Hermione rose immediately and found Harry and Severus arguing in the common room. The debate was heated enough that they didn't appear to be aware that she had opened her door. It was no doubt too much to hope that Harry hadn't noticed that the Potions master had been able to come in before the Gryffindor spelled the door open.
"She's sleeping," Harry said, his aggressive tone suggesting this was not the first time he'd made this observation. "You didn't tell us there would be a session this morning. It's barely half eight and a Sunday. She doesn't have to be awake right now."
"We often have sessions at this time on the weekend," Severus said coldly. "Half the mornings of the week I find her out of your quarters by seven. She shouldn't be sleeping now."
Harry stared at Severus incredulously, and Hermione was impressed with the evenness of the Gryffindor's tone when he replied, "You didn't make previous arrangements with us, sir. She had a late night and is catching up on sleep."
She closed the door loudly behind her, making them both look sharply in her direction. It had been that or let Harry get detention, from the way the argument had seemed to be going.
"Which is remarkably difficult to do when the two of you are arguing out here. I can be ready in a few minutes, sir."
Harry looked as though he wanted to protest on her behalf, but she had known a lost cause from the moment she realized why Severus had come.
Severus was regarding her narrowly. "I thought you had a lab in there."
"And I fell asleep on a countertop," she said shortly. "Did you want me to get ready or not?"
"Do so, Miss Granger." Severus, naturally, gave no indication that he appreciated her acquiescence to what everyone in the room knew was an unreasonable request.
She headed into the bathroom directly from the common room, not wanting Severus to get answers to questions that were annoying him. There, she brushed her teeth, made use of a few cleaning charms, and promised herself a shower after their training session. Moving to her bedroom, she swallowed her slightly tardy Veritaserum pill and pulled on a tank top and tracksuit bottoms which she topped with an old robe. She was back in the common room in less than ten minutes.
Both Harry and Severus were still alive and appeared to be physically unharmed.
She ignored the anticipated barbs about how long it had taken her to get ready and wordlessly followed Severus and Harry out of the room. In Room One, they found both Tonks and Kingsley, and Hermione understood why Severus had been so insistent. Why the idiot man couldn't simply have said that the others were waiting, she didn't know. Except, wait, this was Severus she was thinking about, and he lived to make things difficult.
Tonks still looked rather bleary-eyed. "You know, it's cruel to have me here this early and stroll in twenty minutes late."
"Sorry about that," Hermione said apologetically before Severus could offer more explanations for their tardiness. She focussed on Kingsley. "It's lovely to see you, Kingsley. Dosed any unsuspecting students with Veritaserum recently?"
She was rewarded with a flash of his very white teeth. "Not a single one, Hermione. My life's been very boring."
"Poor you," Harry commiserated.
"What about you?" the older man asked in turn. "Confronted a room full of Aurors lately?"
She smiled widely. "Boring for us, as well. Why are we being gifted with your presence this morning?"
"Even the Acting Head of the M.L.E. occasionally gets a Sunday morning off, and I couldn't think of anywhere I would rather be."
She laughed outright, and Harry grinned as he said, "We're touched."
"I'll mark that down as Albus's officiousness, shall I?" she said.
"Tonks asked me to come, actually."
She and Harry turned to the pink-haired woman.
"Is that a not-so-subtle hint?" Harry asked.
Tonks shrugged. "A recommendation, I suppose. It could be advantageous, but you must do as you see fit."
Well?
Harry gave a mental shrug. Don't want them to die of curiosity, I guess.
She agreed. It wasn't as though either Kingsley or Severus were going to give her and Harry away. And it would be useful to see how well the shield held up against multiple adversaries. She had a sneaking suspicion, however, that Severus wasn't going to take the news particularly well. He got bloody weird every time he was reminded about Harry's relationship; a happy Potter was apparently not to be easily tolerated. She shrugged this concern off, however, as any desire to cater to Severus was considerably abated by the fact that he was still being a complete wanker.
She nodded resolutely and addressed herself to the other occupants of the room. "All right," she said seriously. "Let's say that all of you are out to get Harry. I'm determined not to let that happen. Further," she added with a slightly malicious smile, "I'll even foolishly bet that we'll have all of you disarmed before you successfully land so much as one shot on him."
Severus and Kingsley rapidly took her up on this bet while Tonks smirked to herself but joined the two men on the other side of the room.
They fought. Going up against two Aurors and a Death Eater spy was no laughing matter, but Harry and Hermione had been training with them in earnest for almost a year now, not to mention all the training they did on their own. The hardest part was keeping all three in their sights at once. She and Harry had to constantly block their opponents from getting round behind them. They didn't want to back themselves too close into a corner, either.
