Choices and Consequences

Harry eased into his lessons over the next week or so as the staff introduced the NEWT students to their syllabus.

Charms and Transfiguration classes featured very little practical work to start with, as Professors McGonagall and Flitwick spent time on the theoretical applications that they would use over the coming two years.

Charms was scheduled to cover a wide range of spells that could be used for protection and security purposes, and Professor Flitwick indicated that once the theory was out of the way, the class would be attempting to create amulets of protection using the spells they had learned.

"Isn't that a bit dangerous," Hermione asked, a little nervously, when the subject came up in class.

"In what way, Miss Granger?" Flitwick enquired.

"Well since we're probably only going to be able to cast fairly weak protections on the amulets at this stage, they won't provide us with much protection, will they?"

"Actually, you should be approaching your magical maturity by now," the diminutive teacher corrected her, "so the charms you place on the amulets should be reasonably strong."

"However, you do raise an important point," he continued. "Even though you may be afforded some protection by the amulets from minor things like heat, cold and minor physical attacks, you certainly shouldn't rely on them. It's always best to move away from a source of danger than to rely on protection provided by magic."

Harry had a momentary insight into the Headmaster's reasoning for hiding Harry with the Dursleys all these years, but forced himself to pay attention to the lesson.

Having read through the textbook already, albeit briefly, he had a slightly more ambitious plan for his amulet. He knew that the textbook didn't cover the particular charm he was thinking of, but was keen to try it out for himself if he could find the appropriate instructions. This was one occasion when he knew he would have to confide in Hermione if he was going to find any help in the library, since his friend would have the best idea whereabouts in the huge Hogwarts collection he might find the information he was looking for.

If it came down to it, Harry figured he could ask Dumbledore, but he didn't really want to have to do that if he could avoid it. Although he had forgiven the Headmaster for his neglect as a child, he was still wary of trusting him to do what was best for Harry, rather than best for the common good. Even though he'd accepted that he would likely need Dumbledore's help to defeat Voldemort, he'd found himself much more aware that their respective best interests might differ.

Elsewhere in his NEWT studies, Harry was finding Transfiguration to be rather easy. His additional work over the summer with Fabian Gaarder had proved an excellent revision of his five years of Transfiguration lessons at Hogwarts, and the work on conjuration and the use of elemental magic had fine tuned his spell work to the point where he was able to follow the theory behind the fairly complex transformations that McGonagall was teaching them with relative ease.

Potions classes were slightly different - the majority of their lessons were part theory and part practical. Snape had followed up his initial lesson by being a lot less snide towards Harry and his fellow Gryffindors, and picked on them a lot less, though he still tended to favour the Slytherin students. It made for a pleasant change in the atmosphere in the Potions dungeons though, and Harry no longer dreaded his three hours a week studying the subject.

"It's really not that bad," he found himself telling Ron one evening. "Now that he doesn't feel the need to hover over us and harass us, it's so much easier."

"I still don't trust the slimy git," Ron opined.

"I never said anything about trusting him, Ron. I'm still not happy with how he ignored our plea for aid when we were apprehended by Umbridge."

"It wasn't his fault," Hermione chipped in. "He couldn't exactly let Umbridge know he was on Dumbledore's side, could he?"

"That's not the point," Harry retorted angrily. "He could at least have done something!"

Despite Harry's personal feelings about Snape though, the lessons continued to be reasonably interesting. Following on from the potion they had brewed in the first lesson, Snape spent a lot of time instructing the class in changing specific ingredients from the prescribed recipe, and how to manipulate potions to produce certain effects. Much of this was in relation to potions they had brewed in previous years, which made the instruction a lot simpler, but Harry could see how this would be useful in more complicated potions, or indeed, as John Christopher had suggested, to create new potions from scratch.

Snape had categorically warned them against the latter though, in his trademark fashion, providing some horrendous examples of what had happened to students who had attempted to experiment without supervision. Harry hadn't realised that there were quite so many horrible ways that you could die, and suspected that some of the tales were apocryphal.

The Defence Against the Dark Arts classes contained much more practical activity than Charms or Transfiguration. The lessons were split into one two hour session on a Monday, where they worked on magical combat, including fairly frequent duels between the students, though not quite as entertaining as the ones in the very first class, and an hour on Thursday afternoons that was dedicated to detection spells and counter-curses used in curse breaking.

Harry could see why the latter held such interest for Bill Weasley: they covered a wide range of protective curses and traps that wizards had used over the centuries to protect their belongings and deter unwelcome visitors. Each situation required a great deal of thought before one jumped in and simply acted on the discovery of a new treasure, as the curses were often used in combinations to catch out unwary trespassers.

Hermione in particular seemed to find the topic extremely interesting. She had taken to studying in-depth a wide range of potential curses that she thought might be used in such situations, and enjoyed the cerebral challenge involved in figuring out what sort of curses had been used and how to counteract them.

Professor Silverwood had brought a number of small caskets into the lessons and used them to demonstrate the areas that were the most likely targets for curses, including the locks, hinges, lids and clips, and allowed the students to tackle some examples he'd pre-prepared with some minor curses and jinxes on them.

One thing that was common across all Harry's classes was the insistence of the teachers that they use their 'free periods' to work on their homework assignments and course reading. It was emphasised in almost every lesson that if they wasted their time during these periods, it wouldn't be long before the assignments started to pile up and they would get hopelessly left behind.

