It was enough to make you think twice about the whole heroine business.
Harry's voice turned a bit more formal. "Speaking of which, Miss Granger, how goes your latest quest?"
"Well," said Hermione, "unless the ghost of Salazar Slytherin really does show up and tell us where to find bullies, I don't think we're going to have much luck." Not that she was sorry about that.
She glanced over at Harry, and saw the boy giving her a peculiarly intense look.
"You know, Hermione," the boy said quietly, as though to make sure that nobody else in the world heard, "I think you're right. I think some people get a lot more help than others in becoming heroes. And I don't think that's fair, either."
And Harry grabbed at her witch's robes where they lay over her arm, and hustled her into a side-hall of the corridor they were walking through, her mouth gaping open in surprise even as Harry's wand came into his hand, they rounded a curve of the side-hall and it was so narrow that it was almost pushing her and Harry into each other, even as Harry pointed to the way they'd come and softly said "Quietus", then a moment later, in the other direction, "Quietus" again.
The boy looked searchingly around them, not just to every side, but even upward toward the ceiling and down toward the floor.
And then Harry stuck a hand in his pouch and said, "Invisibility cloak."
"Gleep?" said Hermione.
Harry was already drawing out folds of shimmering black fabric from the mokeskin device. "Don't worry," the boy said with a small grin, "they're so rare that nobody bothered to make a school rule against them..."
And then Harry held out the dark velvet mesh to her, and said, his voice strangely formal, "I do not give you, but loan you, my cloak, unto Hermione Jean Granger. Protect her well."
She stared at the shimmering velvet of the cloak, cloth that swallowed all the light that fell on it except what glinted from small strange reflections, fabric so perfectly black it should've shown dust or lint or something but it didn't, the longer you looked the more you felt like what you were seeing wasn't really there at all, but then you blinked again and it was just a black cloak.
"Take it, Hermione."
Hardly even thinking, Hermione stretched out her hand to grasp the fabric; and then just as her brain woke up and she started to pull her hand back, Harry let go of the cloak and it started to fall and she grabbed at it without thinking. And the instant her fingers touched and held the cloak she felt an intangible jolt run through her like picking up her wand for the first time; and it was like she heard a song being sung, ever so faintly, in the back of her mind.
"That's one of my quest items, Hermione," Harry said softly. "It belonged to my father, and it's not something I can replace, if it's lost. Don't loan it to anyone else, don't show it to anyone, don't tell anyone it exists... but if you want to borrow it for a while, just come to me and ask."
Hermione finally tore her eyes loose from the depthless black folds and stared back up at Harry.
"I can't -"
"You certainly can," Harry said. "Because there's nothing even the tiniest bit fair about my finding this gift-wrapped in a box next to my bed one morning, and you... not." Harry paused thoughtfully. "Unless you did get your own invisibility cloak, in which case never mind."
Then the implications of invisibility cloak finally dawned on her, and she pointed a shocked finger at Harry, though they were close enough together that she couldn't quite straighten her arm properly, and her voice rose with considerable indignation as she said, "So that's how you disappeared from the Potions closet! And the time when -" and then she trailed off, because even with an invisibility cloak she still couldn't see how Harry had...
Harry buffed his fingernails on his robes with artful nonchalance, and said, "Well, you knew there had to be some trick to it, right? And now the heroine will mysteriously know where and when to find bullies - just like she listened to the bullies planning it, even though nobody her age could possibly have turned herself invisible to spy on them."
There was a pause and a silence.
"Harry -" she said. "I'm - I'm not sure anymore that fighting bullies is such a good idea."
Harry's eyes stayed steady on hers. "Because the other girls might get hurt?"
She nodded, just nodded.
"That's their choice, Hermione, just like it's yours. I decided not to do the obvious stupid thing that everyone does in books, try to keep you safe and protected and helpless, and have you get really angry at me, and push me away while you go off on your own and get into even more trouble, and then heroically pull through it successfully, after which I'd finally have my epiphany and realize that blah blah blah etcetera. I know how that part of my life story goes, so I'm just skipping over it. If I can predict what I'm going to think later, I might as well go ahead and think it now. Anyway, my point is, you shouldn't smother your friends to keep them safe, either. Just tell them up front it's predictably going to go horribly wrong, and if they still want to be heroines after that, fine."
It was at times like this that Hermione wondered if she was ever going to get used to the way Harry thought. "Harry, I really," her voice stuck for a second, "really, really don't want them getting hurt! Especially because of something I started!"
"Hermione," Harry said seriously, "I'm pretty sure you did the right thing. I don't see what could realistically happen to them that would be worse for them, in the long run, than not trying."
"What if they get badly hurt?" Hermione said. Her voice felt blocked in her throat; she remembered Captain Ernie saying how Harry had just stared straight into the eyes of a bully as the bully bent his finger back, before Professor Sprout had arrived to save him; and there was another thought that came after that, about Hannah and her delicate hands with the fingernails that she carefully painted in Hufflepuff yellow every morning, but that wasn't allowed to be imagined. "And then - they'll never do anything courageous, ever again -"
"I don't think it works like that," Harry said steadily. "Even if it all goes mind-bogglingly wrong, I don't think it works like that inside a human mind. The important thing is believing about yourself that you're someone who can break your boundaries. Trying and getting hurt can't possibly be worse for you than being... stuck."
