Harry Potter and the Psychic Serpent

“What’s wrong?” he demanded, but not in his usual imperious way.

“Oh, Draco!” she sobbed, throwing her arms around his neck, crying onto his shirt. He didn’t hesitate for a moment, but gathered her to him, stroking her hair. Harry itched to take the cloak off so he could tear them apart, but he managed to restrain himself. Malfoy held her for quite a while, until she cried herself out. As her breathing returned to normal and she let out a great, tired sigh, he kissed her on the forehead and held her at arms’ length.

“Feeling better?” he said quietly.

She hastily separated herself from him and smoothed down her clothes, clearly embarrassed. She wiped her eyes and said shakily, “I have a lot of work to do.”

Malfoy looked as Harry had never seen him, genuinely concerned and caring. “What happened?” he asked her.

“I--I saw--saw Harry. Harry kissing Cho Chang. In the Quidditch stands,” she said brokenly. Then in a rush: “And even though I know that he doesn’t really care about her, even though I know he and Hermione are just trying to fix her up with Viktor Krum so Hermione can be rid of him, that doesn’t mean--that doesn’t mean--” she looked like she might break down again. “That doesn’t mean he has to look like he’s enjoying it so much!”

Enjoying it? Harry thought. Hardly.

Malfoy nodded. “Ah. This is about Potter.”

“Harry,” she corrected him.

“Okay--Harry.” Even to Harry’s ears, it sounded unnatural for Malfoy to call him this. He could tell it felt extremely unnatural to Malfoy. “And--did you say he and Granger are trying to fix up Krum and Cho Chang?”

“Oh!” Ginny was distressed for yet another reason. “I shouldn’t have said anything--don’t tell anyone I said that, please--”

“It’s all right, it’s all right,” he said, trying to calm her. “I won’t say a word.” Harry thought, Yeah, right. “So what, Potter and Granger will be free to be together then?”

Ginny looked up at him, stricken. Harry groaned inwardly; sometimes Malfoy was too smart for his own good. “I--I don’t know. Maybe...”

“Well, good riddance to him, I say,” was Malfoy’s hard reply. Ginny looked like she was about to argue, but he went on, “Look, he’s just not worth getting so upset about. How could he be? He ignored you for three years. How could he know how you felt about him all that time and not care? How could he not--see you?” he ended softly, lifting up her chin and kissing her on the lips briefly, softly.

Harry was going crazy, dying to spring across the room, throw off the cloak--but again not daring to. Mostly he didn’t because he hated the fact that Malfoy was right; he deserved for Ginny to forget about him and move on. He didn’t deserve for her to go on mooning over him, she didn’t deserve for him to go on taking her for granted. Somehow, he managed to forget that he had spent much of the day thinking about kissing Hermione.

Ginny ducked her head and said softly, “You’re supposed to be tutoring me in potions.” To Harry’s relief, she didn’t throw her arms around Malfoy and enthusiastically return the kiss. The tentative delicacy of that kiss had surprised Harry.

“Right,” Malfoy said reluctantly, turning to retrieve his potions supplies from where he’d unceremoniously flung them down when he’d entered.

Harry decided to stay and keep an eye on them while they worked; Malfoy gazed at her and touched her hand quite a lot for Harry’s taste while they were working, but nothing else untoward happened; they neither kissed nor hugged again.

Then after they’d all three had been in the dungeon for about an hour, Snape entered and stopped abruptly, obviously surprised to see them there.

“Good afternoon, Miss Weasley, Mr. Malfoy,” he said stiffly once he’d recovered. “I didn’t expect to find any students down here at this time.” He looked nervous, as though he were up to something he shouldn’t be. Why would he look like that entering his own classroom? Harry wondered.

“Draco’s tutoring me, Professor. He’s been very helpful,” Ginny volunteered.

“Tutoring, Miss Weasley? You’re at the top of your class; in fact, I am to understand from your other teachers that you are at the top of all of your classes.” Harry felt his jaw drop from shock. He could see some surprise on Malfoy’s face as well.

“Well, I thought it couldn’t hurt to get a start on the O.W.L.s. I’ll be in fifth year before I know it...”

“Highly commendable. And you know, Gryffindor and Slytherin cooperation has been known to happen before. Carry on,” he said, looking at them kindly. Harry was shocked; he’d never known Snape to be nice to a Gryffindor student. But if Ginny was at the top of all of the fourth-year classes, she would command a certain respect even from him. Hermione didn’t, but then Ginny obviously wasn’t as--obvious as Hermione was when it came to her grades. Harry had had no idea that Ginny was the best student in her year, and he thought that most other people were also ignorant of this.

