Sorting Error

Chapter 5

True Love of Mine

Hermione looked doubtfully at the thin child in front of her. He was grinning from one stuck-out ear to the other, but . . . Could they really trust him with part of their mission? Eleven-year-olds were so small!

"So you're Hermione, right? I heard you beat a troll with your quill and a bar of soap!" the boy said cheerfully.

Hermione silently cursed her eleven-year-old self. All this boy had to do-- his name was Clarence, she should do him the favor of using it. All Clarence had to do-- was stand in the hall outside Binns' office and make a commotion if anyone official happened by. Hermione had done far more at his age, with far less trepidation, even if the soap story wasn't quite accurate. But she still didn't like trusting herself to someone half her size; and she didn't like leaving Harry and Ron out. There was no telling what might happen.

Unfortunately, Harry and Ron were no longer interested in consulting her. Ron started yelling if she came within ten feet of him, and Harry seemed to be avoiding everyone. She had only herself to rely on.

George tapped Hermione on the shoulder, and she did her best not to jump. This was stupid. She knew perfectly well they were standing right behind her. There was no excuse for this sort of nerves.

"Well," George said, "lovely introduction all round, now I'm afraid we must be going."

Clarence stuck out his tongue; George winked and thrust a bulky package into his arms.

"Cellar corridor number three," Fred announced. "Five minutes."

The boy left, whistling. The song sounded like "Pop Goes the Weasel."

Hermione tapped her foot on the floor. If they had to do things without Harry and Ron, she wanted to do them now. Five minutes sounded like an interminable wait.

Was that something scratching at her ankle? No, she must be imagining it. She was certainly nervous enough. Wait, there was a tickle again, right at the top of her sock . . . Fred and George had their faces pointed straight ahead. They seemed calm, peaceful, almost sedate.

And there was that tickle again. The twins were far too sedate. "Fred!" Hermione yelled. "George! Stop it this instant!"

"What? Us?"

"You know what you're doing!"

There was no answer but a slight tickle along her side, underneath her blouse . . . "Don't!" Hermione said again, but even she could tell it sounded half-hearted.

"I don't know what you're talking about," George said solemnly.

"I think she's sick," said Fred, and kissed her.

"Very sick," said George. "Imagining all sorts of things." The invisible feather slipped across her nipple. Hermione gasped, and punched Fred, and kissed him back.

"That's better." George came close behind her. "Priorities straight, now?"

Hermione bit Fred's lip, traced his teeth with her tongue, kissed deep . . . George's arms reached around her from behind, and Fred's from before.

Then George shouted, "Five minutes!" in her ear, and before the ringing had stopped, they were somewhere else.

Binns' office was startlingly neat. The stone walls were painted white, and a table made of smooth blond wood filled the center of the room. The table was empty except for a row of wire boxes, each holding a stack of papers of apparently equal height. Against one wall sat a small metal bookcase filled with books, all identically bound in green leather. The opposite wall had a fireplace set into it; a feeble flame flickered inside, but the grate was still shiny and silver.

"I wonder how he marks papers?" Fred said. "There's barely even a quill." He began tapping on the walls, as if searching for secret compartments. George went to the bookshelf and began to pull the books out, stacking them neatly. Hermione wondered if he was really looking at the books, or at the space between book and wall. She watched a moment longer, then turned to the table.

The first two stacks were third-year essays on the effect of the Hanoverian Giant Intervention on the price of Scottish wool. "Wool cost a lot," Hermione read. "The giants did not wear very much clothing because they were so large. Also most of the Muggles went around naked." She threw the pile of essays down in disgust.

On top of the next stack was a pamphlet on nineteenth-century goblin mining technologies. Beneath it, however was a letter:

Frogg, Essex, & Pygge, Ltd.