"What if you're wrong, Harry?"
Harry paused for a moment, and then shrugged a little sadly, and said, "What if I'm right?"
Hermione looked back at the black mesh running over her hand. From the inside the cloak felt strangely soft and yet firm against her palm, as if it was trying to give her hand a reassuring hug.
Then she lifted her arm back up, holding the cloak back to Harry.
Harry didn't move to take it.
"I -" said Hermione. "I mean, thank you, thank you a lot, but I'm still thinking about it, so you can take it back for now. And... Harry, I don't think it's right to spy on people -"
"Not even on known bullies, to rescue their victims?" Harry said. "I've never been bullied, but I've been through a realistic simulation, and it didn't feel very pleasant. Have you ever been bullied, Hermione?"
"No," she said in a quiet voice, and went on holding out Harry's invisibility cloak to him.
Finally Harry took back his cloak - she felt a small twitch of loss as the inaudible song vanished from the back of her mind - and started to stuff the black material back into his pouch.
As the pouch ate the last of the fabric, Harry turned from her, to break the Quieting Barrier -
"And, um," Hermione said. "That's not the Cloak of Invisibility, is it? The one we read about in the library on page eighteen of Paula Vieira's translation of Gottschalk's An Illustrated Scroll of Lost Devices?"
Harry turned his head back, grinning slightly, and said in exactly the same tone of voice he'd used earlier with the other students at dinner, "I cannot confirm or deny that I possess magical artifacts of incredible power."
When Hermione climbed into bed that night she was still trying to decide. Her life had been simpler at d
innertime, back when there hadn't been any practical way for them to find bullies; and now she had to choose again; not for herself, this time, but for her friends. In her mind's eye she kept seeing Dumbledore's lined face and the pain it hadn't quite hidden, and in her mind's ears she kept hearing Harry's voice saying 'That's their choice, Hermione, just like it's yours.'
And her hand kept remembering the sensation of the cloak against her fingers, replaying it over and over in her mind. There was a power to the feeling that compelled her thoughts to return to it, and to the song she'd heard / hadn't heard in a part of her mind and magic which now lay silent once more.
Harry had spoken to the cloak like it was a person, telling it to take good care of her. Harry had said the cloak had belonged to his father, that he couldn't replace it if it was lost...
But... Harry wouldn't really do that, would he?
Just hand her one of the three Deathly Hallows created centuries before Hogwarts?
She could say that she felt flattered, but this went way beyond feeling flattered, into making her wonder just what she was to Harry, exactly.
Maybe Harry was the sort of person who went around loaning ancient lost magical artifacts to anyone he considered a friend, but -
But when she thought about which part of his life Harry had said he'd skipped over, the part where he tried to keep her safe and protected...
Hermione stared up at the ceiling of the Ravenclaw dorm. Somewhere beyond her bed, Mandy and Su were talking. She'd turned up her Quieting Charm to where she couldn't hear the exact words, but could still hear their faint murmur; there was something comforting about sleeping in a dorm with the other girls. Harry kept his own Quieter turned up all the way, she knew.
She was starting to wonder if maybe Harry actually did, well...
You know...
Like her.
It took Hermione Granger a long time to fall asleep that night.
And when she woke up the next morning there was a small slip of parchment peeking out from under her pillow which said At half-past ten you will find a bully in the fourth passageway to the left of the hall leaving the Potions classroom - S.
When Hermione entered the Great Hall that morning, her stomach was filled with flying butterflies the size of Hippogriffs; even as she approached the Ravenclaw breakfast table she still hadn't decided what to do.
There was an empty place next to Padma, she saw. That would be where to sit down, if she was going to tell Padma and then ask Padma to tell Daphne and Tracey.
Hermione walked toward the empty place next to Padma.
There were words waiting in her throat, Padma, I got a mysterious message -
And she could feel a huge brick wall inside her, stopping the words from coming out. She'd be putting Hannah and Susan and Daphne in danger. Taking them and leading them by the hand straight into trouble. That was Wrong.
Or she could just go try to handle the bully herself, without telling her friends anything, and that, quite obviously, was also Wrong.
Hermione knew she was being faced with a Moral Dilemma, just like all those wizards and witches she'd read about in stories. Only in stories people always got a right choice and a wrong choice, not two wrong ones, which seemed a bit unfair. But she had the sense, somehow - maybe it came from the way Harry always talked about how the history books would see them - that she was faced with a Heroic Decision, and that her whole life might end up going one way or another, depending on what she chose right now, this morning.
Hermione sat down at the table without looking to either side, just gazing at the plate and silverware like they might have answers hidden inside, thinking as hard as she ever had, and a few seconds later she heard Padma's voice whispering almost in her ear, "Daphne says she knows where a bully's going to be at ten-thirty today."
Doomed.
They were all doomed, in Susan Bones's opinion.
Auntie sometimes told stories which started out like this, people doing something they knew was stupid, and the stories usually ended with someone being doomed all over the floor and all over the walls and getting on Auntie's shoes.
