps the best thing was to comprehend it unconsciously. He
tried to quiet the voices inside him, throwing out one idea after another. He felt a peace come
over him, and suddenly, understanding lit up his brain in a startling epiphany. He looked levelly
at Dumbledore, very calm.
“I understand.”
Dumbledore smiled and nodded at him. “Because you know that you can.” Harry smiled back,
leaving the study more at peace than he’d felt in a very long time. For once he didn’t feel like he
was leaving Dumbledore’s office with more questions than he’d entered. But he still had quite
lot to think about.
Your greatest strength is also your greatest weakness....
* * * * *
The next morning Harry felt like going running again. He hadn’t gone the day before. As he
opened the wardrobe door, getting out his running shoes and shorts, Ron opened his
bedcurtains and peered at him sleepily. “Going running?”
“Yeah,” Harry said shortly, undecided whether it would make him happy for Ron to come
along. Ron rose and retrieved his own running gear. Finally, Harry put his shirt on while Ron
was tying his laces. “Let’s go,” he said tersely.
When they reached the common room, it was deserted. Harry checked his watch; it was ten
minutes after seven. They waited another five minutes, but Harry decided they should leave. “If
she were coming, she’d be down here by now.” He took Sandy off his arm and left her by the
fireside.
When they reached the Quidditch pitch, they did the warm-up exercises in silence, then rose
and started running on the sandy path. Afterward, they were doing the warm-down exercises
when Ron suddenly looked up at Harry and asked, “When did it start?”
Harry was jolted. “What?” he said, realizing even as he said this what it was that Ron meant.
“You and Hermione.”
They’d been going through the motions of normal school life since returning from the forest, as
though nothing had happened, although there were times when Harry saw Ron looking at
Hermione strangely. He put his chin on his knees to consider his answer.
“Well, there was this time we almost kissed at my house, just before we left to come to the
Burrow. No, wait, there was the time she was sunbathing in the garden. Actually, maybe it was
when she kissed me on the cheek before the summer holiday, at the station.” He frowned; then
he went back to his thoughts when they’d consummated their relationship. “No,” he corrected
himself again. “In a way--it started when I noticed at the Yule Ball how pretty Krum’s date
was. I was, of course, still insanely obsessed with Cho Chang, but even I could see that. Then I
realized it was her. And you were such a prat to her; I wanted to kick you,” he said, but smiled.
Ron nodded.
“That’s true. A total prat.”
“And when Krum wanted to talk to me about her, what really struck me was that he actually
thought of me as a rival. He said she talked about me all the time. I told him it was because
we’re friends, and he let it go at that. Of course then everything around us starting going crazy,
Barty Crouch and all that, but later in the summer, I still remembered him saying that she talked
about me all the time.”
Ron shrugged. “Well, you’re Harry Potter...”
“Yeah, yeah, I survived the killing curse. Of course, when she sent the photo...”
“Right. The photo.”
“...then I gathered that she might be interested in me. That was before Bulgaria.”
Ron couldn’t deny this. “True,” he said simply.
Harry looked at his face. “Ron, you’re still my best friend, right?”
“Right,” Ron said, hesitating only a moment before answering.
“I don’t want to hide anything from you. I want to tell you everything.”
Ron widened his eyes, looking both hopeful and apprehensive. “Everything? ”
“Well, okay, not everything...” He realized how that must have sounded. “But there are some
things you don’t know, and there’s no bloody reason to keep them from you now.”
“Like what?”
“After the dream I had on Christmas night, I screamed bloody murder. Hermione heard and--
she slept in my bed with me the rest of the night. And the next night. And the rest of the
holidays. We just slept. I still miss that at times. It was so comforting just having her there,
hearing her breathing in her sleep, feeling her warmth next to me...” Harry trailed off, feeling a
flush rising up from his neck. Ron narrowed his eyes.
“I’ve never done that. Slept in the same bed with someone else...” Harry couldn’t tell whether
Ron sounded envious or it was just a statement of fact.
Harry sighed. “Of course, there came a time when I had trouble not thinking about--certain
things. So I moved to another bed.” He decided that Ron didn’t need to know it was his bed.
“Which did no good, because she followed me, wanting to know what was wrong, and then she
told me it was after midnight--this was New Year’s Eve--and she wished me Happy New Year
and kissed me and--” He looked down. He couldn’t go on.
“Well?” Ron said, looking wide-eyed. Harry realized he’d rather left him hanging.