Now Snape was heading toward the door to his office; Harry decided to follow him in if he could. Snape unlocked the door and walked to his desk, leaving the door open. Harry slipped in, relieved, but then Snape waved his wand at the door and it closed and locked, panicking Harry; he was stuck in Snape’s office now until he opened the door again. He hoped Snape didn’t have some device for detecting the presence of people wearing Invisibility Cloaks.

Snape now pointed his wand at the fireplace, lighting it, and settled heavily in a wing chair by the hearth. Harry almost cried out and gave himself away when Sirius’ face appeared in the flames half a minute later.

“Hello, Snape,” was Sirius’ cautious greeting.

“Black,” was Snape’s even briefer reply. Sirius grimaced.

“If we’re going to be doing this, perhaps we should try Severus and Sirius,” Harry’s godfather suggested.

Snape looked like he’d eaten an Every Flavor Bean that tasted like ear wax. “Sirius,” he said slowly, carefully.

“That’s better. So, Severus, How soon will the Polyjuice Potion be ready?”

“Four weeks, technically. But I won’t be able to get their hairs for another two weeks after that, at the Quidditch match the first weekend in December. We can use it any time after that. My sources tell me that there will be an important meeting just after the winter solstice, on Christmas night.” Polyjuice Potion? thought Harry. Sirius and Snape were going to use Polyjuice Potion? Who were they planning to impersonate? he wondered.

“Christmas?” Sirius looked concerned. “I just hope that’s not too late. Death Eater activity has been spotted around Ottery St. Catchpole in just the last few days.”

Ottery St. Catchpole! Harry thought. That’s the village near the Burrow! Oh, God, he thought, if anything happened to the Weasleys...

Sirius went on. “I’ve been unable to convince Molly and Arthur Weasley to go away on a holiday for a while. Fortunately, Bill and Charlie are still on hand to keep an eye on things, but--”

“What?” Snape was impatient.

“I think we have a weak link. Percy Weasley.”

Snape sat up. “How so?”

“Well, he’s been transferred to his father’s department at the ministry so Arthur can keep an eye on him. Fudge is concerned that Percy was so blind to his boss’ problems last year; Percy had no clue that Crouch was in his son’s thrall, and oblivious then to the fact that he was receiving instructions from a dark wizard. It’s not clear that Percy himself wasn’t under the Imperious Curse as well.”

“Plenty of people find it difficult or impossible to resist the Imperious Curse,” Snape said quietly, looking uncomfortable and making Harry wonder.

“Yes, but Percy just--he reminds me uncomfortably of--another former Head Boy who was so brilliant in his classes and so ambitious...”

“You think Percy Weasley is another Tom Riddle?” Snape asked him.

“I think--he’s easily manipulated and ambitious. I think he could be ripe for recruitment to the Death Eaters. If someone offered him the kind of power he craves...”

“Now, now, Black,” Snape seemed to have given up on calling Sirius by his first name. “His brother was also a top student and Head Boy. Do you think he’s about to become a Death Eater, too?”

“Bill’s not a sycophant,” Sirius told him. Harry remembered what Hermione had said to Ron outside the Potions Dungeon. “Percy’s been bothering other department heads at the ministry ever since he was transferred to Arthur’s department, trying to get a job elsewhere. There’s obviously no opportunity for advancement in his own father’s department, not without displacing Arthur. I’ve heard people say that Percy Weasley’s goal is to be the youngest ever Minister of Magic.”

“That doesn’t mean he would betray his family and become Dark.”

“No, it doesn’t. But it does mean he could be targeted for recruitment, and even if he resists, that means trouble. So now, we have to find out about both him and Harry when we use the Polyjuice Potion.”

Find out what about me? Harry thought.

“I find it hard to believe that Voldemort would be having such a change of heart concerning Potter,” Snape said.

“But Percy and Harry are exactly the sort of wizards that Voldemort always targeted for recruitment.” Harry remembered the Tarot reading he’d been trying to put out of his mind; so Sirius was also worried about Voldemort recruiting him. “He’s seen now how powerful Harry is--Harry dueled with Voldemort and walked away. The only other living wizard who’s done that is Dumbledore. Voldemort always wanted the best and the brightest. Very few Death Eaters--I’d say Peter Pettigrew is the exception--weren’t outstanding students in school. That’s one of the reasons he went after Lily and James.”