13 Grub Street, London

Dear Professor Binns:

Our firm has nothing but the highest appreciation for the great labours you endure while editing Hogwarts: A History. However, we feel that your thoroughness, while exemplary, must be tempered with discretion and attendance to pecuniary requirements. In recent years great scrutiny has been placed upon Hogwarts, that true home of learning-- alma, diva mater, if I may presume to say so. Now, if ever, is the time to put forth a new edition. We wait upon you. We will not trouble you for an account of recent events, but a deeper consideration of certain topics that have proved important in recent years, such as the creation of the Chamber of Secrets and the operation of the Sorting Hat, might not prove amiss.

I await your reply with the utmost anticipation.

Your humble servant,

Ethelfred Pygge

A note was scrawled across the bottom of the letter in nearly illegible handwriting. Hermione peered at it. Was that a P? Presumptuous . . .

"Her-my-oh-knee!" said a voice.

Hermione jumped. Only one person said her name with those particular rough vowels, and that was Viktor-- but what was Viktor doing here? Had he been stupid enough to come to Hogwarts looking for her? Or was this some particularly awful joke from Fred and George? She looked quickly around the room, but George was still looking at bookcases and Fred was pushing at the bricks in the fireplace . . .

"Her-my-oh-knee! Vhere are you?"

The voice again. It was coming from the grate. Hermione shoved Eustace Pygge's letter into the sleeve of her robe, and hurried over.

Viktor's face peered from the tiny flame. "Vhere are you?" he asked again. "You vere very hard to find. I must speak to you!"

"I'm so sorry, Viktor," Hermione said. "I can't talk to you here. I'm in the middle of something important, and . . . Well . . ." She waved her hand at Fred, who had abandoned the bricks and was standing just behind her, staring into the fire.

"But this is also important! I have received your owl, I know you have some reservation, but ve must be married! Do you not understand?"

"No! I don't understand. You know this isn't possible, we were never even really seeing each other. Why are you trying to do this?"

Viktor turned his head, looking over his right shoulder. Hermione wondered whether someone else was watching him. The fire was too small for her to see. "This must happen," Viktor said. "I love you."

Hermione felt her chest go taut, as if the impossible had happened, and she had missed a problem on an exam. "I don't love you," she said. "I'm seeing someone else."

Fred helpfully cupped a hand over her breast. "She's taken," he said, "and we're in the middle of a raid. D'you think she could contact you some other time?"

"Hey, what about me?" George yelled.

Hermione felt the situation sliding away from her. "Viktor . . . I'm so sorry . . ."

"That is all right," Viktor said slowly. "I understand that you may love other people. But it is very important that I marry you. Please vill you do this?"

He glanced over his shoulder again. Hermione was suddenly certain he was watching someone else. "This isn't about me, is it?" she asked.

"Vhat do you mean?"

"Somebody else wants you to get married. Right?"

"It is true this vould be very good for my career. But also I like you. I think ve vould be a good marriage."

"Viktor, you're being an idiot. You'll have a perfectly good career whether you marry me or not."

"You are the only voman I have ever vanted to marry!"

He was leaving something out. Hermione knew it. There had to be something he wasn't saying. She was the only woman . . . She remembered the way Viktor had nodded and mumbled years ago when she mentioned that Ginny was after Harry, and the way he had shifted and paced and called for tea this summer, when she teased Ron about Luna's compliments . . . Of course Ron had been all in favor of the tea as well. Ron was always odd around Viktor. Ron--

"What about Ron?" Hermione asked.

"That is not important. Ve can be married!" Viktor said hastily.

"You're not interested in women at all, are you? This is all about looking good for your public."

"That . . . This vill be good, for both of us. You vill do my research, I vill continue to play Quidditch . . . Ve vill all be happy, do you see?"

"I don't see," Hermione fumed. "I don't see at all. You don't love me really, you've never even kissed me, you want both of us to go through this sham of a marriage just so you can go on playing Quidditch, and on top of that you're hurting Ron!" (Ron screaming at her at breakfast, Hermione thought. That was her fault. She should have been much more understanding. It was so difficult for boys . . .)