"I won't have any slacking off in my NEWT classes," McGonagall made a special effort to remind them. "If you fail to turn in your homework, or it isn't up to a satisfactory standard, you will be required to repeat it, in detention if necessary."

This was something that the seventh years had commented on to them: even if they were caught in inappropriate activities that warranted time spent in detention, once at NEWT level those detentions weren't simply punishment-based, such as assisting caretaker Filch with cleaning duties. Instead the detentions involved supervised quiet periods where they were required to get on with homework assignments.

"There's no point in me assigning you detention cleaning floors or something, Mister Finnegan," McGonagall told Seamus one evening at dinner when she overheard him complaining about it. "You'll only get even further behind in your studies. You need to spend detentions productively at your age."

As it was, Harry struggled to get all his assignments done as quickly as he would have liked. After the first week of settling in, his lessons with John and with Professor Gaarder started up once again, though now he concentrated heavily on his Occlumency and Duelling with John, with some additional assistance now and again from Mad-eye Moody who seemed to be around the castle an awful lot, while his work with Gaarder focused on harnessing his elemental magic; now that his regular Potions lessons had started up, none of them felt any need to continue with the extra work, especially since Harry seemed to be holding his own in class.

To keep his sessions out of the public eye, Dumbledore allowed Harry to use the Room of Requirement, and a lot of his free periods were dedicated to training rather than homework.

Even with only four NEWT classes, Harry found his week full. Although he only had fourteen hours of classes a week including his Astronomy refreshers, he was also in the Room of Requirement with one or other of his trainers all afternoon on a Tuesday, and all morning on Thursdays and Fridays, which left him about half the free periods he would have otherwise enjoyed. He was exhausted after some of the duelling sessions in particular, which garnered him strange looks as he joined subsequent classes all flushed in the face from his exertions.

He was very pleased with the way that his Occlumency was going. Now able to shut both John and Gaarder out of his mind at will, they had started testing him from a distance, while he was in class, to see if he could pick up the fact he was being probed in situations where he wasn't expecting it. The lack of eye contact initially made it a little difficult for Harry to understand, but after the first few times, Harry had found that the buzzing rang alarm bells in the back of his mind, even if he was deep in though about something else, or answering a question in class, and he was able to deal with the distraction with the minimum of disruptions to his classes.

Occasionally he seemed to pick another presence as well, that wasn't either of his two tutors. It certainly wasn't Snape, who hadn't attempted any further intrusion onto Harry's mind after his attempt on their first day of lessons, as the feel of his presence was totally different from this unknown one. This new presence was very subtle, and seemed to only be floating on the very surface of Harry's mind as though to test whether or not he was aware of it at all. Whenever Harry tried to get a good grasp on it to try and get a feel for it for future reference, the presence simply pulled away, leaving a strange sensation of frustration behind it.

He suspected that it was Dumbledore, which irritated Harry slightly. If he wanted to talk about something, he only had to ask. It also annoyed Harry that there seemed to be so many Legilimens around, and yet last year Dumbledore had forced Snape upon him, despite knowing the tension between the two of them.

John had also been teaching him how to segment his thoughts, so that if he needed to act as though he hadn't noticed the mental intrusion, he could gently guide the invading mind to certain topics or away from others without having to expose his abilities by simply shutting off his mind to the attacker.

"That'll be a useful tool," Moody noted one morning when John explained it to him. "It might give you an advantage over the Dark Lord."

Harry looked at him quizzically, awaiting an explanation.

"If he thinks your mental defences are weak or non-existent, which is a likely assumption given the ease with which he's broken into the your mind before, he might underestimate you.

"Can't do it myself - never got round to the training when I was an Auror, but it's good psychology," he grunted. "That's why you need me here: some experience of what it's actually like to be out there fighting."

Towards the end of the second week of term, Harry finally got chance to corner Moody on his own to complain about being followed around.

"I'm just keeping an eye of you, Potter," Moody explained. "You've got a habit of getting yourself into difficult situations, and I mean to be around, just in case."

He found that difficult to argue against, given the trouble he'd gotten into, even on the castle grounds in his first five years at Hogwarts, but Harry was still uncomfortable about having Moody trail him all the time.

"Don't you have anything better to do than lurk around under that invisibility cloak?" Harry asked.

"Not really. Besides, how did you know I was there when I was hidden?" Moody asked, belatedly. "Does that map have something to do with it?"

Harry nodded. "It's quite useful." He explained what the Marauders' Map showed, and how he'd noticed Moody following him at a fairly discreet distance the second night of term. He also explained how it showed the person's correct name, and gave the example of when Barty Crouch Junior had been using Polyjuice Potion to impersonate Moody and the map had actually named him correctly.

"Hmm, useful that, like you say," Moody agreed. "I wonder if I can get hold of something else like that?"

"Speak to Remus," Harry suggested. "He was one of the creators of mine. Perhaps he'd be able to tell you how to duplicate or recreate it. That'll give you something to do while you're waiting around to follow me."

Moody harrumphed at the reminder of his role. "I'm not reporting you back to Dumbledore, you know," he assured the teenager.

Harry raised his eyebrows in question.

"None of his business, you know. Besides which, I remember what it was like to be sixteen, even if it was a long time ago."

Harry really couldn't imagine Moody being sixteen. Given his dedication to his career, he must have been fairly committed to getting his grades at school, but something about him didn't make Harry think he'd been quite as studious as Hermione.

"Anyway, I don't really need to," Moody continued. "Dumbledore's got his own ways of knowing what goes on around here."