“Well, that and the prophecy. Once he’d worked out who two of the the three people in the prophecy were...”

“He tried to recruit their parents to raise their children to be his servants, so his potential enemies would be under his control...”

“But the Potters didn’t cooperate as the Malfoys did...”

What? Harry thought. I’m in some prophecy? And so is Malfoy?

“Speaking of which,” Sirius said, “we never did work out who was going to be who when we take the potion. I thought I would be him, and you could be her...”

“Not so fast, Black. I am the one going to all this trouble to make the potion, and getting their hairs for the final touch. Plus, I need to be him because I have the Dark Mark on my arm still; she is not a Death Eater. When Voldemort summons the Death Eaters, a Mark that is only appearance, as yours would be, would not behave the same as the real thing. And you will have to make sure that he does not go to Voldemort when summoned.”

“True. If two of him showed up, that would ruin everything. All right. I just hope they’re not planning to recruit Draco already. I mean, he’s only--what? Fifteen? He’s a few weeks older than Harry. They can’t want someone so young, can they? I mean, Harry is one thing, he’s Harry Potter...”

“Quiet! Even as we speak, Draco Malfoy is right here in the Potions Dungeon, working with the Weasley girl...”

“What?” Sirius cried, not heeding Snape’s suggestion that he be quiet. “Is it possible that his father is already grooming him? Do you think Lucius put him up to it?”

The Malfoys, Harry realized. They’re going to use the Polyjuice Potion to impersonate the Malfoys.

Snape rose and went to his office door. Harry pressed himself into the bookcase to prevent Snape coming in contact with him and detecting his presence. Snape lifted the black curtain over the small window at the top of the office door. He smirked, and walking back to his chair by the hearth, said to Sirius, “I think his hormones put him up to it...”

Sirius didn’t say anything and Snape sat again, staring into space as if in a daze. “She looks strangely like Lily...” he said quietly, as though he forgot he were having a conversation with someone.

“Now, now, Severus, she’s a student...” Sirius chided him with a smirk.

Snape rounded on him, furious. “How dare you! She’s only fourteen! I would never--”

“All right! All right! I know. Can’t you take a joke?” There was an awkward pause, then Sirius said quietly, “You know, we were all in love with her. Even though I--went with other girls. Even Peter, although he wouldn’t have admitted it. I could see it when he looked at her. Remus, too. And James, naturally. We were just livid that she had a boyfriend from Slytherin...”

It took Harry a minute to make sense of all this. Snape had been talking about Ginny looking like his mother, and Sirius was talking about the entire Marauder Gang being in love with his mother--Sirius, Remus Lupin, Peter Pettigrew (also known as Wormtail) and his father, James Potter. But who was this Slytherin boyfriend? he wondered. Then, with a shock he knew. That was the Gryffindor-Slytherin cooperation Snape had been talking about...

“It wasn’t you,” Sirius went on. “It wasn’t personal. I think we all thought if she was going to go with anyone, it would be one of us.”

“So that’s why you pushed her away? Made her feel excluded? Why do you think she turned to me?”

“We were protecting her, you know that. James and Peter and I were learning to become Animagi so we could accompany Remus when he changed. We didn’t want Lily to get hurt. Plus--you know how she was. So by the book. She would have tried to talk us out of doing it. She would have told us it was wrong.”

“It was wrong. Just as it was wrong not to tell her...”

“Why are you complaining? She became your girlfriend because of it.”

“Yes, but it was also because of you that she left me.”

“Because of me? You were the one snooping around trying to find out what was going on every month during the full moon.”

“Didn’t you ever wonder why I had such a need to know? It was Lily; she came to me in tears, wanted me to find out what was going on. She felt her friends didn’t trust her, didn’t want to confide in her. You cut her off and didn’t expect her to react? She wasn’t made of stone, you know.” Snape sounded more human than Harry had ever heard him; listening, he found himself taking Snape’s side, unexpectedly. When he was in third year and found out about the Marauder’s Gang, it had never occurred to Harry to wonder where his mother was during all this, since he knew that she had been friends with all of them as well. “And then you thought it would be so funny to get me killed by Lupin...”