“Well,” Harry hesitated, “I, er, stopped what we were doing, and then Sandy told me a dark
wizard was coming. I went rather insane. I put Hermione in the corner under the Invisibility
Cloak and I hid under Dean Thomas’ bed, aiming my wand at the door. Of course, it was
Sirius.”
Ron’s jaw dropped, then he burst out laughing, flinging himself backwards and rolling around on
the pitch. Harry felt laughter bubbling up inside him, too, and soon he too was laughing loudly.
After a while, Ron sat up, wiping his eyes.
“Oh, Harry,” he said weakly. “Thanks. I needed that.”
Harry shrugged. “Glad I could amuse you by being such a sodding idiot.”
Ron shook his head, standing. He helped Harry to stand too, then put his arm across his
shoulder. “It’s not that. Okay, it’s that a little bit. I think I thought...” he trailed off. “I thought it
was all rainbows and champagne and sappy stuff like that. And it was probably sneaking
around to snog in dark uncomfortable places, and making up ridiculous excuses, and insanesounding
alibis...None of it sounds remotely romantic or something to be jealous of. I should
have known you’d bollix up your first real girlfriend experience. Cho doesn’t count, of
course...”
“Of course...” Harry mumbled, feeling more than a little insulted, but if thinking of his and
Hermione’s relationship as one horrendous, disastrous encounter after another cheered him up,
he wasn’t feeling inclined to correct him. Then he was struck by something Ron had said that
was just a bit upsetting. “What do you mean, ‘first’ girlfriend?”
Ron stopped walking for a second, then resumed his course, moving ahead of Harry so he
couldn’t see his face. “Oh. Nothing. Nothing at all. Let’s go...”
* * * * *
Harry told Ron about the way Snape had actually been quite decent to him when away from
other people, the way he let him use his office fireplace to communicate with Sirius, and the fact
that he was on a first-name basis with Sirius. Harry and Hermione told Ron together about the
things they’d seen in Snape’s Pensieve; his mouth was open in shock much of the time. His first
reaction to the thought of Snape kissing Lily was the same as Harry’s.
“Eeeew. ”
His second reaction to their recitation of the Pensieve events was to look at the two of them
strangely, and say softly, “Um, you do realize that you two have been finishing each other’s
sentences?”
Harry looked in surprise at Hermione, who then smiled, lacing her fingers through his and
leaning her head on his shoulder. Harry looked at Ron, who gazed with an inscrutable
expression at them both, then looked away.
After a few days, the rest of the people in the Gryffindor common room started acting normally
around Harry, Ron, Hermione and Ginny. At first, everyone seemed to be walking on eggshells
around the four of them, but now games of chess were being played, and Exploding Snap. The
twins were telling jokes and people were laughing at them. There no longer seemed to be a pall
cast on the place. Most Gryffindors simply greeted the news that Harry and Hermione were a
couple with equanimity, as though they’d thought that all along (many of them had), so it didn’t
cause any significant ripples in the daily life of the house. The extent of their relationship was not
common knowledge; only Ginny and Ron knew that. Ginny’s and Draco’s relationship,
however, was still under wraps, for the most part. The twins knew, of course, and weren’t
particularly happy about it, but so far they hadn’t tried to decapitate Malfoy. They had tried to
offer him some Ton-Tongue Toffees, but Ginny had forewarned him, so he declined, looking,
Harry thought, like he was wondering what he’d gotten himself into.
The focus of concern in Gryffindor Tower returned to Neville. There were many people who
still treated Neville very carefully since his recovery, which was clearly wearing on him. Neville
sometimes would retreat to the dorm to sit on his bed reading, catching up with his schoolwork,
but then Dean or Seamus would go up to sit with him. He had started to look a bit annoyed
about this. At one point Harry was on his bed reading for the O.W.L.s while Neville was doing
the same on his. Neville looked up at Harry.
“You don’t have to stay and baby-sit me, Harry. I’m not going to start secretly taking Eutharsos
Potion again.”
Harry looked up in surprise. “I’m not baby-sitting you, Neville. I was here first, reading for
Binns’ class. It’s just that it puts me to sleep, so I figured I might as well be on my bed, so I’ll
be comfortable when it happens.”
Neville smiled in apology. “Sorry, Harry. I just feel like--everyone’s waiting for me to snap. But
you know, they say if you’re reading something that might make you fall asleep, you should
actually read it in the most uncomfortable place you can.”
“You’re assuming I don’t want to fall asleep, Neville,” he laughed, and Neville laughed too,
then look a little surprised.
“That’s funny, Harry. I--I don’t remember laughing since--since I got back. It’s like people are
trying not to say funny things around me.”