"I meant to ask about that," Harry remembered. "How on earth does he find out about everything? I mean, I know for a fact he was safely locked away in his office the other night, but you told me he knew I was involved with what happened."

Harry vaguely recalled Fred and George speculating that the Hogwarts' House Elves all reported directly to Dumbledore and that they were specifically ordered to keep an eye on what happened, but he wasn't sure whether they had been serious about it, or if they had just been trying to wind Ron up at the time.

"Something to do with the way the magic around the castle works," Moody noted. "He's got his magic attuned to that of the wards, and he knows all sorts of ways of getting information. It lets him read signatures of what has happened all over the castle, or something like that."

Harry was reminded of the book that Remus and the twins had given him for his birthday, and resolved to take some time to have a deep look into it and see if that was the sort of thing that Moody was talking about. If Dumbledore could get that sort of information simply from the castle's magic, then Harry thought there might be other ways of manipulating the magic that went a bit further than Fred and George's suggested use for pranks.

By the end of that week, Harry was giving John something of a run for his money with his duelling. The practice he'd had during the summer in controlling and focusing his spells had worked exceptionally well, even if he'd had little chance to demonstrate any of his expanded repertoire when he and Zabini had duelled Professor Silverwood in class. John was now spending most of the time on actual combat practice, with Moody frequently spelling John to give Harry a variety of attacks to defend against.

They were also working on some effective attacking bludgeoning spells that would have been helpful against Silverwood, particularly ones that worked by breaking down shields. Harry had identified this as an area of concern after his duel in the Defence class, since he'd struggled to get much of a shot on the Professor with his strong shields in place, and John was keen to help him improve that.

The elemental magic was proving to be a little trickier. Although he'd mastered the art of creating solid items out of air, when they had moved on to working with fire, he'd found difficulty in conceptualising what he wanted to do with the element. The only thing that had appeared to work so far was to combine the air and fire elements to create a six-foot high barrier of flames that prevented most living things from getting through to him. The only problem with it was that it couldn't stop magical energies, so spells could still pass through the flames with little trouble, and solid objects thrown through also seemed to find their target pretty well, although they were rather hot to the touch afterwards.

Also taking up a fair amount of Harry's time was Quidditch practice. As expected, Katie Bell had been made Captain of the Gryffindor team, and although she wasn't quite as strident about the need for regular practices and having them at ungodly hours of the morning as Oliver Wood had been, she was still quite driven to making her year as Captain a successful one.

Much to Ron's chagrin, she had held tryouts for all the positions, not just those that had been open for discussion.

"Why do I need to try out for Keeper after last year?" Ron had protested when Katie had approached them with the news at breakfast one morning.

For once, Harry had elected to sit with the rest of the Gryffindors rather than the first year students, but they hadn't been ignored - a large number of fifth and sixth year Hufflepuffs had taken to sitting with them as well as a few students from each of the other houses, although the only Slytherins to approach them were the two prefects, Irene and Matthias, that Harry had approached initially, and Blaise Zabini, whose cousin was among the first years.

"I know we won the cup Ron, but you weren't all that impressive," Katie told him, reminding Ron of his woeful performance in the first game of the season, and making his face burn bright red with shame.

"But who else have you got to try out?" he asked, hoping none of them were likely to be trying out for his spot.

"You'll just have to wait and see. Harry, Ginny, I understand you're both going to try out at Seeker and Chaser?" With nods from both of them, Katie continued. "Good. That's fine by me. I'll be keeping a close eye on the two of you to see what our best options are."

With that she swept off, leaving a fairly disgruntled Ron worrying about his position on the team once again.

As it happened, although there were a fair number of Gryffindors trying out for the team, Ron was clearly the best option at Keeper, which mollified him slightly. The confidence he'd gained from their last match, not to mention the extra practice he'd put in with Ginny over the summer, had improved his game substantially and he was already working out which of the opposing Chasers were likely to be threatening and what he could do to stop them scoring.

The two Beaters that had replaced the Weasley twins, Kirke and Sloper, didn't show at all well in their tryout, which wasn't really a surprise to most of the people that had watched them play the previous year. Less obvious, initially, was who would take those spots instead. There weren't any outstanding candidates, but in the end Katie settled on Colin and Dennis Creevey, who had worked really well as a team even if they didn't have the same power as Fred and George.

Everyone bemoaned the lack of top notch Beaters, but in reality it was always going to be difficult to find good replacements for Fred and George, who had worked together all their lives. At least the Creevey brothers were enthusiastic and reasonably competent, which gave them a bit of an edge over the other contenders. Kirke and Sloper declined the opportunity to stand by as reserves in case they were needed, so Neville was offered the spot, and would practice with the team as well.

Ginny pushed Harry quite hard as Seeker, but in the end his slight experience advantage told, as did his known willingness to put his body on the line to capture the snitch. Ginny wasn't too put out though, as she was clearly the best candidate to play alongside Katie at Chaser, and the final Chaser spot was filled by second year Euan Abercrombie who, although his broom wasn't one of the best on the market, made up for it with some excellent Quaffle-handling and reflexes and a dead-eye shot that Ron spent much of the evening grumbling about.

"He should be pleased," Ginny noted in an aside to Harry that evening as Ron went off on another rant.

She sat down next to him in the common room where Harry had been attempting to work on a strange Potions assignment that Snape had set on the long-term effectiveness of phoenix tears.

He looked at her with a raised eyebrow and waited for her to continue.