Sirius grimaced. “I’ve said I’m sorry about that. But James saved you, so--”

“So I lost Lily.”

“Is that why? How did that work exactly? You almost died, so she didn’t want to be with you any more?”

“I don’t want to go into it now. Evidently, she had only been with me because Potter had been unable to say how he felt; he got over that and told her, and she left me for him. End of story.” But Harry somehow got the impression there was just a little more to the story than that.

“I’m sorry to bring up the past, Severus,” Sirius said quietly, sounding genuinely sorry. “Losing Lily--it must have devastated you--”

“It’s not the past,” Snape replied briskly, annoyed. “It’s very much the present. It was after Lily that I--I was recruited. Without her, I didn’t see any reason why not. And then when I learned about the prophecy, about Lily and Potter being targeted--I became a Ministry spy. But it was too late; I couldn’t save her.” Harry noticed that he didn’t seem concerned about not saving his father. “The work I do now I do in honor of her memory. Why else do you think I would put up with you, Black?” Snape finished with a snarl that nonetheless seemed to have a slight smirk behind it. Maybe they’re actually becoming friends, Harry thought. That would be strange.

Sirius laughed. “But why, then,” he asked Snape, “do you give Harry such a hard time?”

“A hard time? Is that what he tells you? Someone around here has to do something other than coddle him, like McGonagall and Flitwick. It’s to make him strong. To make him angry enough to want to do well just to show me.” Harry was surprised; and even more so that it had worked. “Lily wouldn’t have wanted me to be soft on him. You said yourself that he stood up to Voldemort. I understand he withstood the Imperious Curse and experienced the Cruciatus Curse twice. I also understand that he used the disarming charm he learned from me in dueling club several years ago...”

Sirius was smirking again. “You almost sound like you’re taking a fatherly pride in Harry, Severus.”

Snape sneered this away. “Potter would never give me credit for teaching him anything useful--or even for saving his life, which I’ve done more than once.” Suddenly, there was a knocking at the door. Snape hissed at Sirius to leave, and Sirius’ head disappeared from the fire almost instantaneously. Snape pointed his wand at the door saying, “Alohomora!” It leapt open.

Malfoy stood in the doorway. “Sorry to disturb you professor. I didn’t bring all of my supplies with me, and we’re running low on ladybugs for this potion. I don’t suppose I could--borrow some? I’ll replace them immediately. It’s just that we have to add them in the next two minutes...” Snape waved at the shelves of jars next to the door.

“Take them, take them,” he said distractedly, then moved his eyes to the doorway to look at Ginny, working in the classroom still.

Harry took this opportunity to slip back out the office door. Ginny was bent over her potions book, frowning, while the cauldron bubbled. He wondered what he should do about her and Malfoy. Ron would want to know, and George and Fred. On the other hand, if they killed Malfoy, they’d all wind up in Azkaban. Well, he thought, maybe we just need to wait to see what happens to the Malfoys; if they go to Azkaban, and it’s partly because Lucius Malfoy was going after Ginny’s family, they’re not going to be friends for long.

Finally, after agonizing over what to do and watching Malfoy return with the ladybugs, Harry decided that they probably wouldn’t be kissing again or anything else with Snape right there in his office. Harry crept to the door to leave.

He would just have to wait and see.

Hermione avoided Harry during the rest of Saturday; she wouldn’t even look at him at dinner, and went up to her room right afterward, instead of lounging about the common room with everyone else, or even going to the library. Sunday morning, Harry hoped to talk with her about what had happened in the Charms classroom, but when he arrived in the common room to meet her for their morning run, Ginny was there. Harry stopped short, surprised, and a moment later, Hermione descended the stairs, dressed in her usual running clothes, but carrying a hooded sweat jacket, since it was getting colder now. Ginny also seemed to be dressed for running, in a sleeveless form-fitting ribbed top and very tight spandex pants. She also carried a hooded jacket and her red hair was corralled in a bun.

Harry didn’t speak, waiting for one of them to say something. Harry was feeling just as awkward about seeing Ginny as he was about seeing Hermione, but she didn’t seem to be the least bit awkward; then he realized that of course, she didn’t know that he’d been in the Potions Dungeon and heard everything she’d said to Malfoy.

“Ginny asked to come today,” Hermione offered as a brief explanation. “Well,” Hermione said to Ginny, “we’d better warm up.” She began showing Ginny the stretching exercises they were accustomed to doing, and Harry couldn’t refrain from glancing surreptitiously at the two of them.