"Hey, Padma," muttered Parvati, her voice just barely audible over the soft impacts of eight girls tiptoeing through the corridor leading to the Potions classroom, "d'you know why Hermione's been sighing all morning -"
"No talking!" hissed Lavender, the harsh whisper sounding much louder than Parvati's mutter. "You never know when Evil might be listening!"
"Shhh!" said three other girls even more loudly.
Utterly, totally, quite extremely doomed.
As they approached the fourth passageway to the left of the Potions classroom, where Daphne's mysterious informant had said the bullying would take place, the eight of them moved slower, the sound of their feet got softer, and finally General Granger made the gesture that meant Halt, I'll look ahead.
Lavender raised a hand, then, and when Hermione turned to look at her, Lavender, looking puzzled, pointed straight down the corridor, gestured to herself, and then tried to sign something else that Susan didn't understand -
General Granger shook her head, and once again, this time with slower, more exaggerated movements, made the sign for Halt, I'll look ahead.
Lavender, looking even more puzzled, pointed back the way they'd come, and made a bouncing gesture with her other hand.
Now everyone else was looking even more confused than Lavender, and Susan thought with some acerbity that evidently one hour of practice done two days ago wasn't enough to remember a new set of code signals.
Hermione pointed at Lavender, then at the floor beneath Lavender's feet, the expression on her face making it very clear that the intended meaning was You. Stay. Here.
Lavender nodded.
Doom doom doom, went the words of the Chaos Legion's marching song through Susan's mind, doom doom doom doom doom doom...
Hermione reached into her robes, and drew out a little rod with a mirror on the end of it and an eyepiece. Very very softly indeed, the Ravenclaw girl crept up to the wall, right next to where the passageway opened off the corridor, and peeked just the tip of the eyepiece around the corner.
Then a little more.
Then a little more.
Then General Granger cautiously stuck her head around the side.
General Granger turned back to them, nodded, and made the hand gesture for follow me.
Susan felt a little better as she crept forward. The part of the Plan which called for them to arrive thirty minutes before the bully had, apparently, actually worked. Maybe they were only slightly doomed...?
At ten-twenty-nine, almost on the dot, the bully showed up. If anyone had been present to hear - though the corridor was apparently empty - they would have heard his shoes clicking solidly through the main corridor, entering the passageway, walking toward where the passageway turned its first corner, turning that corner, and then stopping in some surprise upon seeing that the passageway now terminated in a solid brick wall where no wall had been before.
Then the bully shrugged and turned away, as he leaned back to watch the main passage from just around the corner.
It was the castle Hogwarts, after all.
Behind the hastily Transfigured thin panels they'd assembled into the outward appearance of a brick wall, the girls waited; not speaking, not moving, hardly even breathing, but watching through the eyeholes they'd left themselves.
As Susan's gaze took in the bully, she could feel the tightening of her chest all the way into her toes. The boy looked to be in his seventh-year if not older, and his robes were trimmed in green instead of the red they'd been hoping for, and he had muscles, and after staring for a bit longer, Susan realized his stance had the balance that meant that he dueled.
Then they all heard the sound of more feet approaching from the corridor. The fourth-year Gryffindors and Slytherins had just been let out of Potions class.
The footsteps pattered past, and diminished and faded, and the bully didn't do anything.
For a moment Susan felt an instant of relief -
Then another, smaller group of footsteps approached.
The bully still didn't do anything, as the footsteps went past.
That happened a few more times.
And then, as there approached the faintly audible sound of one last set of footsteps, the seven girls heard the bully's voice saying, clear and cold and quiet, "Protego".
Someone did gasp then, though fortunately very very quietly. If they couldn't get in even a single shot -
The bullies were learning already, Susan realized, she hadn't expected S.P.H.E.W. to be able to do this very often before the bullies caught on - but - Hermione had already defeated three bullies - and the school had been buzzing with speculation about Salazar Slytherin's ghost, yesterday -
He's expecting us!
Susan would have whispered to give up, to abort the plan, only there was no way to convey a message to -
"Silencio," said the bully in a soft, deliberate voice with his wand pointed toward the corridor, the blue haze of his Shielding Charm shimmering around him. "Accio victim."
When the fourth-year boy came into their field of vision he was dangling upside down as if an invisible hand were holding him high by one leg, his red-trimmed robes beginning to slide down his thighs to reveal the pants beneath. His mouth was opening and closing helpessly, no sound coming out.
"I suppose you're wondering what's going on," the seventh-year Slytherin said in a quiet, cold voice. "Don't worry. It's so simple even a Gryffindor could understand."
With that, the Slytherin's left hand formed a fist and drove hard into the Gryffindor's belly. The fourth-year boy's body jerked around frantically, but still no words left his mouth.
"You're my victim," said the older Slytherin. "I'm a bully. I'm going to beat you up. And we'll see if anyone stops me."
It was at that moment that Susan realized it was a trap.
And in almost the same moment, there rang out the mighty and high-pitched voice of a young girl, crying, "Stop, evildoer! Finite Incantatem!"
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality Page 115