"Well, Euan's on our side, so it's not Ron that he's going to be scoring against when we actually get into a game," she explained.

"Umm, I think he's more concerned about how bad he's going to look in practice if Euan keeps scoring against him though, Ginny," he replied quietly, not wanting to draw Ron's attention to the fact they were talking about him.

"He's still worried about his place on the team?" Ginny asked in surprise. "There wasn't anyone else out there to touch him today."

"I know, but it's a confidence thing."

Ginny rolled her eyes and sank backwards into the sofa next to Harry, pulling him back with her. They'd had a few quiet laughs about how they might try to build Ron's confidence up, with each suggestion getting more and more outrageous, though they had to stop once they got to the stage of suggesting they get Hermione to drag him into a closet for some illicit snogging on their prefect rounds.

"That's still a pretty sore topic Harry," Ginny warned him. "I'd stay well clear of that, if I were you."

At Harry's questioning glance, Ginny had simply nodded across at Hermione, who was sat on the far side of the room, attempting to do some homework herself, and studiously ignoring Ron's attempts to attract her sympathy.

"So what about you?" He asked. "Still seeing Dean?"

Ginny shook her head. "After Ron wrote to him, he sent a snippy letter back pointing out that he already had a girlfriend, and that Parvati wouldn't be all that keen to hear Ron's accusations. Still, it stopped him winding me up for a while."

Harry's stomach gave a little lurch at the reminder that Ginny had only mentioned Dean's name in passing to annoy her brother, and that effectively she was still single. He thought back to how helpful she'd been when he'd wanted to talk to Sirius, and how she'd insisted on going to the Ministry with them. His memories then started heading off in a slightly different direction as he recalled the way her hair streamed down her shoulders, reflecting the light as she flew across the Quidditch pitch tossing the Quaffle around.

Suddenly he realised that she was still sitting next to him, and re-focused to find her waving a hand in front of his fact.

"Hello? Harry? Where were you just off to just then?"

Harry blushed. "Mmm? Oh nowhere," he said quickly, leaning forward and picking up his Potions essay once more.

Ginny leaned forward slightly too, and placed a hand on his back. "If you want to talk, let me know," she said softly, before pulling herself to her feet, taking a quick glance around the room and heading upstairs to her dormitory.

At the start of October, Dumbledore announced that there would be a Hogsmeade visit next weekend, which roused the students out of the torpor they had settled into now they were used to their class schedules. The Great Hall became abuzz at the announcement as people started making arrangements for the trip, deciding who they would go with and what shops they intended to visit.

There was a special frisson of activity going around among the third years, who would be making their first visit to the village, and the excitement permeated even the work-addled brains of the NEWT students. Harry particularly looked forward to a relaxing day with his friends instead of the constant training that he had become accustomed to over the past few months, and spent quite some time in the preceding few days making sure that all his assignments for class were up to date.

Even with the additional hours that he'd been putting into training and Quidditch practice, Harry found that he was just about coping okay with the workload. Having a few free periods when he was more or less on his own gave him the opportunity to get a lot of his work out of the way then, rather than having to complete it in the Gryffindor common room late at night, or when there were other tempting distractions around, though it did meaning turning down Ron's regular offers of games of chess or Exploding Snap in the common room, when their free periods coincided, in favour of actually doing his homework.

Harry had assumed that he, Ron and Hermione would go to Hogsmeade together, but the way that the tension between Ron and Hermione had increased since the announcement of the Hogsmeade visit, he was starting to think that this unspoken arrangement was starting to be jeopardised.

Each time the two of them they returned from their prefect meetings and rounds together, which was almost every evening, the air between them seemed more frosty, and they seemed to be in a constantly bad mood when they were in one another's presence, continually sniping at each other between lessons and in the common room, and generally doing the sorts of things that irritate each other, seemingly deliberately. Neville reported that Herbology lessons were extremely tense with the way the two were acting, and that Professor Sprout was losing her temper with their attitude, without Harry there to keep the peace between them in lesson time.

Harry recalled the way that the two had rubbed each other up the wrong way in their first year, and shuddered to think that they had regressed to that point. Even Professor McGonagall had noticed their increasing hostility toward each other and had threatened all sorts of repercussions if it got out of hand and became a disciplinary issue.

Ron also seemed to be worked up about Ginny, presumably a residual effect lingering from her relationship with Michael Corner the previous year and her purported one with Dean that she had wound Ron up about. He seemed to keeping a very close eye on what she was up to, much to her annoyance, and still didn't seem to fully trust Dean, despite his assurances that he was perfectly happy with Parvati. Ron seemed to be getting as paranoid as Moody on this particular issue, and even if he wasn't scaring off any of Ginny's potential boyfriends, there would surely be a reckoning eventually.

Eventually the blow up came. Harry had tuned out their constant bickering over the previous day or so, and he lazed in a comfy chair in front of the fire in Gryffindor Tower, idly chatting with Ginny as she worked her way through an essay for Astronomy. While he had done a similar essay the previous year, Ginny was providing just enough new information to keep his mind alert for new facts that would help him with the re-sit a couple of months down the line.

Heads turned to see the two sixth year prefects barge through the portrait hole on their return from patrolling the corridors.

"Do you mind?" he heard the Fat Lady ask plaintively as the slamming of the door caused her painting to reverberate. Neither of them paid her any attention though.

It seemed that Ron had been deliberately irritating Hermione with his disregard (in her view) of his prefect duties, and whinging about how it cut into his chess-playing time in the evenings, and she had finally had enough of it.