“Even Fred and George?”
“Even them.”
“Well, come on downstairs, Neville. If they’re not busy with their N.E.W.T. preparation,
maybe they can give us both a good laugh.”
They left their books on their beds and went down the stairs to the common room. Before they
had reached the bottom, however, they met Ron coming up the stairs, looking breathless.
“Oh,” he said anxiously, “Harry and Neville! Are Dean and Seamus upstairs in our room?”
“No,” Neville answered. “We were the only ones there.”
“Well, um--do you need to go back there real soon? I’d like some--privacy---”
Harry looked down and saw Parvati appear at the foot of the stairs. She didn’t look at Harry or
Neville. Harry understood, and was a little bit wistful; he and Hermione were trying to be so
careful about people knowing about their physical relationship, they hadn’t been alone together
since returning from the forest.
Neville nodded at Ron, smiling. “Not a problem.”
“I’m putting a locking charm on the door, just so you know.”
“Fine, fine,” Harry said, trying not to sound too irritated as Parvati, averting her eyes, passed
him on the stairs.
“It’s not for you two; last time Dean and Seamus thought they would ‘interrupt,’” Ron said.
“Let them know they shouldn’t even bother.”
Neville said he would, laughing, and Harry was glad to hear him laugh again. He was right; he
hadn’t laughed enough since returning from the hospital wing.
Thinking of Ron and Parvati up in their room made Harry wonder where Hermione was.
Probably in the library, he thought, with O.W.L.s being so close. Maybe if they went up to
Fluffy’s room...
But he didn’t bother to go look for her. He and Neville started playing Exploding Snap with the
twins, and before long, they were all laughing hysterically and nursing small burns, mostly singed
eyebrows. Then Harry excused himself to go to the lavatory. The twins hinted broadly that he
was going to try to spy on Ron and Parvati, and Harry laughed, pretending to go along with this.
He went up the stairs, not hearing any sounds from the dorm before he entered the lavatory.
When he was washing his hands, he heard the door to the dormitory open and slam shut again,
then open again.
“Parvati!” he heard Ron’s voice plead. Harry dried his hands on a towel; he stepped closer to
the door and put his ear to it. He heard her footsteps return from the stairs, then the
unmistakable sound of a slap.
“You bastard!” he heard Parvati’s strangled voice, as though she were trying not to cry. Harry
swallowed. He was trapped. Although perhaps if he opened the door and appeared on the
landing with them, it could defuse the explosive situation he somehow felt was brewing.
“Parvati--” Ron pleaded again. “Come on! It happens to everyone...”
Now Harry was appalled; he did not want to know about this, not in a million years. How
awful, he thought, imagining himself in Ron’s shoes. Now he knew for sure that he shouldn’t
step foot out of the lavatory. Ron would die if he knew he had heard.
“It was a slip of the tongue...” Ron continued to try to placate her. What? Harry thought.
Obviously it wasn’t what he thought. Ron had said something to upset her. What could it be?
“A slip of the tongue? A slip of the tongue? Don’t tell me you haven’t been pretending I’m her
every time. I’m not a bleeding substitute! I--I sometimes suspected, but when you actually call
me by her name in the--in the middle of it--it becomes glaringly obvious! I am never speaking
to you again, Ron Weasley!”
Harry covered his mouth in horror. It was even worse than he’d originally thought. He heard
Parvati run down the stairs, her footsteps a rapid tattoo on the stone, receding now. Harry
heard Ron take a step, then held his breath. What if Ron came in here? Harry thought fleetingly
of running into a stall and standing on a toilet seat lid, hoping Ron wouldn’t find him. But then he
heard the door to the dorm slam again, and Harry breathed a sigh of relief. He opened the door
and stepped onto the landing just as Ron opened the door to their dorm again. He froze when
he saw Harry. Harry felt himself flush, remembering what he’d just heard. Ron’s face was
furious when he’d opened the door, then mortified when he saw Harry.
“Harry,” he said nervously. “How--how long were you in there?”
“Why?” Harry decided the best course of action was to feign stupidity and deafness.
“You didn’t hear our--our argument, did you? Me and Parvati?”
Harry swallowed. “You and Parvati had an argument?” he said, his voice higher than he wanted
it to be. “I’m--I’m sorry to hear that.”
Ron looked at him as though he were unconvinced, but also as though he’d rather kiss Snape
than admit what they’d been arguing about. “Yeah, well, you know. Women.”
Harry smiled feebly. “Women,” he echoed softly.
Or, he thought, a particular woman.
Hermione.
* * * * *
