"I've heard about people without souls," Dean Thomas said gloomily. "They have to dress all in black, and they write awful poetry, and nothing ever makes them happy. They're all angsty."
"I don't want to be angsty!" cried Pansy.
"Too bad," said Dean Thomas. "You've got to be, now that your soul's gone."
Pansy turned, and stretched out a begging hand toward Draco Malfoy's desk. "Draco!" she said pleadingly. "Mr. Malfoy! Please, make Tracey give me back my soul!"
"I can't," said Tracey. "I ate it."
"Make her throw it up!" yelled Pansy.
The heir of Malfoy had slumped forward, resting his head in both hands, so that nobody could see his face. "Why is my life like this?" said Draco Malfoy.
A wild babble of whispers started up as Tracey returned to her desk, now smiling in satisfaction, while Pansy stood in the midst of the classroom, wringing her hands and tears starting from her eyes -
"Be. Quiet."
The soft, lethal voice seemed to fill the whole classroom as Professor Snape stalked in through the door. His face was angrier than Daphne had ever seen it, sending a jolt of genuine fear down her spine. Hastily she looked down at her homework.
"Sit down, Parkinson," the Potions Master hissed, "and you, Davis, take off that ridiculous cloak -"
"Professor Snaaaaaape!" wailed Pansy Parkinson in tears. "Tracey ate my sooouuul!"
Chapter 75: Self Actualization Final, Responsibility
It was a looping, meandering alley in the midst of Hogwarts, wandering like a stray lock of hair; sometimes crossing itself, it seemed, but you couldn't ever get to the end if you gave into the temptation of apparent shortcuts.
At the end of the tangle, six students leaned against rough stones, robes black against the grey walls and trimmed in green, eyes darting from one to each other. Torches burned in the windowless sconce, casting light to ward off the darkness and heat to ward off the chill of the Slytherin dungeons.
"I am certain," Reese Belka snapped, "absolutely certain, that was no true ritual. Little firstie witches can't do that kind of magic, and even if they could, who's ever heard of a Dark ritual which sacrifices a sealed horror for - that?"
"Were you -" said Lucian Bole. "I mean - after that girl snapped her fingers -"
Belka's glare should have melted him. "No," she spat, "I was not."
"That is, she wasn't naked," drawled Marcus Flint, his broad shoulders leaning back in apparent relaxation against the lumpy stone surface. "Covered in chocolate frosting, yes, but not naked."
"This day Potter has offered great insult to our Houses," said the grim voice of Jaime Astorga.
"Yes, well, I'm sorry to be blunt," Randolph Lee said evenly. The seventh-year duelist rubbed at his chin, where a faint fuzz of beard had been allowed to grow. "But when someone sticks you to the ceiling, it's a message, Astorga. It's a message which says: I'm an incredibly powerful Dark Wizard who could've done anything to you I damn well pleased, and I don't care if your House is offended, either."
Robert Jugson III gave a soft, low laugh at this, a chuckle that sent chills down several spines. "It makes you wonder if you picked the wrong side, doesn't it? I've heard tales about messages like that, sent at the old Dark Lord's bidding..."
"I'm not ready to kneel to Potter just yet," said Astorga, staring hard into Jugson's eyes.
"Neither am I," said Belka.
Jugson was holding his wand, and he turned it idly back and forth in his fingers, pointing it up and then downward. "Are you a Gryffindor or a Slytherin?" said Jugson. "Everyone's got a price. Everyone smart."
This statement produced a moment of silence.
"Shouldn't Malfoy be here?" Bole said tentatively.
Flint gave a dismissive flick of his fingers. "Whatever Malfoy's plotting, he wants to put on an air of innocence. He can't be seen missing at the same time as us."
"But everyone knows that already," said Bole. "Even in the other Houses."
"Yes, very clumsy," said Belka. She snorted. "Malfoy or no, he's just a little firstie and we don't need him here."
"I will owl my father," Jugson said softly, "and he will speak to Lord Malfoy himself -" Abruptly, Jugson stopped speaking.
"I don't know about you, dearies," Belka said with fake sweetness, "but I don't plan on running scared from a false ritual, and I'm not done with Potter and his pet mudblood."