There was a lot of wild spell-fire, spells cast and dissipated or clashing in midair and bouncing off at weird angles. Severus finally got off a shot that neither Hermione nor Harry could parry because they were each firing spells at Kingsley and Tonks.
Peripherally aware of Severus's smirk of triumph, Hermione threw up the strongest wandless shield she could manage while she and Harry were finishing their previous spells. For obvious reasons, casting two spells at once could only be done by someone capable of casting wandlessly. It took a lot of skill since it required thinking in a very focussed manner on two spells simultaneously, saying one that employed a wand and thinking and wandlessly performing the other.
The force of Severus's spell impacting against her shield drove her back a couple of steps but the shield held, and the moment the last syllable of the spell she'd been saying against Kingsley was out of her mouth, she reinforced the shield with the full force of her power and smiled at Harry.
You're up, Boy-bird.
He grinned and sent out a Stunner that went right through her shield and took out Severus before the smirk had totally faded. There was new realization in Kingsley's eyes, but nothing he or Tonks cast made her shield waver, and it only took a few more shots from Harry before both of the Aurors were disarmed. She released her shield once they gave nods conceding their defeat and Summoned Severus's wand so that no one could argue they hadn't disarmed him.
She walked over to Severus and Ennervated him, holding his wand at the ready hilt-first so that he would feel slightly less at a disadvantage. He retrieved it before he rose to his feet. As Hermione had predicted, he did not look happy.
"Alastor spoke of the Longbottoms," Kingsley said, still sounding vaguely surprised and impressed.
She and Harry nodded. "Tonks said."
"How long have you been able to shield like that?" Severus demanded.
"We discovered it by accident in Tonks's class on Halloween," Hermione answered. "I decided I'd rather get hit by Harry's Freezing Charm than Tonks's Burning Spell." Harry nodded. "Instead, his spell passed through my shield while hers was repelled. It happened very quickly, so we don't think anyone else noticed."
"Except Tonks," Harry added, "who apparently wanted to have her butt kicked."
"It's a handy skill to hone, and the two of you require some serious competition to make that possible," Tonks said cheerfully.
"You should have informed me." Severus's voice was cold.
"At which point did you wish me to announce it, sir?" Hermione ground out the ultimate word. "I'm sure I don't need to remind you how much opportunity we've had to speak to you recently."
"It would only have taken a moment to open your mouth and transmit the necessary information," the Slytherin snapped.
"But when she stands a good chance of getting thrown out of your lab or given second-degree burns, why would she bother?" Harry jumped to her defence.
"Burns?" Kingsley inquired.
"Hazard of training," Hermione answered curtly without looking at him, her attention still focussed on Severus. "You expressed no interest in any extraneous talk. Had we needed to do so, we would have used the ability during training previously, but it didn't come up. Now you know, and we can continue to train that ability along with all the others we possess."
For a long, silent moment, she waited for an explosion, but to her surprise, a tactical question came instead.
"What happens to your shield if it's hit by high-powered spells from both sides at the same time?"
It was a question to which neither she nor Harry knew the answer.
They worked until lunchtime and discovered that the impact of a strong enough spell cast by Tonks, Kingsley, or Severus at the same time as Harry's emerging spell could cause quite the backlash. It only knocked her unconscious the first time before she learned how to brace for it; the consensus was that it was because she'd still instinctively protected Harry, who'd been left unharmed.
Kingsley took his leave before, in his words, the Ministry sent out search parties. Tonks agreed to walk him out since it would be easy enough to pass off his visit as an official one to her. This left Harry, Hermione, and Severus to head up to lunch together. They cast Cleansing Charms on themselves, and Hermione revised her shower promise; she'd have one by tonight.
At least there's no worry from his expression that he's happy doing this, Harry observed with a mental eye roll.
The Head of Slytherin's expression was nothing short of forbidding as they trekked up the stairs to the Great Hall.
I think our secret's safe, she agreed. No one will guess we spent such an enjoyable three hours together.
He snorted. Good point.
They separated, Harry and Hermione seating themselves at the Gryffindor table and Severus making his way up to the High Table. She really hoped they could continue training without bickering constantly, but at the moment, that possibility was looking rather remote.
December arrived, and Hagrid was happy to cut her and Harry a small evergreen that they could decorate and put in the corner of their common room to make it more festive. Hermione conjured plenty of garland and baubles and then experimented until she came up with something like Muggle Christmas tree lights; they were made of magic and glowed softly in all the colours of the rainbow. Hermione had swallowed heavily and very carefully said nothing pitying when Harry had confessed that this was the first Christmas tree that he had ever helped decorate; she told him instead that he had done a spectacular job for a novice, and he had grinned brightly at her.
