"The task I have for you is very simple, Miss Felthorne," said Professor Snape's toneless voice, "and your extremely generous pay of fifty Galleons is merely to compensate you for being Memory-Charmed afterward."
She drew an involuntary breath. Her family might be rich but they had other daughters and kept her on a tight leash and it was certainly a lot of money for
Then her ears caught up with the words
"You surely know," said Severus Snape, "of Miss Hermione Granger, the Sunshine General?"
"
Chapter 72: SA, Plausible Deniability, Pt 7
The winter Sun had well set by the time dinner ended, and so it was amid the peaceful light of stars twinkling down from the enchanted ceiling of the Great Hall that Hermione left for the Ravenclaw Tower alongside her study partner Harry Potter, who lately seemed to have a
Nearly every single pair of eyes in the whole Hall lay on them as they passed through the mighty doors of the dining-room, which were more like siege gates of a castle than anything students ought to go through on the way back from supper.
They went out without speaking, and walked until the distant babble of student conversation had faded into silence; and then the two of them went on a little further through the stone corridors before Hermione finally spoke.
"Why'd you do that, Harry?"
"Do what?" said the Boy-Who-Lived in an abstracted tone, as if his mind were quite elsewhere, thinking about vastly more important things.
"I mean, why didn't you just
"Well," Harry said, as their shoes pattered across the tiles, "I can't just go around saying 'no' every time someone asks me about something I haven't done. I mean, suppose someone asks me, 'Harry, did you pull the prank with the invisible paint?' and I say 'No' and then they say 'Harry, do you know who messed with the Gryffindor Seeker's broomstick?' and I say 'I refuse to answer that question.' It's sort of a giveaway."
"And
"Yep," said Harry Potter, smiling slightly. "That'll teach them to take hypothetical scenarios too seriously."
"And you told
"They might not
"But -" Hermione said helplessly. "But - but now people think I'm
"It goes along with being a hero," Harry said. "Have you seen what the
For a brief second Hermione imagined her parents reading a newspaper article about her, and instead of the story being about her winning a nationwide spelling bee or any of the other ways she'd imagined getting into the papers, the headline said "HERMIONE GRANGER GETS DRACO MALFOY PREGNANT".
It was enough to make you think twice about the whole heroine business.
Harry's voice turned a bit more formal. "Speaking of which, Miss Granger, how goes your latest quest?"
"Well," said Hermione, "unless the ghost of Salazar Slytherin really
She glanced over at Harry, and saw the boy giving her a peculiarly intense look.
"You know, Hermione," the boy said quietly, as though to make sure that nobody else in the world heard, "I think you're right. I think some people get a lot more help than others in becoming heroes. And
And Harry grabbed at her witch's robes where they lay over her arm, and hustled her into a side-hall of the corridor they were walking through, her mouth gaping open in surprise even as Harry's wand came into his hand, they rounded a curve of the side-hall and it was so narrow that it was almost pushing her and Harry into each other, even as Harry pointed to the way they'd come and softly said "
The boy looked searchingly around them, not just to every side, but even upward toward the ceiling and down toward the floor.
And then Harry stuck a hand in his pouch and said, "Invisibility cloak."
"
Harry was already drawing out folds of shimmering black fabric from the mokeskin device. "Don't worry," the boy said with a small grin, "they're so rare that nobody bothered to make a school rule against them..."
And then Harry held out the dark velvet mesh to her, and said, his voice strangely formal, "I do not give you,