Any idea of the Three Broomsticks for dinner was abandoned as they waited for the Aurors to get there. Harry had to mollify the wizard who had had part of his house destroyed by guaranteeing that he would pay for repairs. It didn't really appease the man, but it made him a lot quieter. Madame Rosmerta had emerged from the pub and, seeing the aftermath of what happened, disappeared back inside only to come back a few minutes later with a tray filled with hot mugs of tea. It was surprising how much the tea helped. It gave them something else to focus on. For Ron it was the sweet taste, for Harry it was the warmth seeping into his fingers. Anything that wasn't how close they had all come to dying.
The Aurors arrived and immediately took all the teens into custody. They weren't arrested, but it was made clear they were going to the Ministry to answer questions. The Aurors portkeyed them all together. Because they were minors, the Aurors couldn't question them without a guardian and they also couldn't just throw them in cells until their guardians got there. So they all sat in an interview room with a young female Auror who said her name was Jones.
Susan was pretty shaken by the whole thing. Hermione, though, was just staring into space. Harry was just getting worried about her when the D.M.L.E. medi wizard turned up to look them all over. One quick spell had Hermione diagnosed with a concussion. It had to be Harry's fault. Hermione had banged her head on the floor when he tackled her out of the path of the killing cure. Fortunately for her, the cure for a concussion was a simple enough spell. Unfortunately for her, the side effect was one killer headache.
Ron and Susan were pretty lucky Susan's aunt and Ron's father both worked in the D.M.L.E., so it was a matter of ease for them to come and sit with their wards while they were interviewed. Harry and Hermione, however, were left in the Interview room for quite a bit longer. It took time for them to contact Charlus and have him leave the school and come and Help them.
While they waited, Hermione moved from dazed and groggy to angry and moaning about her terrible headache. Harry of course asked about pain relief for her, but unfortunately the Auror on guard said that there was nothing that could be done. Hermione could drink an entire cauldron of pain relief potion and it wouldn't touch the type of headache you get when a concussion is fixed. The Auror was rather sympathetic, having experienced what Hermione was going through a number of times. Apparently concussions were quite common in the line of duty for Aurors.
Once Charlus arrived, it was time for the questioning. The process was very similar to what had happened after the riots at the World Cup. The Aurors asked questions, Harry told them his point of view. They asked more questions, Harry told them what he saw. They asked the first questions again and Harry told them again what happened from his point of view again, and again, and again. He now understood that the repetition was a good way for the officers to get the details of a situation, but he did find the constant repeating of himself to be very time he had to explain it he had to live through the terror he had felt at seeing Malfoy's wand pointed at Hermione. It made his chest feel tight and made him feel like he was going to throw up. It made recounting the incident again and again quite distressing.
Eventually they were finished and Harry was led out to where Ron and Susan were waiting. They weren't allowed back in with Harry and Hermione after they had answered their questions. Probably some protocol to keep them from coordinating their answers. Harry only got a glimpse of Hermione before she went in for her own questions, but was relieved to see she looked less insane now and more annoyed. Harry knew she hated the idea of being the 'damsel in distress,' she would especially hate the idea that they were attacked and all she did was bounce her head off the floor. Not that she would have a problem with Harry saving her, she wouldn't blame him for that. No, she was going to be beating herself up inside her head.
"Hey," Ron said as Harry sat down across from him and Susan. Mr. Weasley and Director Bones were standing off in the corner talking in whispers. "How are you holding up?"
"Well enough. Sorry about the tackle, Susan." Harry apologised
Susan wouldn't accept it. "No need to apologise, Harry. You saved me and Hermione. I was standing right next to her. If that shot hadn't hit her it would have hit me. Honestly I owe you one."
"Friends don't owe friends debts Su," said Harry, and he meant it too. He would expect nothing from her because he knew if the roles were reversed she would have done just the same. "What are they saying?" Harry asked, nodding to Director Bones and Mr Weasley.
Ron got quiet. Susan however said, "They're talking about if Ron should be charged. He admitted to firing a deadly curse with the intent to kill."
"But the self defence clause…" Harry started to say.
"Technically it's supposed to be decided by a trial, not just the head of the D.M.L.E. Auntie needs a good reason to dismiss the charge. And because I'm involved, Auntie's reasoning needs to be above reproach, else she could be accused of using her position to keep the girl she raised as a daughter's boyfriend out of trouble. It's difficult to say but it helps that whoever tried to kill us hit that poor man. It's proof we were in a real life or death situation."
"It was Draco Malfoy. I saw him just before he pointed his wand at Hermione. It's the only reason I knew to tackle you and her to the ground. Malfoy wasn't even targeting me. He was trying to kill Hermione. Why would he focus on her instead of me?" Harry felt rage building in his chest again at the memory of what Malfoy tried to do.