Nobody answered. All their gazes were looking past her.
Slowly, Belka turned around to see what the others were staring at.
"You will do nothing," hissed their Head of House. Severus Snape's face was enraged, when he spoke small spots of spittle flew from his mouth, further dotting his already-dirtied robes. "You fools have done enough! You have embarrassed my House - lost to first-years - now you speak of embroiling noble Lords of the Wizengamot in your pathetic childish squabbles? I shall deal with this matter. You will not embarrass this House again, you will not risk embarrassing this House again! You are done with fighting witches, and if I hear otherwise -"
If you thought they'd be sitting next to each other at dinnertime, after that, you'd be quite mistaken.
"What does she want from me?" came the plaintive cry of a boy who, for all his extensive reading in the scientific literature, was still a bit naive about certain things. "Did she want to get beaten up?"
The upper-year Ravenclaw boys who'd sat down next to him at the dinner-table exchanged swift glances with each other until, by some unspoken protocol, the most experienced of their number spoke.
"Look," said Arty Grey, the seventh-year who was leading in their competition by three witches and a Defense Professor, "the thing you've got to understand is, just because she's angry doesn't mean you lost points. Miss Granger is angry because she got all frightened and you're there to be blamed, you understand? But at the same time, even though she won't admit it, she'll be touched that her boyfriend went to such ridiculous and frankly insane lengths to protect her."
"This is not about points," ground out Harry Potter, the words visibly escaping from between his clenched teeth. Dinner sat ignored on the table in front of him. "This is about justice. And I. Am. Not. Her. Boyfriend!"
This was met by a certain amount of sniggering from all present.
"Yeah, well," said a sixth-year Ravenclaw boy, "I think after she kisses you to bring you out of Dementation and you stick forty-four bullies to the ceiling for her, we've gone way past 'she's not my girlfriend, really' and into the question of what your kids will be like. Wow, that's a scary thought..." The Ravenclaw trailed off and then said, in a smaller voice, "Please don't look at me like that."
"Look," said Arty Grey, "I'm sorry to be blunt about this, but you can have justice or you can have girls, you can't have both at the same time." He clapped a companionable hand on Harry Potter's shoulder. "You've got potential, kid, more potential than any wizard I've ever seen, but you've got to learn how to use it, you know? Be a bit sweeter to them, learn some spells to clean up that mess you call hair. Above all, you need to hide your evilness better - not too well, but better. Nice well-groomed boys get girls, and Dark Wizards also get girls, but nice well-groomed boys suspected of being secretly Dark get more girls than you can imagine -"
"Not interested," Harry said flatly, as he picked up the boy's hand from his shoulder and unceremoniously dropped it.
"But you will be," said Arty Grey, his voice low and foreboding. "Ah, you will be!"
Elsewhere along the same table -
"Romantic?" shrieked Hermione Granger, so loudly that some of the girls next to her winced. "What part of that was romantic? He didn't ask! He never asks! He just sends ghosts after people and glues them to ceilings and does whatever he wants with my life!"
"But don't you see?" said a fourth-year witch. "It means that even though he's evil, he loves you!"
"You're not helping," said Penelope Clearwater a little further down the table, but she was ignored. Several older witches had started toward Hermione, after she
'd sat down at the extreme opposite end of the table from Harry Potter, but then a swifter cloud of younger girls had surrounded Hermione in an impenetrable barrier.
"Boys," said Hermione Granger, "should not be allowed to love girls without asking them first! This is true in a number of ways and especially when it comes to gluing people to the ceiling!"
This was also ignored. "It's just like a play!" sighed a third-year girl.
"A play?" said Hermione. "I'd like to see the play where anything like this happens!"
