They ran into Hermione outside Flourish and Blotts. Literally. Harry had just adjusted Teddy higher against his chest, shifting the sling so his two-year-old sat comfortably, when someone slammed to a halt directly in front of him hard enough that passersby stumbled to avoid the collision. She saw them and stopped dead. Harry barely had time to register the look on her face-white-hot fury, unfiltered and unmistakable-before she crossed the small distance between with furious strides.
"HARRY POTTER." Her voice cut clean through the morning noise of Diagon Alley.
"You had no right," Hermione said, voice already rising, "absolutely no right-"
Heads lifted from pages. A clerk paused with a stack of books half-shelved; someone nearby found sudden, intense interest in a display of self-inking quills. Harry shifted Teddy higher against his chest on instinct. Teddy's hair went from black to startling yellow. Conversations stuttered. Pages fluttered and settled. A witch, halfway through asking the price of a book, froze, mouth still open. Harry looked up. Hermione stood there breathing hard, eyes blazing, hair half-escaped from its usual order, robes rumpled like she'd been walking fast for a while.
"Oh," George muttered pleasantly. "This is going to be educational."
"You don't get to do that," Hermione said, advancing on Harry without lowering her voice. "You do not get to do that without telling me."
Harry turned slightly, instinctively angling Teddy away from her forward momentum. Teddy's hair flashed bright yellow, then mottled green.
"Hermione," Harry said calmly. "This isn't-"
"You froze the payments," she snapped. "All of them. Every stipend, every continuing grant, every postwar fund Dumbledore put in place using your vaults. Do you have any idea what kind of chaos that caused?"
Heads were turning now. Someone hovered in the doorway of Flourish and Blotts. An enchanted sign flickered uncertainly. "Yes," Harry said. "I do."
Her voice climbed higher. "People depend on that money, Harry! Students, families, researchers-those funds were keeping things running."
"They were running without consent," Harry replied.
Hermione let out a sharp, disbelieving laugh. "Oh, don't you dare turn this into a technicality. Dumbledore set those up with your blessing."
"No," Harry said, and the word landed solidly. "He set them up with my silence."
That made her stop for half a second. Then she surged right past it. "And Gringotts," she said, pointing an accusing finger at his chest, "had the audacity to lock me out and confiscate every single book and artifact I had signed out of your vaults. Do you know how humiliating that was?"
George winced. "In public, or-"
"George," Hermione snarled, without looking at him, "I will hex you into a decorative shrub."
Teddy peeked out over Harry's shoulder. "What kind of shrub?"
Hermione faltered. Just a flicker. Then she looked at Teddy properly.
"You took them," she said to Harry, voice shaking now with something deeper than anger. "Some of those texts are irreplaceable. I was using them."
Harry's jaw tightened. "You were using them under authority that was never yours."
"I had Dumbledore's permission!"
Harry's reply came quietly, and Diagon Alley somehow heard every word. "Dumbledore is dead."
The street went still. A breeze stirred parchments in a nearby display. Somewhere, glass chimed. Hermione stared at him, color high in her cheeks. "You know exactly what I mean," she said fiercely. "He trusted me."
"I trusted him," Harry said. "That didn't make everything he did right."
Her hands clenched. "Those funds were helping people."
"They were also bypassing oversight," Harry said. "They were being used to smooth over cases the Ministry didn't want to look at too closely."
Her mouth opened- "-including cases involving children," Harry continued, voice still level, "whose magic didn't fit comparably into established categories."
Teddy's hair flashed angry red. Hermione's breath caught. "That's not fair," she said. "You're conflating-"
"I'm connecting," Harry said. "Because the same system that lets money move without accountability is the system that decided my son could be labeled and managed."
A hush settled over the street. Not silence-Diagon Alley never went silent-but attention. Focused. Intent. Hermione's voice dropped, hoarse.
"So you're tearing it all down."
"No," Harry said. "I'm taking my name out of it."
"And the books?" she demanded. Harry met her eyes. "They're mine."
"You let me have them."
"I would've let you borrow them if you asked," he corrected. "But you didn't ask, nor were you going return them to me."
Hermione looked like she might scream again. Instead, she laughed once, sharp, wounded. "You think you're protecting people. But you're isolating yourself."
Harry adjusted the sling again, slow and careful, Teddy settling against his chest.
"Isolating myself," Harry said calmly. "Last I checked, I'm not alone."
Teddy looked between them. "Are we in trouble?"
Hermione swallowed hard. "No," she said quickly. "No, sweetheart."
Harry didn't look away from her. "We're done here."
He stepped past her. George and Daryl fell in beside him without a word, their presence a quiet barrier as they moved down the street. The murmurs followed them like ripples in water. Behind them, Hermione stood in the middle of Diagon Alley, fists clenched, surrounded by watching eyes and half-heard truths. For the first time, the distance between them wasn't about misunderstanding.
It was about boundaries.
And Harry didn't turn back.
They didn't get far before the sounds of Diagon Alley began to seep back in, tentative at first, then steadily louder, like water closing over a stone. Someone laughed too loudly. A hawker resumed his pitch. Life, inconveniently persistent, rolled on. Harry kept his pace even. Teddy had gone quiet, cheek pressed against Harry's collarbone, fingers fisting the edge of his jacket. His hair faded from red to a thoughtful brown, then settled into a muted sandy blond. Processing, Harry thought. Just like his mother used to. George let out a low whistle after a block or so.
"Well," he said mildly, "that's one way to announce a policy change."
Daryl snorted. "Understatement of the year."
Harry didn't answer. He was very aware of the space behind them, of the way conversations bent as they passed, of the looks that followed-curious, wary, recalibrating. For years, people had looked at him like a relic or a reassurance. Something symbolic. Safe.
Not today.
They reached the edge of the crowd near the apothecary, and Harry finally slowed. He shifted the sling again, careful, practiced. Teddy sighed and relaxed, hair flickering briefly to pale pink before settling.
"You okay, mate?" George asked, quieter now.
Harry nodded. "Yeah."
It was true. His chest felt tight, but it wasn't doubt. It was the aftershock of having finally said something out loud that had been pressing on him for months, maybe. Silence could be weaponed. He'd learned that the hard way. Behind them, somewhere up the street, Hermione was still standing in the middle of Diagon Alley with the truth ringing in her ears. Harry didn't hate her for it. He wasn't even angry anymore. But he wasn't responsible for cushioning the impact, either. Teddy shifted, then craned his head back to look up at him. "Daddy?"
"Yeah, love."
"Did you and Mione stop being friends?"
Harry considered that, then answered honestly. "We stopped agreeing."
Teddy frowned, a very serious little crease between his brows. "Can you start again later?"
Maybe, Harry thought. Maybe not. Some things couldn't be picked back up where they'd been dropped. Some lines, once drawn, changed the outcome.
"We'll see," he said gently.