"Because You-Know-Who wants you to suffer mate," said Ron. "We all know that's who the blond ponce works for now. You challenged Voldemort at his rebirth and told all his Death Eaters he couldn't beat you, you then proceeded to prove it by fighting him to a draw. If he wants to keep his followers afraid of him, he needs to be the one who kills you. Think about it, if Malfoy had actually killed you, then You-Know-Who would look weaker than Malfoy." Ron was always pretty good at understanding strategy.
"So as long as Hermione is around me Voldemort will be trying to kill her," Harry said, sounding almost defeated.
"Around you or not, I am a muggleborn and someone you care about. Voldemort won't stop targeting me until either he is dead or I am. So you can get those thoughts out of your head now." The sound of Hermione's voice came from behind Harry, and he spun around to see her looking annoyed. He jumped up and wrapped her in a hug holding her tight to his chest, letting the fact that he could feel her breathing and know she was very much alive calm him.
"You weren't in there long," said Susan, prompting for more information.
"Well I didn't actually see much. I knew there was someone on the other side of the street, and didn't think anything of it. Next thing I know my head was shaking into the floor and I was pretty dazed after that. I couldn't focus on much, but I did hear someone cast the killing curse and someone cast the lightning curse. Doesn't take long to cover that."
They were there for a while longer while the D.M.L.E. worked out what to do about Ron. It really helped when Harry offered to give his testimony again under an Unbreakable Vow of truth as he knows it. That was done in front of three people. Director Bones, the Head Auror Rufus Scrimgeour, and the new person in charge of the under age magic office, a witch by the name of Macey who was a muggleborn so Director Bones could be sure she wouldn't discriminate against them like her predictor tried to do with Hermione. This was done to protect Director Bones from accusations of bias.
Harry recounted everything again, and with the strength of that testimony, the three heads unanimously voted to not press charges against Ron. They cited the obvious case of self defence and that it would be a waste of money to call for a trial in this case. They also updated the warrant for Draco's arrest. He was a full fledged murderer now, and as far as the D.M.L.E. was concerned, a Death Eater. No Auror who found him now was going to hold back.
Finally they were relieved to go back to school. Grandfather/Uncle Charlus took on the role of Professor Potter again and escorted them all back to the school.
-ϟϟϟ-
Later that night after a long day of explaining the situation to the Aurors, then to Headmaster Greengrass and Professor McGonagall, and finally to everyone who was asking questions and then delivering the Honeydukes orders to everyone. Harry was tossing and turning in his bed trying to get to sleep. Not only was his head full of what ifs from earlier, he had bumped his still healing shoulder, and while he was active earlier it had been easy to ignore. Now that he was trying to turn off his brain enough to sleep, however, the throbbing ache was making its distracting self known. Harry was surprised when the curtains around his bed opened and someone slipped in.
"Hermione?" he asked because it was too dark to see, but he couldn't imagine anyone else coming to his bed like this.
"Yeah. I couldn't sleep. Figured either you couldn't either so you'd like the company, or snuggling in next to you would be enough of a distraction that I may fall asleep." She said as she pushed him to scoot over a little and climbed under the covers next to him. Harry just accepted her presence and shifted over.
"What's keeping you awake?" Harry asked. He had a pretty good idea generally, but specifically it could be a number of things.
"Harry, what do you think our life will be like after Hogwarts?" she asked.
Harry had the impression that the answer was important. This wasn't an idle question so he gave it a little thought before he answered. "I can't say for sure, but I imagine not too different from everyone else. Jobs, life struggles such as finding the time to do household chores, kids, friends, family, and trying to find time for just the two of us." Hermione snuggled into him as he spoke. "Do you picture anything different?"
"Yes and no. I want what you described - well I don't want the struggles part but they are unavoidable. But I'm starting to worry this war is going to drag out. Voldemort has been killed so many times now and he just keeps coming back. What if this is our life now? Dodging murder attempts every few months. It's like that dream I have of my future is dying a little every time something happens. This is the second direct attempt on my life in four months. If we have to keep doing this, what will it do to us? Who will we become? I used a spell to threaten to kill Crabbe and Goyle the other day, Ron tried to kill Malfoy today, and only five months ago you actually killed Voldemort. Did you ever think this is what we would become when we first met?"
Harry considered for a second and said, "No. Not when we first met. It was almost two months later. The troll incident. You were scared but you didn't fall to pieces. Ron and I rushed a bloody troll. It was when you lied to Professor McGonagall after that I realised you were a strong person. One I wanted as a friend because I felt she could do whatever she set her mind to."
"Only a friend?" Hermione teased a little.