"Oh," said the third-year girl, "I was thinking of that really romantic one where there's this very nice, sweet boy who makes a Floo call, only he mispronounces his destination and stumbles out into this room full of Dark Wizards who are performing a forbidden ritual that should've stayed forever lost to time, and they're sacrificing seven victims in order to unseal this ancient horror which is supposed to grant someone a wish if it's freed, so of course the boy's presence interrupts the ritual, and as the horror is eating all the Dark Wizards and everyone is dying the boy's last thought is that he wishes he could've had a girlfriend, and the next thing you know the boy is lying in the lap of this beautiful woman whose eyes are burning with a dreadful light, only she doesn't understand anything about being human so the boy always has to stop her eating people. This is just like that play, only you're the boy and Harry Potter is the girl!"
"That..." Hermione said, feeling quite surprised. "That actually does sound something like -"
"It does?" blurted a second-year girl sitting across the table, who was now leaning forward, looking horrified and yet even more fascinated.
"No!" said Hermione. "I mean - he's not my boyfriend!"
Two seconds later, Hermione's ears caught up with what her lips had just said.
The fourth-year witch put her hand on Hermione's shoulder and gave her a comforting squeeze. "Miss Granger," she said in a soothing voice, "I think if you're really honest with yourself, you'll admit that the real reason you're angry with your dark master is that he channeled his unspeakable powers through Tracey Davis instead of you."
Hermione's mouth opened but her throat locked up before the words came out, which was probably a good thing, because if she'd actually yelled that loudly it would've broken something.
"How's that possible, actually?" said the third-year girl. "I mean for Harry Potter to work through another girl even though he's bound himself to you? Do the three of you have one of those, you know, arrangements?"
"Gaaaaack," said Hermione Granger, her throat still locked, her brain halted, and her vocal cords spontaneously making a noise like she was coughing up a yak.
(Later.)
"I don't understand why you're being so unreasonable," said another second-year witch, who'd replaced the third-year-girl after Hermione had threatened to ask Tracey to eat her soul. "I mean, really, if someone like Harry Potter rescued me, I'd be - sending him thank-you cards, and hugging him, and," the girl's face was a bit red, "well, kissing him, I'd hope."
"Yeah!" said the other second-year witch. "I've never understood why girls in plays get angry when the main character goes out of his way to be nice to them. I wouldn't act like that if the hero liked me."
Hermione Granger had dropped her head to the dinner table, her hands slowly pulling at her hair.
"You just don't understand male psychology," the fourth-year witch said in an authoritative voice. "Granger's got to make it look like she can mysteriously resist his seductive charm."
(Even later.)
And so before long Hermione Granger had turned to the only person left she could talk to, the only person guaranteed to understand her point of view -
"They're all mad," said Hermione Granger as she strode vigorously toward Ravenclaw tower, having left dinner a bit early. "Everyone except you and me, Harry, I mean everyone except us in this whole school of Hogwarts, they're all entirely mad. And Ravenclaw girls are the worst, I don't know what Ravenclaw girls go reading when they get older, but I'm certain they ought not to be reading it. One witch asked me if the two of us had soul-bonded, which I'm going to look up in the library tonight, but I'm pretty sure has never actually happened -"
"I don't even know a name for this kind of fallacious reasoning," said Harry Potter. The boy was walking normally, which meant he often had to skip forward a few steps to match her own indignation-fueled speed. "I seriously think if it was up to them, they'd be dragging us off this minute to get our names changed to Potter-Evans-Verres-Granger... Ugh, saying that out loud makes me realize how awful it sounds."
"You mean your name would be Potter-Evans-Verres-Granger and mine would be Granger-Potter-Evans-Verres," said Hermione. "It's too horrible to imagine."
"No," said the boy, "House Potter is a Noble House, so I think that name stays in front -"
"What?" she said indignantly. "Who says we have to -"
There was a sudden awful silence, broken only by the thuds of their shoes.
"Anyhow," Hermione said hastily, "some of the crazy things they said at dinner got me thinking, so I just want to say, Harry, that I really am grateful to you for saving me and everybody from getting beat up, and even though some parts of this afternoon upset me, I'm sure we can just talk about it calmly."
"Ah..." Harry said with a faint and tentative smile, his eyes showing a mixture of befuddlement and apprehension, "that's... good, I guess?"