They both looked spectacular. He’d grown so accustomed to seeing Hermione, day-in and day-out that he realized he hadn’t really seen her. Having been kissing her the day before, he very much wanted to look at her now, memorize her. She had definitely acquired a classic hourglass figure, her running bra just barely being adequate to the job of keeping her chest still during exercise. And he--and Malfoy--had already noted how aesthetically pleasing the view of her walking away was.

Ginny, on the other hand, was about four inches taller than Hermione, willowy and lithe, her long legs emphasized by the stripe down the outside of her tights. Her curves were slighter than Hermione’s, but undeniable. Her top seemed to be cut rather low--Harry tried not to look like he was staring while he did his own stretches. Something about her exposed neck was attracting his attention; he realized he just wasn’t used to seeing it. It seemed very long...

Are they just doing this to torture me? he wondered, as he followed them out the portrait hole. No, he assumed it was just Hermione trying to avoid being alone with him. But it was torture, just the same, walking down the stairs behind them. Before they went outdoors they all put on their jackets, then went down to the Quidditch pitch. Next thing you know, Ginny’ll be asking Malfoy to run with us, Harry thought. Like I need to see what he would wear to go running.

Ginny kept up with them pretty well, but felt winded about two thirds of the way through their usually workout. She sat down on the grass and watched them finish, then they walked back up to the castle to do their warm-down exercises in the entrance hall. They all took off their jackets to do the stretching and sit-ups. Harry held Ginny’s ankles while she did her sit-ups and Hermione stretched. Suddenly, Malfoy appeared at the top of the stairs that led up from the dungeons where Harry knew the Slytherin common room to be. Malfoy stopped abruptly when he saw Ginny, Harry and Hermione, looking at all three of them with a smirk, but his glance at Ginny also seemed to reveal some concern.

“Didn’t think you’d go in for a menage a trois, Potter,” he drawled. But despite his mocking tone, Harry could see where his eyes were straying: the neckline of Ginny’s top, the long stripe down the side of her tights. But then, however, he turned his attention to Hermione. “You know, Granger, I’m glad you were here this morning. It reminded me that I’d like to have lamb for dinner.”

Hermione was perplexed. “Lamb?”

“Yeah, you know. Rack of.” He looked pointedly at her running bra. And, grinning broadly, he turned and went into the Great Hall. Hermione colored and looked down at her rather generous chest, then put her jacket back on and mumbled that she needed to go shower (even though she hadn’t finished the warm-down). Ginny, on the other hand, was looking at Hermione in a less than friendly way. First they were mad at each other because of me, and now it’s because of Malfoy, thought Harry. There’s a disgusting development.

It seemed that Hermione was doing her best to assure that she was never alone with Harry. All during the rest of the day, she went to great lengths to assure that she was never alone, and therefore not open to being preyed upon by him. He felt like he’d been labeled as some kind of stalker, and wondered if this was how Sirius had felt when he’d first broken out of prison. It had been Hermione who had insisted on “tutoring” him for his meeting with Cho, he thought, feeling the injustice of it all.

Then, finally, she had no choice but to be alone with him. Since the Sunday night prefects’ meeting was running late, Alicia suggested to Roger that they continue without the fifth-year prefects, and instead send them back to their houses to check on the first and second years and make sure everything was under control. Alicia was very much a control freak, Harry decided; she seemed to assume that every time there was a prefects’ meeting, the other students were taking the opportunity to have wild parties or something. And yet, he remembered that she had been quite the party girl on Hermione’s birthday.

So he and Hermione were walking up to Gryffindor Tower alone, since the other houses were in very different directions. But when they reached the Charms corridor, he pulled her into the classroom again, where they’d been the day before, and without preamble, he pulled her to him and looked down at her. There was moonlight streaming in the windows, silvering her brow and cheeks. He wished he could see better what expression was in her eyes as he leaned down slowly and pressed his lips to hers. He had wanted to move slowly so that if she really wanted to, she would have had plenty of time to escape, to prevent it.

But that didn’t happen; instead, she immediately opened her mouth under his, entwining his tongue with hers, moaning in the back of her throat. Harry slid his fingers into her curls, holding her face up to his, feeling a warmth travel through his entire body that made him feel on fire. Her trembling fingers went from his face to his arms, then to the clasp of his robes, which were now gone, now to the buttons of his shirt, then to his chest, roaming over his sensitive skin, the changed torso she’d first noticed the morning after she’d arrived on Privet Drive, and he found her sitting on his bed. It suddenly occurred to him to wonder how long she’d sat there that morning, watching him sleep.