Harry laughed. "At the time, yeah. This," he paused and kissed her. "that came later. When I grew up enough to see you as a woman as well as a friend."
"But what about who we will become? You hear all those stories about what people went through during a war and changing them and they can never go back to who they were." Hermione asked.
"I can't say we will be the same people then as we are now. But that's true even without this war. Don't people keep changing until they are in their early twenties just for growing up? And every struggle we face, whether it's something as mundane as running out of dish soap with a sink full of dishes and company due to arrive, or something more sinister like a battle with Voldemort. Everything leaves its mark. But do you know what has left the biggest mark on who I am? It wasn't the years I spent at the Dursleys or fights I have had with Voldemort, or even getting my grandfather back. It was you.
"You make me want to be a better person. You make me want to pick up my school books and study just so I can be worthy of standing next to you. You make me ponder the deeper moral questions behind things because I don't want you to be disappointed in me. You will always have the greatest influence on who I will become, because love is so much more powerful than fear and hate." Harry was going to continue, but he noticed that Hermione had fallen asleep using his chest as her pillow. He leaned down and kissed the top of her head and lay there stroking her long curly hair. He thought he would be like that until morning just watching her sleep, only to find himself just as deep in the land of slumber only five minutes later.
-ϟϟϟ-
The next day, Hermione had woken up in the boys dorm to the sight of a naked Dean Thomas walking back from the bathroom to his trunk. Hermione was still blushing for a few days afterwards whenever she saw Dean, and Harry honestly found it all incredibly funny, probably because it was a good distinction from the events of the Hogsmeade visit. Hermione hadn't meant to see anything and Dean was just being his usual self and using a drying charm rather than a towel as soon as he got out of the shower. He hadn't known Hermione was there and honestly probably wouldn't have changed anything he did even if he had.
When Dean had noticed Hermione in the room, he had just shrugged and continued to get dressed like normal. He said if Hermione wasn't mature enough to shrug it off, she probably wasn't mature enough to sneak in and sleep with Harry. They all, including Hermione, had pretty much agreed that this was the boy's space and Hermione didn't have any right to expect them to behave differently when she wasn't even supposed to be there. Still, it was funny seeing Hermione so flustered over something so mundane. She had pointed out he would be just as bad if he had seen any of her roommates like that, and Harry had to agree she was right about that.
Cursebreaker Williams and his team of three others returned and went right to work, and by the end of the second day there they had closed off most of the seventh floor. Professor Sinistra wasn't happy about having to move her theory classroom to another room, and a single class of Divination students were grumbling about having to take a longer route to Trelawney's tower now. The only part of the seventh floor that wasn't closed off was the dozen or so feet needed to get in and out of the owlery.
Charlus called the trio into his office to chat with Williams, who told Harry, Hermione and Ron that the curse breakers had tracked the Horcrux to that floor in some type of secret room, but they were having an issue locating the entrance. Unfortunately there were a lot of ways to hide something with and without magic, and sometimes the best solution was just to try everything until something worked. By the end of the first day, they looked behind every tapestry and painting casting about two dozen different detection charms each time but they still hadn't found the room. They weren't giving up of course, but it was going to be slow going from here.
The reason Williams was so open was because he wanted something from Harry. "We all know about your exploits in the Chamber of Secrets. Kinda hard not to know when you sell a thousand year old basilisk slain by the hand of a natural hero. The issue is that the room we are looking for may be protected the same way the chamber was."
"With Parseltongue," said Hermione
Williams nodded. "Exactly. Especially as we are looking for a room You-Know-Who feels safe hiding a piece of his soul, an anchor to his immortality here despite knowing that every year hundreds of curious teenagers run around. If the room could only be opened by a Parselmouth it would explain why he was so confident."
"Plus he used Parselmagic to protect the Locket, so it's possible he did it again," Harry added. "So you want me to go up to the seventh floor and try to start a conversation with all the walls?"
"After what happened last time? No, I'm not comfortable putting an underaged wizard in so much potential trouble again without exhausting other options first. I spoke to my colleagues and they came up with an idea. What if we modified the magic used to send Howlers? We don't know if it will work, but we do have a simple way to test it. We want you to send a Howler to the entrance of the Chamber of Secrets. If it opens, we know it will work and we will work on creating some type of repeating Howler."
Ron shuddered at the very idea of a repeating Howler. "Whatever you do, please never let my mother discover the existence of repeating Howlers. She is bad enough now. I don't want to think what she would be like if she could send Howlers that can repeat themselves." Harry couldn't help but laugh, as since his second year here not a year had gone by without Mrs. Weasley sending at least three of the red letters. Usually to the twins, though neither Ron nor his sister had escaped that particular displeasure.
