The Weight of the World

Chapter 5 - The Reunited Trio

Dumbledore had private conversations with everyone in the room except for Ron and Harry. This didn't bother either one of them however and they didn't feel like they were being left out of anything. Being here at the school for the summer, they both knew that if anything important happened, they would be in on it anyway. After everyone was finished, Dumbledore thanked them all for coming one last time. They all made their way to the main entrance and the Weasleys all shared their good-byes with Ron and Harry. Mrs. Weasley gave Harry another one of her famous bear hugs, and even though they restricted his breathing, he liked them just the same.

Harry and Ron made their way to the entrance to Gryffindor tower when Ron saw the fat lady.

"Damn, do you know the password?" he asked.

"She isn't using one for us this summer," Harry said as the Fat Lady smiled and let them both in.

After Ron got all of his things situated in his new dorm room, he and Harry went back down to the common room to play a game of chess. After the third straight check-mate in less than 30 minutes by Ron, Harry had had enough.

"I am never going to beat you at this unless I cheat," He said.

Ron just smiled at this. There weren't many things he was better than Harry at, but chess was one of them and he wasn't about to go easy on him.

"You'll beat me one of these days. Maybe I should start playing you without my queen," Ron said laughing.

"Very funny. How about some snap, at least I can compete at that," Harry added.

Just then they heard yelling outside of the entrance portrait.

"What's going on out there?" Ron asked Harry.

"I don't know. I'll go find out."

Harry pushed the painting open from behind and saw Hermione standing there demanding she be let in. "I don't have a password..... just let me."

"Harry!" Hermione's eyes lit up immediately when she saw him. She gave him an enormous hug like they hadn't seen each other in months.

"Hey you! What are you doing here?" Harry tried to act surprised.

"Well I'm coming to stay here for the summer to do some early studying for OWLS and I wanted to surprise you. She wouldn't let me through though," She said pointing to the Fat Lady.

"Oh!" Harry said turning to the Fat Lady. "She and Ron are staying here for the summer too. Will you let them through as well, or do you need to set a password?"

The Fat Lady seemed to be thinking for a second, but then smiled and said, "Sorry dear, I just wasn't informed that's all. Can't be too careful these days."

Harry grabbed Hermione's things from her hands and called to Ron to help with her trunk.

"Hey Ron, its Hermione, come help get her things."

Ron walked to the entrance and had a smile on his face the moment he saw her.

"Hey Hermione, we weren't expecting you until later!" he said.

"Ron Weasley, I told you not to tell him I was coming!"

She turned to Harry with that disgusted look on her face.

"Good job acting surprised though Harry," She smiled and gave him a wink.

Hermione led them into the girl's dormitory to tell them where to set her things. After they set them all down, they each picked a bed to sit on and Ron began to fill her in about that afternoon's meeting. Right when he got to the end he remembered that Harry had stayed behind to talk to Snape.

"Harry, now that Hermione is here, you have to tell us about Snape."

"Snape is here this summer?" Hermione said quickly and Ron nodded.

"Oh great," She said.

"So what did you say to him Harry?" Ron asked.

"I just thanked him," He said plainly.

"You what? Thanked him? For What?" Ron said quickly.

"I just thanked him for risking his life. For going back to the Death Eaters. I told him that I knew what Voldemort did to them. How he punished them for not bringing him back."

Ron and Hermione were speechless. Harry had finally said something about that night. It wasn't much, but it was something. Hermione looked at Ron for a second as though she wanted him to say something but then realized he wasn't going to take the chance.

"Harry, that's a really nice thing you did. I bet it meant a lot to hear you say that. I just realized that I didn't even think about him that way. What he was risking I mean. Did he say anything back to you?" she asked.

"Not much, but I could just tell that something was going on with him. Something was really bothering him. I wanted him to know that I was on his side and that I wasn't going to let anything that has happened in the past stop me from not recognizing what he was chancing for us all."

Ron and Hermione looked at Harry for a second, then at one another, and then both of them looked at the floor. Ron finally broke the silence.

"So what was it you wanted to tell us mate?"

"Oh yeah. This is kind of a long story, are you sure you don't want to wait?" Harry was stalling. He didn't know if he was ready to share it with them even though it had been all he had though about since this morning.

"Wait for what? Tell us! You're killing me here" Ron said.

Hermione gave Ron a mean look and then went and sat by Harry and took his hand.

"Harry if you aren't ready to tell us, then don't," She looked into his eyes and smiled.

He couldn't help but smile back at her. She was such a good friend to him and it had always been so easy to talk to her. He always knew that he could get advice from her and an honest opinion when he needed it, even if he didn't agree with it all the time. There was something about her holding his hand that made it easier.

"Okay I'll tell you. Hmmm, this is hard. To start I mean. Well, okay. Dumbledore told me early this morning why Voldemort is trying to kill me. Why he tried to kill me all those years ago. It seems as though there is some old prophecy that states...." Harry continued with the story.