"Honestly Ron," Harry could hear above the gentle babble of the common room, "you get one little opportunity to take some responsibility around here, and you're more concerned about spending your time playing Exploding Snap than setting a good example."

"Will you lay off me?" Ron responded angrily. "I'm not cut out for sucking up to the teachers like you, with my nose buried deep in my books."

"This isn't about studying, this is about acting responsibly," Hermione insisted. "I really don't understand sometime why you got to be a prefect. Harry would have been a much better choice. At least he takes his responsibilities seriously."

Harry winced as he heard Hermione utter these words. He was sure that Ron wasn't in the mood to be compared to Harry right then, and the silence that followed as the whole room waited to see Ron's reaction was nerve-wracking. Harry was glad that he was largely hidden from sight from the rest of the room, and raised his eyebrows top Ginny, who'd looked up at him in concern at Hermione's words, her face twisted into an expression of fear.

Predictably, Ron wasn't impressed.

"Oh! Harry would be fine as a prefect, I'm sure! Harry takes his responsibilities seriously! I suppose I'm just here for comic relief, am I? If Harry's such a great guy, why did I get the prefect badge then? I suppose it's fine for Harry to get into so much trouble over the past five years, but when it's me that you're talking about it's all a question of acting responsibly? I suppose when you're sleeping with him you get all the prerogatives that money can buy?"

Harry cringed in his seat. Did they have to talk about this out loud? In the common room? With half of Gryffindor paying rapt attention?

"Oh, really, Ron! You are the absolute pits, you know!" Hermione expressed her frustration, ignoring the gaping mouths that greeted Ron's last pronouncement. "I'm sick of your constant sniping, your insinuations and your jealousy! When are you going to get over yourself?"

"Yeah? I thought you were my friends, the two of you. We've had you stay at our house and have taken Harry in when he wasn't wanted by his relatives, basically treating him like a member of our family, and what does he do? He takes the only girl that I've ever been interested in from right under my nose and rubs it in my face. I'm not stupid - I know the real reasons why he stayed over at your house when the rest of us were sent back to The Burrow. I can't believe that you would do that to me - choose to be with him over me."

"And exactly where do you get off making such assumptions, and telling me who I can have a relationship with?" Hermione countered, her anger rising to match Ron's as the room settled back to watch the slanging match, while Harry buried his head in his hands, really not wanting to think about where else the argument might go. Ginny quietly moved across from her own chair and sat of the arm of Harry's, putting her hand on his shoulder in consolation as Hermione continued her rant.

"I can't believe you're so arrogant to think you ever had 'first refusal' with me, Ron. I thought I made it plain before the Yule Ball that if you were interested in me that way you had to let me know, not leave me standing until the last minute. Well I can safely say that your last minute went a long time ago. You obviously have no respect for me, the way you've been acting, and I'm not your puppet to be picked up and put down whenever you feel like it. Get that into your thick head and stop treating me like an idiot!"

"Oh, I see! It's respect, is it? I don't suppose it has anything to do with the bloody Boy-who-Lived, does it?"

"Now you're being ridiculous."

"Ridiculous, am I? I'm not the one who's always getting the attention, am I? Saviour of the wizarding world! Youngest Quidditch player in over a century! A vault full of Galleons! Picture in the Daily Prophet every time he's spotted in Diagon Alley! I'm sick of it!" Ron spat, bitterly. "And now I guess the two of you are finally going to be a couple and leave me on my own. Well that's just fine! Get the hell out of my life, both of you!"

Ron turned to leave, but was prevented from doing so by Hermione's tug on his robes.

"Don't think you can just walk away like that, Ron Weasley. You're being totally unreasonable about this, and you know it! You can't possibly believe one word of what you've just said. You've seen how much he hates the attention! Don't you understand that Harry would swap everything he's got - his fame, fortune, and Quidditch skills - just to have a family like yours, to have people that really care about him, in an instant? You take your family for granted, when Harry doesn't even have one. How can you be so jealous, and so bitter?"

Out of sight, Ginny looked into Harry's eyes, curious as to the truth of Hermione's claim. Harry nodded, with a sad smile, and pulled her into a close hug, needing the comfort that it provided as the two people who had been his best friends for the past five years washed their dirty laundry in the semi-public environment of the Gryffindor common room.

Hermione's words had only served to enrage Ron further. "How dare you talk about my family like that! You don't know anything!" he snarled as logical argument escaped him. "I've spent my whole life trying to live up to the expectations of my family, and this is the thanks I get? Even Fred and George have made a success out of their lives, and then I find out that he was responsible for that as well!"

"Oh grow up, Ron!" Hermione shouted. "Stop trying to live up to everyone else's expectations and get your own life. You can't be Harry, and I can tell you right now, you wouldn't really want to be. You don't understand half of what he's been through, even if you have heard the prophecy."

Even amidst the shocked silence of the common room there was a new buzz about this last statement. Harry could hear a couple of people asking their friends what they knew about a prophecy, but being hushed up to better hear Ron and Hermione's continuing argument.

"Don't I?" Ron demanded. "Who went into the Chamber of Secrets with him in second year? Who sacrificed himself in a chess game to let him get to the Philosopher's Stone and save it? I think you'll find that I've seen an awful lot of what he's been through, because I've been through it too."

Hermione shrieked at him: "You know nothing! Harry has always been the one who has had to suffer for the rest of us. Don't you dare blame him or think you've seen anything close to what he's experienced!"