Ron was still avoiding them as though they had the plague. He went out of his way not to stand near them, look at them, sit near them, or speak to them. Hermione didn't want to have much of anything to do with him, either, but she wouldn't have minded if he were a little less obvious about it.
By the time the second Quidditch match of term arrived, she and Harry were annoyed enough that they were actually tempted to boycott it. Unfortunately, as Head Girl and Head Boy, they didn't feel comfortable not supporting the school's teams.
Gryffindor won, and Harry and Hermione limited themselves to not cheering much, although Harry said he was pleased on Ginny's behalf.
But, he grumbled, I was really looking forward to cheering for Draco.
Hermione offered him a brilliant mental grin. It would be nice to give the Prophet something else to headline, wouldn't it? About time they got back to that most important of topics.
Harry snorted. If they started dwelling solely on Quidditch, our lives would be a lot easier. I don't suppose we can avoid the victory party?
Actually, I feel certain it's our duty to patrol the corridors and make sure the Slytherins aren't taking their loss badly.
He nodded. Or the Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs; they could be acting out because they feel left out. You're absolutely right.
Feeling quite pleased with their only somewhat specious reasoning, they headed off to their rounds.
On Monday, students staying for the holidays had to submit their names to their Heads of House. For the first Christmas in six years, Ron had expressed no interest in what Harry was doing. He issued no invitation for Harry to spend the time at the Burrow, and he did not put himself on the list to stay at the school. Harry squared his jaw and signed his own name, and Hermione added hers.
Very few students were remaining in the castle. The younger children were, generally, wanted home by their families whenever possible, and all of the seventh-years had been under such scrutiny in the media, by the Ministry, and at school that parents seemed especially anxious to have their children in their own sight for three weeks of holiday time.
Remus picked up his Wolfsbane on the morning of the second Saturday of the month. He reassured her that he was still feeling just fine and would continue to work diligently on everything else. Both Severus—who'd come to make sure she'd given the Wolfsbane—and Harry—who wanted to see Remus—looked curious, but she and Remus pretended not to notice.
The final trip to Hogsmeade followed Remus's visit. As she'd predicted, Harry had to do nearly all of his gift-buying, as did a number of other students to judge from the crushes in the stores and the desperation in many of the shoppers' eyes.
Since she was finished, Harry drafted her into helping him. She managed to avoid this for the most part by the simple expedient of constantly suggesting books, but she did help him with Ginny and Mrs Weasley, as he seemed particularly inept when it came to buying gifts for females. She was pleased that he didn't commit the solecism of asking her for help with her own gift.
Homework was heaped upon them in this last week, including plenty of holiday work for them to return after the break. Harry promised to work on the first four days of the holiday in exchange for her agreement to take Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and Boxing Day off. Hermione knew that this would put them well ahead of most of their peers; many wouldn't crack open a book until the very last minute in the new year. She wanted to get as much out of the way as soon as possible because not only was she anal like that, she had learnt the hard way that one never knew when a holiday was going to go pear-shaped and one would end up half a cat for over a month, with paws instead of hands.
On the eighteenth, she and Harry took their final continuous dose of five drops of Veritaserum. According to her calculations, their tolerance would remain, and they would never again have to worry that only three drops would make them speak the truth. Since what they were doing was unprecedented, however, she was switching them over to a maintenance program where they took five drops once a day. After they'd done this for a couple of months, she'd be willing to let them risk not having any regularly. Given the precarious situation they were in, it wasn't the time for them to be forced to tell the truth on the off-chance her Arithmancy calculations turned out to be wrong.
Seven of their year-mates had the lecture portion of Astronomy Friday afternoon, but more than half of their year had their last class with DADA this morning. Rather than devoting the time to a lecture that they might not attend to very carefully given how close they were to the freedom of the holidays, Tonks had come up with a plan to keep their attention.
She broke them off into their standard partners but announced that she was turning the class into a competition so that they could see their progress. Someone would go away as the head of the class because rather than all practising at the same time, the rest of the class would be watching as they went through the class pair by pair, matching winners with winners until there was only one person left. Everyone looked intrigued, and Hermione doubted drifting attention would be a problem.
They were permitted to use any spells they knew so long as they were legal. Duels were called once someone was successfully disarmed. Most of the classroom was cleared to give the duellers ample room; those not currently duelling were sitting on conjured benches along the back wall.
Hermione found it interesting to be able to really watch her classmates duel and see how they adapted the spells they'd been learning throughout the year. The duels tended to last between five and ten minutes depending on the relative skills of those fighting. Daphne lost to Draco, Lavender to Parvati, Seamus to Dean, Justin to Terry, Hannah to Susan, Morag to Padma, Vera to Neville, and Ron to Hermione.