To be specific, there'd been the fourth-year witch explaining that, since Harry was the evil wizard who'd fallen in love with Hermione, and Hermione was the pure and innocent girl who would either redeem him or get seduced by the Dark Arts herself, it followed that Hermione had to be perpetually indignant at anything Harry did, even if it was him heroically saving her from certain doom, just so that their romance wouldn't resolve itself before the end of Act IV. And then Penelope Clearwater, who Hermione had really thought was smarter than that, had remarked in a loud voice that for identical reasons it was impossible for Hermione to just go over and talk sensibly with Harry about why she was feeling hurt, and anyway Dark Wizards were attracted to passionate defiance in a woman, not logic. This was the point at which Hermione had shoved herself up from the benches, stomped furiously over to where Harry was sitting, and asked him in a reasonable voice if the two of them could go for a walk and sort things out.
"So in other words," Hermione said in her calmest voice ever, "you're not really in trouble with me, I'm still talking to you, we're still friends, and we're still studying together. We're not having a fight. Right?"
Somehow this only seemed to increase Harry Potter's apprehension. "Right," said the Boy-Who-Lived.
"Great!" said Hermione. "So, have you worked out why I was upset, Mr. Potter?"
There was a pause. "You wanted me to keep out of your affairs?" Harry said cautiously. "I mean - I know you wanted to do things on your own. And I was staying out of your way, until I'd heard you'd gotten ambushed by three junior Death Eaters and, honestly, I wasn't expecting that. Professor Quirrell wasn't expecting that. I started to worry you'd gotten in over your head and then, no offense Hermione, forty-four bullies in a massed ambush is way beyond what anyone could handle without help. That's why I thought you really needed help just that once -"
"No, that part's fine," said Hermione. "We were in over our heads, honestly. Please guess again, Mr. Potter."
"Um," said Harry. "What Tracey did... startled you?"
"Startled me, Mr. Potter?" There might have been a touch of acidity in her voice. "No, Mr. Potter, I was scared. I was frightened. I wouldn't want to admit to being afraid of just dragons or something, people might think I was cowardly, but when you can hear distant voices crying 'Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!' and there's pools of blood seeping out from under all the doors, then it's okay to be scared."
"I am sorry," Harry said with what sounded like genuine regret. "I thought you'd realize it was me."
"And the reason we all got scared like that, Mr. Potter, was that you didn't ask first!" Despite her intenti
ons, Hermione found her voice was rising again. "You should've asked me before you did something like that, Harry! You should've said very specifically, 'Hermione, can I make blood come out from under the doors?' It's important to be specific when you're asking about that sort of thing!"
The boy rubbed the back of his neck as he walked. "I... honestly, I just thought you'd have to say no."
"Yes, Mr. Potter, I could've said no. That's the whole point of asking first, Mr. Potter!"
"No, I mean you'd have had to say no, whether or not it was what you really wanted. And then all of you would've gotten beaten up and it would've been my fault for asking first."
Hermione's eyebrows went up in a bit of surprise, and she kept walking for a few steps while she tried to understand this. "What?" she said.
"Well..." the boy said a bit slowly. "I mean... you're the Sunshine General, aren't you? You couldn't say yes to me scaring people, not even bullies, not even to save your friends from getting beaten up. You would've had to say no, and then you would've gotten hurt. This way, you can tell people honestly that you had no idea and that it wasn't your fault. That's why I didn't warn you."
Hermione stopped walking, turned to face Harry full on instead of just turning her head. Her voice was carefully even as she said, "Harry, you've got to stop coming up with clever reasons for doing stupid things."
Harry's eyebrows flew up. After a moment he said, "Look... I know what you mean, of course, but there's still the question of whether it's actually is a good idea, not just a clever one -"
"I understand why you did what you did today," Hermione said. "But I want you to promise that from now on, you'll ask me first, always, even if you can come up with a reason why you shouldn't."
There was a pause that stretched, and Hermione could feel her heart sinking.
"Hermione -" Harry started to say.
"Why?" The frustration burst out into her voice. "Why is it so awful? All you have to do is ask!"
Harry's eyes were very serious. "Who in S.P.H.E.W. do you try hardest to defend, Hermione? Who are you most afraid for, when you fight?"
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality Page 122