"You know what? I don't care, anymore," he responded.

Ron had heard enough, and stormed off to the sixth year boys' dormitory. Harry dreaded what he would find when he finally made his own way up to bed. Although Ron couldn't have known that he'd heard the entire argument, he must have been aware that there were more than enough people in the common room that would tell him, and his outburst would soon be common knowledge around the whole school, not merely Gryffindor Tower.

"Well at least you know what his problem is," Ginny half-joked, as Harry released her. She looked at him sympathetically, as conversation in the room returned to normal levels, though Harry suspected that the topic of conversation had changed and that Ron, Hermione and himself were the subject of most of it.

"I hadn't realised it was that bad!" Harry shuddered.

"You're not the only one who keeps things bottled up, Harry." Ginny reminded him. "It's not as though he's had any outlet to discuss this."

Any further discussion was halted as Hermione came stomping over to the back of Harry's chair, and suddenly realised that he'd been sitting there all along.

"Oh hell!" she cursed.

"Not happy to see us, Hermione?" Ginny asked, as the rest of the room craned their heads to see if Harry really had been there throughout his friends' argument.

"You heard all that?"

They both nodded solemnly.

"Oh hell!" she repeated.

Harry stood up and turned to face her, engulfing her in a big hug, something he would have felt very awkward doing only a few months earlier.

"It's okay," he reassured her. "I'm not mad."

"You sure?" she asked tentatively, looking at him nervously and taking a seat on the sofa on the other side of Ginny.

"Sure. A bit embarrassed, seeing as the whole of Gryffindor now thinks we've been sleeping together," he suggested with a wry grin and watching Hermione turn bright red, "and I'm not sure I was ready for the whole school to know all that stuff about me wanting to have a proper family, but I'm not mad at you."

"And Ron?"

Harry's face clouded over.

"Well I'm not exactly mad at him for being jealous of me. I'm a bit annoyed that he's gone all this time without saying something to me about it rather than taking it out on you. I thought he'd mostly gotten over it after the first task of the Tri-wizard Tournament, but then we had that scene at The Burrow as well."

"You don't mind that I didn't deny anything?" she asked.

Harry paused a moment as the implications of what she was asking sank in.

"I hadn't even noticed, I'm afraid," he admitted with chagrin. "If the word gets around, we might need to make a decision what to tell people though." Harry stopped for a moment and considered his next words. "I don't mean to sound rude about this, Hermione, but I don't think we'd make a very good couple."

Hermione looked quizzically at him. "Is this you trying to get around saying you don't find me attractive?" she asked, not entirely sure she knew what she wanted Harry's answer to be.

He stuttered a little, and blushed as he tried to find a way of expressing himself that wasn't going to hurt his friend.

"That's not what I meant!" he protested.

She grinned with the satisfaction of having flustered him.

"You're my friend, Hermione. I don't think I could ever have wished for anything more than that. As I said to you last year when we were off to meet Rita Skeeter, I don't think you're ugly - in fact I think you're quite nice looking. I just couldn't imagine you as my girlfriend though. Sorry."

Hermione took this with good grace, though her smile looked a little forced. "It isn't a problem, Harry. I did wonder, though, especially with what Ron's been insinuating all week, whether it was something you'd thought of."

"Ah, yes, well," he prevaricated. "Tonks has been on at me all summer about finding a girlfriend - she seems to think it's important for some reason - and she told me to consider all the girls that I was even remotely friendly with."

"Looks like you're still in with a shot then Ginny," Hermione commented, smirking at the younger girl, and nudging her towards Harry, making both of them blush.

"I thought you'd given up on me?" Harry asked Ginny in surprise. "So she told me." He added with a nod at Hermione.

Ginny gave Hermione a look that spoke volumes. Volumes that suggested a long discussion at some point in the very near future about the level of discretion Hermione had employed in relation to Ginny's secrets.

"Well he's not running away," Hermione noted in an undertone. "That's a start, at least."

Harry looked between Hermione and Ginny, slightly bemused by the calculating look on Hermione's face and the inscrutable expression on Ginny's.

After a long, searching look at Harry's face, which made him feel as though she was looking for something in particular, Hermione turned to Ginny. "Let's go for a walk," she suggested.

"No, not you," she added, as Harry got up to go with them. "Just Ginny and me." He slumped back down into his seat, though not before he'd been spotted by some of the other Gryffindors, who accosted him as the two girls slipped out of the portrait hole.

Harry spent the next half an hour or so trying to explain about a thousand different things to his housemates, who'd gathered round him in an attempt to get more gossip about what Hermione and Ron had been yelling about. It didn't seem to be a huge secret anymore, so Harry told them the broad outline of the prophecy. He filled some of the younger Gryffindors in on the Tri-wizard Tournament, which was largely a matter of public record, and how he'd left it too late to ask the girl he'd wanted to go to the Yule Ball with.

He exchanged glances with Parvati at this point, but she smiled back at him and shrugged.

"It didn't take a genius to work out that you only asked me to the Ball because you had to," she noted, making Harry blush again and try to stammer an apology.

"It's okay, Harry," she continued. "I had a good time anyway. I was only mad at you for about half an hour."

Rather than go into any more detail about the Ball, he explained about the attack at the Grangers', and how Hermione had been affected by the memory of Voldemort's rebirth in Harry's Pensieve. Truth be told, most of them seemed more impressed that he owned a Pensieve than how he'd had to comfort Hermione, though he caught Parvati and Lavender sharing a look that suggested they might be asking Hermione a few questions in the privacy of their dormitory.