Viktor pinched the bridge of his nose. He was either pondering, or afflicted by a terrible headache.

"Wait," George whispered. "Did Ron and Viktor have some sort of thing going?"

"Of course they did!" Fred answered. "Mum thinks we're all completely bent, you know."

"All of us? Are you sure?"

"As far as she knows none of us have had a serious relationship, except for Ginny and Percy. And obviously Percy's gayer than a shop full of parasols."

"What about Bill?"

"Veelas don't count."

"Are you sure? I don't recall the girls being affected, particularly."

"We were distracting Hermione, though. With our tremendous sex appeal."

"Right, right."

Viktor coughed and began to speak again. "Please . . . My friend, Hermyoninny . . . I vill . . . I vill not ask you to do anything you are not wanting to do, do you understand? It vill . . . I know that ve love each other, there vill not need to be any of these sordid things, do you see? There need-- ve do not need to sleep together?"

Hermione asked, "Viktor, what are you afraid of?"

"I do not understand."

"You're scared of something. Maybe the force of your own emotion, I don't know. You wouldn't be saying this to me, if you really loved me."

"But I do love you!" Viktor said. His voice was strangely toneless. A broken record, Hermione thought. Why was he doing this? What was he afraid of? His own sexuality? And why did that have to spill onto her? That was just like a wizard, Hermione thought, angry again. So much power, in their very bones, it made them blind to anyone who had less. House-elves and squibs . . . And women, too, sometimes, even if those women were witches themselves. Look at the way they'd been fenced out of Gryffindor! And then lied to! And now Viktor. She liked Viktor, he was her friend, but he obviously didn't respect her. He was still thinking of her as the fourteen-year-old who'd never even read Our Charms, Ourselves, not somebody who was sensible and aware of her own body. Why couldn't he let her say no? Why didn't he trust her to know herself?

Hermione knew she understood herself. All of herself. You didn't know anything, not if you didn't know that . . . And if she happened to enjoy kissing and being kissed by two red-haired boys at once, that was her right, and she was damned if she was going to let some antiquated sexist respect for propriety make her give it up.

"You don't love me, Viktor," Hermione said. "I'm sorry. You don't. And I can't talk to you about it now."

Outside the room a boy's voice rose shrilly. "But Professor! I'm scared! Can't you predict whether my awful nightmare will come true?"

"That's our signal," George said. "Time to go."

"Vait!" Viktor shouted. "Vait! I know that ve can find the solution . . ."

"But I dreamed about a giant green thing! A green mass bearing down on me!" yelled the boy in the hallway. "Getting closer and closer!"

"Good boy, that Clarence," Fred remarked. "Take her other arm?"

Fred and George held Hermione tight, preparing to apparate.

"I have to go!" Hermione told Viktor. "Can't you see we wouldn't be right?"

Viktor's face scrunched. Hermione hoped she hadn't made him cry.

"And then there were fireworks! BANG! Like these!" Clarence shouted. There was a tremendous noise, crashes and clangs.

In the mist of the noise the door burst open. Madame Beauregarde shot into the room, followed by a cloud of smoke. She was clutching a tremendous bundle of white lilies, with some sort of card attached. Clarence hung on her sleeve, babbling about hauntings.

And then Clarence winked, and dropped something, and the room filled with reddish smoke. Hermione coughed. By the time she stopped coughing, she was in her bedroom again. She settled down with the twins to wait for Clarence, and the debriefing.

***

Harry hovered above the Quidditch pitch, waiting for practice to end. As he watched, Natalie McDonald sent the Quaffle flying toward Ron; for a moment it seemed as if the ball would shoot through the goal, but at the very last minute Ron swooped downward, and the Quaffle hit his face with a resounding thud. Ron would have a black eye out of that, thought Harry. He ran his fingers lightly along his own cheekbone, wondering where the mark would be . . . Then his shifting weight sent his ever-sensitive broom end over end (the Imbres 7K was renowned for its responsiveness), and Harry spent a few glorious minutes trying to fly right-side-up again.