She wondered if it had been a wise plan to pair them up as usual; she hoped a lot of hurt feelings weren't the result of that preliminary round, although she had to admit that she hadn't felt at all bad about trouncing Ron. However, since eight students now got to sit back and watch the rest of class rather than continuing to strategize about who they were going to be duelling with next, perhaps losing wasn't such a hardship. For the most part, everyone appeared good-mannered.
Since they were still an odd person out, Harry was joining in on this second round against Neville. If Harry won, he'd be going up against Hermione, making it an even round, as they'd both have fought one other opponent. If he lost, they'd be off by a person again, so they were clearly betting on his winning. To give Neville time to recover from his duel with Vera, who had acquitted herself well, two other pairs went first. Parvati lost to Draco while Padma beat Susan, and then it was time for Hermione to see who she'd be going up against.
Five and a half minutes later, Neville lost to Harry. Neville was almost unrecognizable from the accident-prone eleven-year-old boy they had first met, but even with his extra DA training, he couldn't compete with Harry and Hermione for sheer knowledge and practice time.
It took Dean almost twelve minutes to narrowly achieve a victory against Terry, and then it was time for Hermione and Harry to face off against one another.
Contrary to what many of their peers thought given their expressions, Harry and Hermione squared off with the ease of long familiarity, and their long initial pause wasn't waiting for the other person to make the first move but having an internal conversation.
How hard are we trying? he asked.
We want to give them a good show, but I hardly think this is the proper venue for the revelation of our best secrets.
In other words, wands, wordless, and a fair portion of what they'd learned from Severus and the Aurors.
He nodded, and they began. They were the closest matched of the pairs that had gone up, and it took almost twenty minutes for Hermione to get in the deciding shot. She finally managed to hit Harry with a Trip Jinx that took him off his feet, which she followed immediately with a Cushioning Spell. The unexpected soft impact when he'd been braced for a harder one caught him off-guard and gave her the crucial moment she needed to disarm him.
The class exploded into cheers. She and Harry, breathing hard, bowed to the crowd and embraced one another, and she returned his wand. She was sitting for less than ten minutes before Draco had taken down Dean, and then it was her turn to go up against Padma, whom she brought down without much difficulty.
Tonks gave them an extra ten minutes to recover and prepare before the final confrontation that had the rest of the class sitting on the edge of their seats: Draco versus Hermione.
Draco was a much more aggressive dueller than Harry. He concentrated far less on protective shields and more on deflecting her spells with spells of his own and attacking her as fast as he possibly could. She was finally able to use this to her advantage, erecting Harry's modified shield, the one that dissipated spells rather than reflecting them.
Given the strength with which Draco was casting at her, she knew this would result in that mini-explosion surrounding her shield. Since she was expecting it, she'd protected her eyes and was sending off the disarming spell while Draco was still blinking and recovering from the unexpected explosion.
For the second time, the class cheered madly. She returned Draco's wand to him and offered her hand. He shook it, his face expressionless.
Tonks reminded them of the work she'd set out for the break, and the bell rang a few minutes later as she was wishing them all a happy and safe Christmas holiday. They gathered up their schoolbags and moved en masse into the hallway to go up to lunch. Hermione and Harry hung to the back so that they could congratulate Tonks on an excellent final class and offer to help set the classroom back to rights, but Tonks waved them on, and they headed outside.
Harry was a few steps ahead of her, and Hermione just had time to realize that all the rest of the seventh-year Slytherins seemed to be in the corridor when Draco turned abruptly and put out his hand, preventing her from progressing more than a step past the door as it closed behind her. For a fleeting instant, she could have sworn that the look in his eyes was one of sorrow, but then all she saw were hard chips of ice.
"You don't really think you could beat me in real fight, do you, Mudblood?" he sneered.
She hadn't heard that word out of his mouth since fifth year when he had still been acting a complete prat. For him to say it in front of their entire Defence class was the height of stupidity. Expressions of outrage could be heard from the other students.
"I beg your pardon?" she asked, giving him a chance to retract, amend, or apologize.
Draco, unfortunately, chose none of these options. He drew his wand, and she threw up a shield as she shook her wand into her own hand.
She would have been perfectly fine if he hadn't cast one of the three spells in the world that went right through her shield as though it weren't even there.
"Crucio."
He spoke quietly—barely a whisper, really—but she still went down like a ton of bricks, agony searing through her, and the corridor exploded into chaos.
Most of the class went after Draco, but the Slytherins defended their housemate. Spells flew wildly, smoke filled the air, a whole section of the corridor wall exploded, spraying rock chips across them all. Someone stumbled into her, but she couldn't even tell who it was in the confusion—not to mention the fact that she was a little preoccupied with the fact that it felt as though someone had lit her nerve endings on fire.
The mêlée was, fortunately, short-lived. Tonks wrenched the door open and nearly stumbled into Hermione but got round her and started disarming people. Severus must have been on his way up to lunch, for he appeared as well and waded into the fray.