But then she broke the kiss and he felt her lips on his neck again, like the day before, then her tongue making an agonizing, wet trail down to his chest, as her fingers brushed lightly over his nipples. He felt like he needed to sit down, or fall down, or explode, or something. This was so--amazing. Why had she been avoiding him? She wasn’t pulling back now, she was taking the lead, if anything. What was with her?

He held her head as she turned her mouth to his right nipple, making him draw in his breath and say her name.

“Hermione,” he breathed softly. “Hermione, why were you avoiding me all day?” His voice was still a whisper.

She brought her head up, no longer in contact with him in any way. She was crying, he saw. Crying? Why? he wondered.

Then, without warning, she broke from him and ran for the door of the classroom, crying harder now. But Harry was too fast for her, reaching out and grabbing her wrist.

“Hermione,” he said more loudly now, and she shushed him.

“Harry,” she said in a thick voice, through her tears. “We can’t do this now. It’s too dangerous. Until the whole Viktor and Cho thing is over, we can’t risk it. If anyone caught us together...”

“We--we can be discreet,” he said, pulling her into his arms again. She raised her tear-streaked face to him in the moonlight.

“No, we can’t. I can’t. I--have no self-control when I’m alone with you. I--I want this too much--”

“And you always have to be in control, don’t you?”

She pushed him away angrily. “Don’t make fun of me. But, yes. I need to be in control of myself, and you--you make me feel anything but.”

His chest felt tight upon hearing this. I make her feel out of control, he thought. I do that. He felt happier than he ever remembered feeling during his entire life.

“I need your help in this, Harry,” she said softly. “If you don’t help me--I’m lost--”

“Of course,” he said quickly. “Of course...”

She separated herself from him again, but did not run; they stood not touching a mere three or four inches apart, but to Harry, it felt like a gulf a mile wide. “And sometimes,” she said, “maybe sometimes, we can--be together. But we have to be careful. We can’t be thoughtless and careless. No one can know about us yet.”

Harry nodded, unable to speak, in case he said other things besides Of course I’ll stay away from you, of course I’ll refrain from kissing you, touching you...

She raised herself on tiptoe and put her hand on his bare chest; his shirt was still unbuttoned to the waist. “Don’t think this means I don’t want you,” she said even more softly, and quickly kissed him, her lips soft and moist and gone too soon. Hermione turned and left the classroom, no longer running, but purposeful. Harry stood there for a moment, in agony, remembering her hands, her lips and tongue...

He slowly buttoned his shirt and stooped to pick up his robes, then trod heavily up the stairs to the common room, having sentenced himself to hell.

In Defense Against the Dark Arts, they’d finished their discussions concerning Lord of the Flies and were supposed to start reading Tess of the D’Urbervilles. On Friday, it was finally Ron’s turn to do his Othello presentation. Harry didn’t know what to expect, and neither did Hermione, since he’d refused to show it to either of them. The two of them had tried to keep Ron with them as much as possible all week, so they wouldn’t be tempted to go off alone.

He went to the front of the classroom when Moody read his name, and while he started out reading in a monotone, he could not maintain his initial passive demeanor as he progressed through the essay:

“Rather than taking Othello’s character in an unnatural and opposite direction, his worst potential was realized and brought to the surface by Iago. This is not the same as corrupting someone; if Othello had truly been corrupted by Iago, we should have gotten the impression that without his help, it would have been absolutely impossible for him ever to behave in such a judgmental and violent manner.

“Furthermore, Iago kills the most honorable man in the play, Roderigo, who is prepared to kill himself when he has lost Desdemona to Othello. Roderigo is not determined to kill her, to keep other men from her; he does not even attempt to kill Othello. Roderigo is guilty of nothing more than being lovesick and gullible; does no one serious harm and bears no one malicious thoughts. When Othello kills himself, at the end, doing what Roderigo only considered, he is finally acting honorably.”