If this were a real game, Harry knew, the Snitch would be hiding in Malfoy's robes by now. He couldn't afford these lapses of attention.

But he hated drill anyway. When would this end? (When could he return to staring hopelessly at NEWT essays almost a mile long?) Harry leaned left and sent himself into tighter and tighter spirals, trying to silence his thoughts.

As he spun toward the ground, there was a shout and another shout. Harry ignored them, concentrating all his attention on flight. Ten . . . Nine . . . If he leaned back at the last possible moment he could skim along the ground, flashing into the air at the edge of the pitch, the way shadows leap when a candle moves.

"We're leaving!" Andrew Kirke shouted.

It was true. The Quaffle had been put away. Ron was already gone. Harry was abandoned, and relieved. He floated to the ground and set off toward the broom shed, holding his broom tightly. The Imbres 7K always seemed to want to fly away again. Which was rather a good idea, Harry thought, except that he had nowhere to go. He couldn't hide in the Forbidden Forest and eat berries, and the Dursleys certainly didn't want him.

And anybody else who might have wanted a visitor like Harry was dead.

Nobody else was in the broom shed. Harry lingered for a few minutes; some of the bristles on his broom seemed a little bent, and he tried half-heartedly to straighten them again, though there wasn't much he could do without ruining the aerodynamics charms. Finally he began the trudge back toward the Gryffindor common room and his waiting essays.

"Harry!" said a voice. "There you are!"

It was Ginny. Harry couldn't imagine why she was waiting about, unless she'd had a fight with . . . Was she seeing Neville again, or was it still Andrew Kirke? "What do you want?" he asked.

"To talk to you, of course."

Harry suddenly understood all the complaints Ron had ever made about Ginny. Why did she have to hover so? "You don't want anything of the sort," he said. "Go away. Can't you see I'm miserable?"

"That's what I'm going to talk to you about."

"Why? Why should you care?"

"The whole team cares, Harry. We all talked about you and Ron. This is Quidditch. If the two of you keep on like this, we're going to lose the Cup."

This wasn't about one of Ginny's boyfriends. It was about Quidditch. Harry was simultaneously relieved and annoyed.

"You and Ron aren't even looking at each other any more," Ginny went on. "We can't do this, Harry. We're a team. When we win it's because we all work together, we know each other in ways those stupid Slytherins won't ever, and you can see it in our play."

We know each other, Harry thought. He had known Ron like that, so close that one of them could guess when the other would speak, and he didn't any more. But it wasn't his fault. Ron had given up on him.

"I know he misses you," said Ginny. "He's my brother. I can tell."

Harry turned his face away. She was lying. She had to be lying. Ron didn't like him at all. That was why they weren't speaking, why they drew careful diagrams of plays and then turned away from each other.

"He's your best friend! Aren't you even listening?" Ginny stood in front of him, blazing with righteous anger. She was shorter than Harry. He could brush right past her, where Ron would have blocked him.

Where Ron would have grabbed his arm.

Was it right to think about your best friend kissing someone else, off-center and clumsy and grinning that impossible grin? Surely if they were really friends, Harry would let Ron do whatever he liked?

"Go away," said Harry. "It's none of your business."

"He's the most important person to you in the world," Ginny insisted. "The whole school knows it. They announced it in fourth year, for God's sake. Forget the Quidditch, you're ruining my brother's life, and I don't have to stand for it!"

"It would have been Hermione," Harry lied. "But Viktor had first dibs."

"Viktor had last dibs, don't you see? You love them more. They're your friends, Harry."

Harry thought about hitting her, but he didn't think he was supposed to hit girls, especially when they were smaller than him. And anyway it wasn't her fault. The whole damn team had interfered. This was about him and Ron, not the whole school. Why couldn't they just let them alone? Hadn't he done enough for them?

Last dibs, though. Did Ron know that?

More importantly, Harry thought-- did Ron care?