He told them the entire story in every detail. He told them about Godric Gryffindor and his mom and Dudley, and how his uncle had started being nice to him. He went on for over thirty minutes repeating all that he could remember until he finally looked at them and waited to hear what they had to say.

"Whoa." A wide-eyed Ron said with an open mouth.

"You are really the heir to Godric Gryffindor?" he said.

"Apparently so," Harry said as he looked to Hermione to get her response.

She was still holding onto his hand, but considerably tighter now and with both hands. She looked over at Ron then up to Harry and took a deep breath before she started to speak.

"One of these days this will all end Harry. You know that don't you? I mean you're almost fifteen and you've already had more bad things happen to you than most people have in a lifetime."

She looked as though she was about to start crying, but then looked back up at him with a smile.

"One day it's all going to end Harry, and you'll be truly happy. Just think about that. Think what it will be like when you don't have to worry about you- know- who or the Death Eaters. You might almost become bored with life."

Harry smiled at her and nodded. He had never been so glad to have them around in his life. He knew that he had tough times ahead and he knew that they would be there to help him get through them. Ron just stared at the floor. He was back to wondering if there was anything he could possibly say to help out. Hermione was good at it. She was better at reasoning than he was.

"Harry?" Hermione broke the uncomfortable silence again. "I have a couple of questions. When Dumbledore said that they made protections years ago to hide the Gryffindor heirs, what exactly did they do?"

"I don't really know Hermione," Harry hadn't really thought about many of the details at this point.

"Why don't we go to the library and see what we can find out?" she said.

"You've only been here for an hour, and you already want to go to the library!" Ron said.

"I don't want to go for me Ron! I want to find out this information for Harry," She turned to Harry suddenly. "You do want to find this information out don't you?" she said.

"Yeah I guess so," He said reluctantly.

So they left the girl's dormitory and headed for the library. When they got there, it was open, but empty.

"Is there anyone here during the summer Harry?" Hermione asked.

"I don't know. I haven't been in here. I've only been here for a day as well, remember?" he said.

"Well it's starting to get dark. Let's light some of the lamps and start looking a bit before dinner," She ordered.

They each picked a different section of the library. Harry went to a section that had books dealing with the history of magical education. Ron went to the section with wizard biographies, and Hermione took one last look around the library, and slipped quietly into the restricted section to look around there.

Harry immediately found a book entitled "The Hogwarts Founders". He went to a side table and opened the book. Inside he found it divided into four sections; one for each founder. He quickly found Gryffindor and opened it to find a picture of Godric himself. He stared at it for a while. The picture was faded and was obviously very old, but he could make out Godric's green eyes. His green eyes. His mother's green eyes. The picture almost looked like a muggle still photo like the ones of Dudley that were scattered all over the Dursley's house. But he looked closer and could see Godric blink every several seconds. He must have stared at that picture for five minutes. Finally he realized what he was doing, took a deep breath, and went further into the book. He read about some of the old wars that took place, and how Godric fought and was a leader in most of them. He read all about Godric meeting up with Helga Hufflepuff and how they began to magically train students to defend themselves. It also said how the two joined up years later with Ravenclaw and Slytherin and how they spent 10 years magically building the castle with some of their former students. But it really didn't say much after that. It talked about how he had created the sorting hat, and how it was used to.

"Wait a minute!" Harry said loudly.

"Did you find something Harry?" Ron said.

"The sorting hat!" Harry said. "It was Godric Gryffindor's!"

"I know Harry," Ron said with a puzzled look on his face.

"Well don't you think he might actually know something about Godric Gryffindor? I mean he sat on his head for God only knows how long," Harry said with a smile on his face.

"Harry that's a great idea!" Hermione said from behind the cage of the restricted section.

"Both of you keep looking here for a few minutes. I'm going up to Dumbledore's office, and talk with the hat, and then I'll meet you both in the Great Hall for dinner, in say, an hour." Harry put the book back on the shelf and walked out of the library. It gave Ron and Hermione their first chance to be alone since she had arrived there.

"Hermione, I'm really worried about Harry."

"He'll be okay Ron. He's been through a lot, but you know how strong he is, he'll be fine," She said matter-of-factly.

"Hermione, I'm not so sure. You didn't see him this afternoon. We were in the Great Hall after the meeting and he suddenly got up like he was going to be sick and ran outside. I found him under a tree staring at the Quidditch field. I went down there and talked to him but he didn't seem right. He told me that he didn't think he could play Quidditch this year because he didn't want to go back down to the field. He just seems so sad."

"He'll be fine Ron" she said.

Hermione turned around quickly and pretended to be looking for a book so Ron wouldn't see the tears that were silently running down her face.

"I hope your right Hermione. If he doesn't play Quidditch I don't know if he'll hold together. It's really helped him steam off when he was having problems in the past."

Hermione didn't say anything she just let out a small sniff, and then secretly wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her shirt.