Strangely enough, no one asked him anything about Ron, though he sensed there might have been a few questions still unformed that had been overwhelmed by some of the other things that Ron and Hermione had flung at each other, and eventually the questions died away as Harry answered them and people went back to what they had been doing before the outburst.

The only questions that Harry ignored, or provided oblique answers to, were those that related to whether or not he and Hermione were an item, though there was certainly suspicion in some eyes that such was the case. Until he'd had a chance to talk to Hermione about it in more detail, he wasn't prepared to go into that any further - not because there was any lingering ambiguity between them about their relationship, but because he wanted to know what she wanted to tell them before he tried answering such questions.

Hermione and Ginny eventually returned from their 'walk', seemingly content with whatever they'd come up with. Hermione had a conspiratorial smile on her face as she whispered to Ginny, which made Harry nervous for some reason. Ginny had a determined expression from what Harry could see, though he only caught a brief glance at the red-haired Gryffindor fifth year as she headed straight up to her dorm room.

Hermione sat down in front of the fire next to Harry and exhaled sharply.

"Everything okay?" Harry asked casually.

"I think so," she replied with a satisfied expression.

"You look fairly content for someone who's just had a steaming argument with Ron. What are you and Ginny up to?"

"Oh, nothing much. You'll find out eventually."

Harry eyed her suspiciously, but let the matter drop. In any case he had a question that had been troubling him ever since he'd heard about Ron's attitude towards Hermione when they'd been at The Burrow for his birthday.

"What I don't understand is why Ron's taking all his frustration out on you. I mean, it's me he's jealous of, isn't it? Why isn't he upset at me?"

"I don't really know, Harry. The only thing that Ginny and I could think of was that he has to share a dorm room with you. He's never really gotten on well with Dean or Neville or Seamus, and he's scared that he's going to be on his own if he gets mad with you, but I don't know if that's all."

"He's not really bothered by the fact that you might be going out with somebody else then?"

Hermione blushed. "Once I would have thought so, and I would have been flattered by the attention. Remember how jealous he was every time that Viktor's name was mentioned?"

Harry remembered very well how jealous Ron had been at the time, though whether that had been because he'd missed his chance to ask Hermione, or that she'd made herself look particularly beautiful for the evening to be with Viktor, Harry couldn't tell. It certainly wasn't something he'd even considered asking Ron about.

"But now?" Hermione continued, "I don't know. I don't really get the impression that he's all that interested in me. He certainly doesn't look at me in the same way that I've seen him look at other girls. I can't really imagine Ron being my boyfriend, though. Not the way that he acts right now, anyway."

"He's just worried about the two of us going off and leaving him on his own?" Harry shook his head at the thought. "I didn't realise he was that insecure," he added, almost to himself.

"Anyway, we need to decide what to tell all these folks that are going to be curious about your little outburst," Harry reminded her. "Your room mates looked as though they had a thousand and one questions to ask you when they got you alone."

Hermione sighed tiredly at the thought of the interrogation she was likely to get from Lavender and Parvati, and agreed with Harry that they needed to make sure everyone got the same story. It wasn't too difficult though, since all they had to do was tell the truth: Hermione had fallen asleep on Harry's shoulder when he'd comforted her after viewing his memory of Voldemort's re-birth; they weren't a couple, and they weren't likely to be, either.

They were both happy with that explanation, though Hermione seemed a little wistful at Harry's outright denial of any romantic feelings for her. They both knew that Hermione would have to go into deeper detail about why not with Lavender and Parvati once she made it up to her dorm, but that wasn't something she fretted too much about.

"I'm a little disappointed of course that you don't really think of me as girlfriend material, Harry. I think there'll be lots of girls after you now you're not quite so unapproachable and moody, particularly with those muscles you've been working on," Hermione teased a little, "but I'm very happy that you consider me like a sister. I know how much it means for you to have family to turn to."

Harry muttered something unintelligible as he hid his face.

"What was that, Harry?"

"I said 'I didn't mention anything about a sister'," he spoke up.

"True, you didn't. But if it gets you to talk to me when you're planning some hare-brained scheme that's going to get us into trouble, then I reckon that's a start."

Harry winced at yet another reminder of their trip to the Department of Mysteries. He was going to have to get over that.

"I do want to know what you are looking for in a girlfriend though," Hermione continued. "I think Tonks is right; you could do with someone special to take your mind off Voldemort. I've decided to make that one of my goals for the next few weeks."

Harry groaned at the thought of all the attention this would garner, especially given Hermione's tenacity once she had dedicated herself to a cause.

"Do you have to?" he complained.

"Come on Harry, you've spent all your free time doing extra training. You've hardly had an evening to yourself with all the homework we've had - it's about time you took some time off to relax."

"I relax when I'm practicing Quidditch, Hermione. Besides which, it's a Hogsmeade day on Saturday - I'll take that day off from studying and training."

"That's hardly much, Harry."

"Well I never thought I'd see the day when you encouraged me to do less work," Harry grinned.

Hermione punched him lightly on the shoulder. "Stop trying to change the subject."

"Well, I wasn't, but I can do."

"No, enough of that. If you've discussed this with Tonks, you must have thought about what you're looking for in a girlfriend, even if you aren't looking all that hard." She rooted through Ginny's bag, still on the floor in front of them, pulled out a piece of parchment and a quill and waited with the quill poised ready to write as she looked up at Harry expectantly.