By the time Tonks and Severus were done with them, they were separated down the length of the hallway.
"If I see a single person's wand, the offending student will not be returning from his or her holiday," Severus snarled at them. "All of you, into my classroom now. Tonks, retrieve the headmaster."
The students were smart enough to be obedient now, filing away without so much as a word of protest.
Hermione's motor control was still off; she had to clench her hands into fists just so that everyone couldn't see how badly they were shaking, and she couldn't seem to find her feet. Harry had to help her up, and he held her protectively, one arm over her shoulder and a hand clutching her arm in a death grip. He was white as a ghost and seemed to be breathing with almost as much difficulty as she was.
Albus arrived at an accelerated pace with Tonks, Minerva, and Filius before Harry and Hermione made it out of the corridor, suggesting the headmaster had been on his way down already before the pink-haired Auror found him. Given the alarms that would have been tripped by the use of the Unforgivable inside the castle, this didn't really surprise Hermione.
Albus sent Minerva and Filius to make sure the seventh-years weren't stupid enough to cause additional trouble. There was little doubt from the expressions on the two Heads of House's faces that the students would be read the riot act until Albus arrived.
Albus gestured those remaining back into the DADA classroom and threw up privacy charms. Harry conjured a chair for Hermione, as Tonks had not finished setting up the classroom normally again. Hermione sank into the armchair with relief, and Harry perched on the arm, apparently unwilling to be very far away from her. He seemed to have made a good educated guess about what had happened.
Tonks, Severus, and Albus remained standing in front of them.
"What happened?" Albus demanded with some urgency, his expression very serious.
Hermione cleared her throat and forced herself to speak clearly and evenly. "Malfoy wanted a rematch of our classroom duel."
Tonks, Severus, and Harry blinked at her, evidently not thinking this explanation adequate.
"And how did this result in the disaster I found when I arrived in the corridor?" Severus was the one to ask.
"He was … less than polite in his request," she answered circumspectly.
"He called Hermione a Mudblood, sir," Harry clarified, voice tight.
"Unbecoming as such uncouthness may be," Severus answered coldly, "it is insufficient reason for almost the entirety of the seventh year to be engaged in a brawl in the corridor."
"He attacked Hermione," Harry answered angrily for her. "Most of our class tried to stop him, and the Slytherins in the corridor tried to stop us."
"The Slytherins were waiting in the corridor?" Albus asked, voice mild but eyes sharp.
Harry nodded stiffly.
"In other words, this whole event could have been avoided if Miss Granger had simply shielded herself against Mr Malfoy's attack."
Harry growled, but the headmaster spoke first.
"Miss Granger can hardly be blamed for the actions of her classmates, Severus," he observed blandly.
"She did shield," Harry gritted out, his grip white-knuckled on the armrest.
"From the way you have been clinging to her, I understood that she was injured," Severus sneered.
"She is." The words were clipped.
Tonks was frowning. "The only spells that can go through the type of shield Hermione can cast are—"
"Imperius, the Killing Curse, and Cruciatus," Harry answered fiercely. "Don't you think I know that?"
"You have the temerity to accuse Mr Malfoy of—" Severus began.
"Of casting the Cruciatus on a fellow student," the Gryffindor boy answered with dead certainty in his voice. "I saw her go down. You did not."
"How dare you—" It was a low hiss.
"Severus," Albus interrupted. "I was already on my way down because the Dark Magic wards had sounded."
The Head of Slytherin's jaw clenched. "Mr Malfoy is a Slytherin, not an idiot. He would never cast an Unforgivable within the school."
"But he would cast one," Harry interpreted flatly.
"I did not say that," Severus snarled. "Did you hear him cast?"
Reluctantly, Harry shook his head. "He was facing away from us, and he spoke quietly. Hermione's the only one who could have seen or heard what he cast."
They all looked at her, odd expressions on their faces. Severus looked forbidding but almost resigned, as though he were certain of the words that would come out of her mouth. Albus looked both curious and disappointed. Tonks looked disturbed, perhaps because Unforgivables had been allegedly tossed about right outside her classroom.
"Did Mr Malfoy cast the Cruciatus on you, Hermione?" Albus asked.
She drew a deep breath, let it out slowly.
"No, sir." They looked shocked. "I'd just battled three strong wizards in class. My shield must not have been up to its usual strength."
It was true that her shield had likely been slightly weaker than it would have been had she cast it at the beginning of class. However, she'd been training in strength and endurance for quite a while now, and she'd hardly been facing an interminable pitched battle. She knew full well the shield she'd cast would have kept everything normal out. But they didn't know that.
"What did Mr Malfoy cast?" Albus asked.