So Harry was taught how to send a Howler. He practised by sending Ron jokes and Hermione a few sappy little love messages, but after about twenty-five minutes he had it down. That's where they hit their first snag, as a Howler had to be sent to a person. The only person who might be in the girls bathroom with the entrance was Myrtle, the ghost who would probably run away crying if she was sent a Howler.
Hermione volunteered to go wait in the bathroom, as she was the only girl in the group, and left Professor Potter's office and made her way to the second floor girls loo. Luckily it was on the same floor, just in the other wing of the castle. When she went in, she found Myrtle lazily floating around the room. She looked bored, which was honestly rather cheery for the ghost. "Hey Myrtle, it's been a while."
The girl looked around and saw Hermione. "Hey, you looking for somewhere to turn yourself into a cat again?"
Hermione sometimes wondered if Myrtle was so unpopular in life because she had a tendency to say hurtful things, or if the tendency grew as a self defence mechanism. Either way she didn't want to get into an argument, so she ignored the stab at what was a painful memory for her. "Nope, conducting a little magical experiment today using the entrance to the chamber," Hermione said, hoping that the girl's natural Ravenclaw thirst for knowledge would distract her.
It worked. "You're experimenting on the chamber? How?" Myrtle looked interested now.
"Not in the chamber, just the entrance. We are going to see if Harry can open it without coming anywhere near here. He is going to send me a Howler that will speak the password, and we will see if the door opens or not," Hermione explained. She didn't want the red envelope to spook the girl.
"Oh that's clever. But why would Harry want to be able to open the chamber without being here? Didn't the goblins already take everything from down there?" Myrtle asked.
"Well there is a cursed object hidden in the school, hidden by…" Hermione hesitated. "By the same person who was controlling the basilisk that petrified me and killed you." She waited for the typical Myrtle explosion, but it didn't come. Myrtle was angry, but she didn't think it was at Hermione. "We have some curse breakers looking for it, and they think it may be behind another Parseltongue lock. But they don't want to risk Harry getting hurt, so we are looking for another solution."
Myrtle looked a little upset then just deflated into herself. "Why didn't anybody care to make sure I wasn't hurt?" She asked sadly.
"I don't know. They should have. You didn't des-" whatever more Hermione was going to say was cut off by a bang as the door to the bathroom was kicked open. She spun around to see what the bang was, realising as she did so that she had been stupid and had come here on her own.
"See, I told you I saw her coming in here alone," Pansy Parkinson said as she was flanked by Crabbe and Goyle.
Hermione didn't waste any time thinking, that was a mistake she made before and one Sirius was ruthless in training out of her when he was helping her, Harry, and Ron. This gave Hermione a slight advantage and resulted in the Full Body Bind Goyle sent her way bouncing off her Protego shield.
"Overwhelm her, she can't keep that shield up forever, then she is ours," Pansy ordered.
Unfortunately Pansy was right tactically. With three of them there all attacking her, Hermione did not dare to drop her shield for even a moment to counter attack. So instead Hermione did what she was best at and started using her head. "Myrtle, would you please be a dear and go inform Harry that I'm being attacked? He is in Professor Potter's office on this floor in the other wing. I would appreciate it if you were hasty." Myrtle nodded and flew through the wall flying to where Hermione wanted her to go.
Hermione looked around, hoping to find something she could work with. She saw, with what had to be some of the most perfect timing ever, Hedwig fly through the still open door, drop a red envelope at Hermione's feet, and fly right back out the door, probably well aware of the loud nature of her delivery. Pansy tried to shoot a spell at Hedwig, but apparently aiming at something that wast standing still wasn't a strong suit of the Slytherin girl.
Pansy laughed when she took a second to look at what Hedwig had delivered. "Oh this is rich, a Howler delivered by a Potter's owl. You just sent Moaning Myrtle to a boy that's just dumped you!" she said, obviously making assumptions about what was in the letter. Hermione though saw it as the opportunity it was. She put her foot on the red envelope to hold it still then used her other foot to tear the envelope, setting it off immediately. It burst into flames that stung Hermione's leg a little, but not much. Harry's voice echoed around the room in a hiss, and the entryway to the Chamber of Secrets opened directly behind the three Slytherins.
The sound of stone grinding on stone caused both Crabbe and Goyle to look behind them, and Hermione took her opportunity. She dropped her shield and snapped off three low powered Bludgeoning Hexes. They were all nonverbal and lacked any real power, but all Hermione needed was a push of a few feet.
Unfortunately, Pansy was faster than Hermione hoped and caught Hermione with a nonverbal Full Body Bind just as Hermione's spells knocked the girl and her two trolls into the newly opened hole. Hermione had just enough time to see the looks of shock and fear on Pansy's pug face as they disappeared before she toppled forward and for the second time in a week smacked her head on a rock-hard floor.