The class clapped hands politely; Moody stomped his clawed wooden leg on the floor in lieu of applause. Ron sat down. Hermione looked at him strangely, and Harry started to reconsider whether Ron would be dangerous to him and Hermione once he found out about them, or only to himself. Could Ron possibly be suicidal? Harry wondered. Then something else stuck in his brain: She has deceived her father, and may thee. She was deceiving Viktor Krum, and to a lesser degree, Ron (since he wasn’t her boyfriend); could she ever deceive him, Harry? He tried to quickly suppress this thought, but now Moody was speaking.

He took Ron’s parchment from the desk, where he’d left it, and read from it. “We perhaps most readily believe what we most fear to.”

He looked at the class, his normal eye narrowed and his magical eye seeming to be focused on the wall to his left. “We humans jump to conclusions. We make assumptions. And sometimes, we open ourselves to darkness by doing this. We aren’t being infiltrated by it; we bring it out of ourselves, we let it rise to the surface, we stop stopping it.”

He had been speaking very softly, but somehow, it now seemed like he was shouting, the room was so quiet. “Do you know what happens if someone is placed under the Imperious Curse, and then told to do something they wanted to do anyway? Something they were preventing themselves from doing, but something they wanted very much, nonetheless? That’s when it becomes damn near impossible to fight the Imperious Curse. When it takes away your inhibitions. ‘Inhibition’ is a word that’s gotten a bad reputation, when it’s our inhibitions that help us to maintain a civilized society. What would happen if every time one of us had an impulse of any kind, we simply obeyed it? CHAOS! Just pure chaos would result!

“When someone under the Imperious Curse is told to do something against their nature, that’s when it’s easiest to fight it, because they stand a chance of being able to distinguish in their mind between their will and the will of the person who has cursed them. But if they are told to do something that is a deeply suppressed longing--TROUBLE.”

With a jolt, Harry remembered Hermione describing her abduction in the marketplace in Bulgaria: I suddenly felt all lightheaded and floaty....I tried fighting it, but there was nothing to fight, I wasn’t being told to do anything I didn’t want to do. I decided that I had an incredible urge to buy vegetables, but that’s what I was already there for. I remember being very confused, like I was waiting for instructions, but they didn’t come.

Had the instructions come from within herself? Harry wondered. Was it something against her nature they were urging her to do--or were they removing her inhibitions? Which inhibitions? he started to wonder, but then he immediately stopped wondering, and remembered her saying I want this too much. She was normally so in control, but now he made her feel out of control, she had said. Did he make her feel that way, or was it a curse? Would she have done any of what she had of her own volition, if she were fully able to govern her own actions, to decide which impulses to bury and which to give in to?

He was suddenly so full of doubts, it seemed that his head was spinning. He sat through the rest of the lesson in a fog, at the end hearing vaguely Moody growling to Ron, “Oh, and Weasley: twenty-five points for Gryffindor. Best damn essay I’ve gotten all term.”

He saw Ron’s ears go red as he tried to hide how pleased he was. Then, without warning, when they were out in the corridor, Ron stopped Harry and Hermione.

“Hey, you two. Wait a minute.”

Harry and Hermione looked at each other, then Ron. Did Ron already suspect something?

“What’s up with you two?” He turned to Hermione. “Ginny said you’ve been begging her to come running with you, when she hates getting up early.” Aha, thought Harry. She told me Ginny asked to come. “And all week, at breakfast and in each class you’ve been trying to put me in between you. Don’t deny it, I can tell. Did you two fight or something? Because I hate when these things go on and on. Just kiss and make up already.”

Harry winced. It’s just an expression, he reminded himself. Just an expression.

“Well, to tell you the truth,” Hermione was saying shakily, “we did have a disagreement. And--it’s not going to be solved anytime soon, so you’ll just have to deal.”

“What?” Ron said, not having gotten any real information.

“We’ve agreed to disagree,” Harry said vaguely, before Ron could ask more questions. But this did not end it.

Ron leaned in closer to Harry and said quietly, “This isn’t about being a Death Eater, is it?”

“No. I’m not going to become a Death Eater. I promise. Can we just go to Transfiguration now?”

Ron looked at the two of them, dissatisfied with their answers; he looked like he could tell they were hiding something. He turned without a word and strode away from them, his red hair like a flame lighting the corridor, his lanky six-foot-two frame moving easily, his slightly frayed robes billowing out behind him with a dignity Harry had never seen him muster before. He felt his stomach clench. I’m lying to my best friend. Then he looked at Hermione.

Is she under a spell?

He tried to shrug nonchalantly at her and turned to follow Ron.

We have to stay apart.

We have to stay apart.