She didn't falter. "He cast wordlessly. Some sort of Blow or Impact Hex, I guess; I hit the door as I fell. It took a lot out of me. But I'll be fine."
Are you sure this is a wise choice, Berit? Fawkes asked, his tone very serious.
It is the one I have chosen. Trust me?
Of course.
At least she knew he wouldn't blab to Albus about what had really happened.
"If an Unforgivable wasn't cast, what set off your wards, sir?" Harry apparently did not believe a word of what she'd just said.
"The wards detect Dark Magic, Harry, not solely Unforgivables," Albus clarified.
"It was a fight between most of the students in seventh year," Hermione pointed out, warming to her subject. "It's likely someone cast something they shouldn't have in the heat of the moment. There are Blasting and Burning Curses that are counted amongst Dark Magic. There was a lot going on, so I can't tell you precisely what was cast."
"You seem to be defending everyone's actions, Miss Granger, when this apparently began as an attack on you," Severus observed, clearly still fishing.
"It escalated very quickly into a situation that was out of everyone's control."
"We will have to remove points from everyone who was involved." The Head of Slytherin was watching her through narrowed eyes.
"We were only trying to defend Hermione!" Harry exclaimed angrily.
"And the Slytherins were only trying to defend Draco."
"Malfoy was uninjured," Harry fired back. "We were only trying to subdue him."
"You had not already done so, Hermione?" Albus asked.
All eyes on her again. She shook her head. "I didn't cast any spells."
Her professors were looking at her with varying degrees of scepticism.
Tonks's tone wasn't particularly censorious, but it was hard to take her comment as anything but. "You took out Ron, Harry, and Draco in class but didn't cast a single spell in the corridor?"
Hermione had been a little too busy grappling with her first real experience of an Unforgivable. Severus was now scrutinizing her even more carefully, and she looked down so that she didn't have to meet his eyes, hoping that she'd clasped her hands in her lap tightly enough that he didn't see the quaver in them.
She shook her head in answer to the question, and murmured, "Not a single one."
Still staring at her hands, she saw a small bloody scratch which finally afforded her a plausible reason for what had happened. Get the entire seventh year involved in a huge fight, and none of them would be likely to notice the removal of a small blood sample. It would explain why the Slytherins had been lying in wait and why Draco would start something at such enormous risk to himself. Disobeying Voldemort tended to be seriously hazardous to one's health.
Albus considered for a moment. "I believe we'll make it fifteen points from everyone who was involved in the altercation." Harry opening his mouth to protest. "Hermione, you will be given forty points for only defending yourself rather than attacking, and Draco will lose an additional thirty-five points for beginning the altercation. Everyone except Hermione will serve a week's detention in the new year."
Harry opened his mouth again.
"Harry," she said, "over a dozen people went after Malfoy; you can't blame the Slytherins."
The Gryffindor closed his mouth with an audible snap, jaw clenched angrily.
The headmaster was regarding her with bright blue eyes that she hoped didn't see too much. "If you are still feeling the effects of your fall, Hermione, you may go see Poppy."
"I'm still a little sore," she agreed readily, "but I don't think it's anything a little rest won't cure. If it's all right with you, I'll just return to my room with Harry as my moral support."
"Of course." The headmaster gave his consent graciously. "I need to speak to the others and make sure they don't need Poppy's assistance, either. I believe you should be present, Tonks, Severus."
They followed obediently, leaving Harry and Hermione to make their way back to their quarters. As soon as the door was closed, Harry rounded on her.
"Hermione, you were shielding, and don't give me any of that nonsense about it not being strong enough. What the hell happened out there?"
"Look," she said, holding up her hand.
He stared at it uncomprehendingly. She pointed at the scratch.
"What the hell does that have to do with anything?" he demanded angrily.
She sighed and sat down on the couch. "Harry. It's blood. I know there were rock chips flying around, but I seriously doubt that one of them caused this. Don't you see why that fight happened?"
He didn't, apparently.
"They had to have been under orders to get blood. That's why almost everyone in our year was there. They got most of us in one fell blow. Who's going to question a scratch in the midst of that chaos?"
Harry sank onto the couch next to her. "You mean they got me, too? That was all to get our blood?"
"Take a look."
There was nothing on his hands, but when he shrugged out of his robe and pulled up his sleeves, they found a small gouge on the outside of his left arm near his elbow. With a sigh, he cast Reparo and Scourgify on the tears in his shirt and robe.
"Voldemort's pretty determined." If she could summarize with a gross understatement. "I guess he decided the Ministry was capable of messing up even a testing by Veritaserum."
"And is Voldemort capable of messing up a testing of our blood?" Harry queried.
"Of course."
He drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Why did you lie?"