Harry blew his cheeks out. "Okay then," he said resignedly. "If I absolutely have to."

He sat back in the comfortable sofa and laid his head back, closing his eyes.

"What I'd really want is someone who likes me for who I am, what I do. For me, Harry, rather than for being the 'Boy-who-Lived' and all that goes with that. I know that there are things that you can't separate out like that, but I'd like to think that any girlfriend would be with me because they like me, personally, not because of my fame, money or Quidditch ability, whatever the Prophet might suggest."

Hermione's quill scratched the surface of the parchment as she summarised Harry's words.

"Go on."

"She'd have to be fairly self-sufficient; able to defend herself if the need arose, but willing to understand that I would always feel the need to protect her. Basically, she'd need to be aware that she could find herself in danger, and to be prepared to fight her way out of trouble if necessary."

"Would she have to be a Gryffindor?" Hermione asked curiously.

Harry stopped for a moment. "You know, I hadn't even given that a thought one way or another." He paused to consider the question. "I don't think it matters. It's not like we're restricted to our common rooms all week long. There's no reason why it would have to be a Gryffindor, though that's obviously the most convenient place for you to start," he smirked.

"Even a Slytherin?"

Harry made a face. "Come on Hermione, you know what the Sorting Hat said."

"Are you trying to avoid answering the question?"

"Yes."

"Any particular reason why?"

"You won't think any less of me?"

"No, of course not."

"Okay then. Even a Slytherin."

Hermione raised an eyebrow in question.

"Like I said, it doesn't matter what House they're in. Not all Slytherins are evil, pure-blood bigots, you know."

"I know - I was just thinking what Ron's reaction would be to you dating a Slytherin."

Harry snorted at that thought. "None of his business."

"True. Those two fifth year prefects you introduced to the first years seemed like perfectly normal people."

"Exactly. Any more questions, Miss Matchmaker?"

"No, I don't think so. Not for now."

"And?"

"Well, I'll let you know," she said with a giggle, "but I can tell you I've eliminated about eighty percent of the girls at Hogwarts already."

"That few?"

"That's just at first glance, Harry. Even before we start to think about whether you find any of the remaining candidates attractive at all."

"That might just kill off the other twenty percent."

Hermione tilted her head to one side and back again in a 'maybe, maybe not' kind of gesture. "I do have one prime candidate in mind, though."

"Oh? Wouldn't be the fifth year Gryffindor you just went for a stroll with by any chance, would it?"

She looked at him knowingly.

"Talk to her, Harry. You've got a lot in common. By my reckoning, she meets your criteria fairly well, and she's about the only one who really knows what it's like to face Voldemort directly, even if she wasn't strong enough to resist his magic."

"You're not serious?"

"Of course I am. Unless of course you see her like a sister as well, but you haven't really taken any chance to get to know her very well before this year."

"No, it's not seeing her as my sister that would be the problem. Laying that on top of Ron's existing jealously isn't going to help."

"I really don't think it will be an issue, Harry," she reassured him. "Judging by his comments on the train at the end of last term, you're about the only guy that Ron would think is good enough for her."

"Even in his latest strop?"

Harry still looked troubled by the thought, and unconvinced by Hermione's arguments. "I'm sure that was fine when he was talking in the abstract, but seeing it right in front of him might be a different story. Hell, he didn't even have to see you asleep on my shoulder to start getting het up about it."

"Harry, I'm not trying to find you a wife here. We're talking about just having a little bit of fun and spending some time together, and maybe a bit of snogging and groping if it gets down to it."

Harry's jaw dropped at Hermione's casual dropping of 'snogging and groping' into the conversation.

"I'm not suggesting you go off and start having sex between lessons, or run down to Hogsmeade this weekend and get married," she continued. " I just think that having someone to share you cares and worries with, and who you can count on to be there for you as more than a friend would do the world of good for you."

"Groping?"

Harry's mind clearly hadn't progressed beyond that particular concept, despite the length of Hermione's monologue.

"Yes, Harry. Groping. As your honorary sister, I have to talk to you about things like this," she insisted, a huge smile growing on her face. "Actually, this is excellent. The possibilities are endless."

"Eh?"

"Oh, nothing, Harry. Just thinking that perhaps there are a few other conversations we might have as well."

"What sort of conversations?" Harry asked suspiciously, starting to feel as though Hermione was setting him up.

"Just some stuff for my personal research," she suggested innocently, before dropping the bomb on him. "You know, sex stuff, what a guy likes-,"

"Umm, that might not be such a good idea," Harry interrupted, feeling the heat in his cheeks. "I'm not exactly the most experienced sixteen year old in the world."

Hermione snickered. "Ah, perhaps not then. It was just a thought." The corners of her mouth curled up in a grin she couldn't hide.

"Anyway," she said, getting up from her seat, "if you have any feelings like that at all for Ginny, I suggest you talk to her. At least that shouldn't prove too difficult?"

"No?" he asked with a pensive look.

"Well you've spent plenty of time talking to her this term, even hugging her. It's not that big a step."

"I guess not," Harry mused, a little unsurely, before getting up himself. "I'm not sure whether I should be thanking you for this or not."

"Don't worry about it, Harry," she suggested, and put her arms around him in a hug, laying her head on his chest. "I always wanted a brother to do this," she added, as she felt Harry's arms slide tentatively around her shoulders to hold her close for a moment, before they headed up to their respective dormitories.