She opened her mouth, but they were interrupted by the arrival of Severus. Harry had not been happy about her permitting the older man to enter at will, but since it was not an ability that Severus had exercised—let alone abused—in nearly three weeks, Harry had looked to be almost reconciled to it. One look at Harry now told her that this was likely to change.
The Head of Slytherin crossed to the couch and held out a little blue vial.
Hermione blinked back sudden tears. "I'll be fine."
"You'll be better if you take this," he said flatly.
She took the vial from him, lost in thought. If she drank it, she was admitting what had happened. She still felt poorly, though, and they both basically knew anyway. She downed the vial and instantly understood the grimace of distaste he had made when she had seen him drink it. It was positively horrid.
"Why didn't you tell Albus the truth?" Severus demanded.
She laughed softly, and he raised an eyebrow in query. "That's what Harry wanted to know just before you arrived." They both stared at her pointedly. She waved Severus into a chair and addressed him. "Draco Malfoy isn't about to cast an Unforgivable in front of almost our entire year on a whim." She explained her blood discovery, adding, "It looks as though most of Slytherin was in on it, and assuming they managed it on all of us, Voldemort will soon have a pretty comprehensive answer to his question."
"That doesn't explain why you lied," Harry pointed out. "Knowing they did it for Voldemort doesn't really help, does it?"
She sighed and tried to formulate her feelings into an answer they would understand. "I did it because I'm all that's standing between Draco and Azkaban. I'm not sending him there for what he did to me today. We'll all be fine. That's not worth his life. I don't think it was something he wanted to do."
"But he managed to call you a Mudblood and cast the Cruciatus on you with the required skill," Harry pointed out thickly.
"Yes." She remembered that fleeting look in Draco's eyes. "But I think what Voldemort would have done to him had he not succeeded would have been a lot worse. He could have held me under for longer than he did. People are put in horrible positions during wars; I won't condemn the genuinely regretful for that."
"But you don't know he regrets what he's done," Harry snarled. "You have no idea how he feels."
She shrugged. "But I do know he won't have the opportunity to truly regret it if he's condemned to Azkaban." They both continued to look somehow puzzled. "I was the one injured. It is my choice to offer forgiveness."
"The Ministry does not take such an enlightened view when it comes to Unforgivables," Severus observed coolly.
She smiled slightly. "Are we now advocates of every choice the Ministry makes?"
Neither of them seemed to have an immediate response to this. She did find it rather grimly amusing that she was the one defending Draco; it was she who had been injured by him while both Severus and Harry had more reason than she to want Draco to remain out of Azkaban.
Rather than taking up the issue of their feelings about the Ministry and its policies, the Head of Slytherin went with a non-sequitur: "As a result of the altercation, Gryffindor lost sixty-five points. Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff each lost seventy-five points, while Slytherin lost one hundred forty points."
This seemed to soothe the last of Harry's overt anger, and Hermione was left wondering if that was why Severus had said it.
She cast Tempus and saw that, as she had thought, Severus was in danger of being late for his afternoon class.
"You'd better go, Professor. Thank you for the potion; it helped tremendously, but I think I'll just lie down for a bit."
What she really thought would help was an afternoon spent with her herd, but sneaking out to the Forbidden Forest at one o'clock in the afternoon didn't seem the wisest of plans.
At the door, Severus paused and turned back with what she thought was reluctance.
"I trust you remember all the treatments for that particular curse?"
She barely managed not to gape at him. Never once had he referred to the events of that night last year, and she had convinced herself that he didn't remember the way it had ended.
It appeared he recalled plenty.
Stunned and unable to find her voice, she nodded.
He looked about to say more but apparently thought better of it and left without another word.
"What was that?" Harry asked.
"Nothing," she said, smiling at him as she rose. "I really am feeling much better, but I'd like to lie down."
He rose as well. "If you say so." His tone softened. "I'm glad you're all right."
"And I, you." She smiled. "I'll be up in a few hours, good as new."
She slept until half three, showered, and dressed in jeans and one of the warm Weasley jumpers Molly had knit for her. She felt much improved, but it was still disturbing to realize that she had been hit with an Unforgivable this afternoon.
She wouldn't have guessed that Draco would be the one to cast it, and the fact that it had occurred at Hogwarts—in the corridor outside of her Defence classroom, no less—made it seem all the more surreal; she wouldn't be shocked to learn that she was just now waking from an odd dream.
She emerged into the common room to find that Harry was there and deep in the midst of his homework from the look of it.
"Hey," she greeted him softly. "That looks like an awful lot of schoolwork."
He looked up from his position on the couch, books piled around him, and his face lit up as he took in her alive and unharmed appearance.
"I thought if I wanted a hope of approaching the same level of completeness as you when we stop working before Christmas, I needed to do some major catch-up." He set the scroll that had been on his lap to the side and grinned ruefully. "Now it'll only look as though I was asleep for half the term."
"Nobody says you have to be as compulsive about your schoolwork as me."
"Nobody else is the top of every class she's taking, either," he said, grinning more broadly.
She shrugged, a smile peeking out at the corner of her lips. "Well, there are perks to being compulsive, yes."
He shook his head, trying to hide his smile. "How are you feeling?"
"Quite well, thank you." Nothing a trip to the Forest wouldn't fix, anyway. "I think reaction is starting to set in, but I've survived."
He looked concerned. "You're sure you're all right?"
She shifted a couple of books out of the way and sat down on the couch next to him.
"I've had some strange things happen to me over the years. I don't really remember being Petrified, so I can't speak to that. When we went into the Department of Mysteries, we knew we could be facing a fight. Once it started, there was every chance we'd be badly injured. When I got hit by Dolohov's curse, it was still sort of a surprise, because I thought when I Silenced him that I'd stopped him, but part of me still knew that I could be hurt." She paused for a moment to gather her thoughts. "I was even prepared to get injured in class today, and I know that scuffles can break out in the hallway from time to time, but I wasn't … prepared to be hit with anything that Dark. It's still a little weird to think about."
"As it should be," Harry answered sympathetically. "We should be more protected than that in our own school. So don't you worry about any reactions you have." He grinned suddenly. "Maybe I can come sleep in your bed!"
She snorted. She was certain he shouldn't be expressing quite so much glee at the prospect of her having nightmares, and he seemed to realize it as well, trying to tone down his expression, but she knew he was just pleased at the prospect of helping her the way she had helped him in the past.
She gave in and smiled at him. "I think I'll be all right, thank you, Harry."
"Well, just remember that I'm always here to help."
She nodded. "I don't think you have to worry; I doubt that Draco is going to try to hurt me again."
Harry let out a loud exhalation of breath. "I don't really understand why you can be so sure of that. I want it to be true, but…." he trailed off, looking frustrated.
"I can't really explain it," she said, which was probably not the answer that he was looking for. "I guess I … sympathise with people pushed into horrible positions with this war." All she ever had to do was think of Severus, and her heart went out to people who were forced to commit actions they found abhorrent. "I think it's good that we're all going on break. It will give everyone the chance to unwind and figure out what's going on in their lives."
"Speaking of, since I doubt everyone will be at breakfast tomorrow, we should probably head up to dinner."
Hermione nodded. "I suppose we ought to reassure them of our health and happiness."
"And cozy coupleness?" he added with another grin, rising from the couch and offering his hand.
Laughing, she accepted the assistance, merely shaking her head bemusedly as he tucked her arm through his.
"I guess so," she answered. "We wouldn't want the student body to think you'd abandoned me because I defeated you in class and then got the stuffing knocked out of me in the corridor."
"That would be shockingly heartless," he agreed.
They joined the Gryffindor table and were met with many solicitations after their health.
Hermione assured everyone that she was fine, played up how startled she had been by the attack after the afternoon of duelling had tired her out, and brushed off concerns about what Draco had cast at her; a brief nap, she said, and she was good as new.
Apparently, the seventh-years had spent most of the afternoon spreading the tale of what had happened, so everyone knew all about it, and the younger students were rather in awe of a fight that had required the participation of almost every seventh-year at Hogwarts. The few of her year-mates who hadn't been there looked as though they were feeling rather left out, which Hermione thought was completely nonsensical. She made sure to stress the punishment which had been meted out.
"Violence isn't a solution to our problems," she pointed out to all those who seemed to be listening for promises of vengeance. "We could have resolved the situation peaceably; instead, all the houses lost a lot of points, and all the seventh-years will start the new year with a bunch of detentions. Not much fun at all, really."
This, thankfully, seemed to slow them down a little; the last thing she wanted was the rest of the school mimicking their horrible example.
Albus seemed to be thinking similarly, for he took the time as dinner was drawing to a close not only to bid everyone farewell for their holidays, but to remind them of the proper etiquette within Hogwarts upon their return.
"We will not hesitate to take harsher measures should you decide that brawling in the corridors is an acceptable pastime. We take attacks on our students very seriously, both by internal and external forces. Now," he added, smiling at them as his tone softened, "everyone head off and finish packing. Remember that the train leaves promptly at eleven tomorrow morning."
There was the usual hustle and bustle as students grabbed a last dessert, shouldered their school bags, and climbed off the benches.
An ominous silence suddenly fell around the Gryffindor table, and Hermione had her wand in her hand and pointed at the reason before she'd quite processed that Draco was standing beside her. Both his hands were visible, and he was unarmed, but everyone in the vicinity had their wands trained on him.