"And that's why," Hermione said carefully, "you told everyone..." She concentrated, rembering the exact words. "That if hypothetically there was a conspiracy, you could not confirm or deny that the true master of the conspiracy was Salazar Slytherin's ghost, and in fact you wouldn't even be able to admit the conspiracy existed so people ought to stop asking you questions about it."
"Yep," said Harry Potter, smiling slightly. "That'll teach them to take hypothetical scenarios too seriously."
"And you told me not to answer anything -"
"They might not believe you, if you deny it," said Harry. "So it's better to say nothing, unless you want them to think you're a liar."
"But -" Hermione said helplessly. "But - but now people think I'm doing things for Salazar Slytherin!" The way the Gryffindors had been looking at her - the way the Slytherins had been looking at her -
"It goes along with being a hero," Harry said. "Have you seen what the Quibbler says about me?"
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 does show up and tell us where to find bullies, I don't think we're going to have much luck." Not that she was sorry about that.
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 I don't think that's fair, either."
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 "Quietus", then a moment later, in the other direction, "Quietus" again.
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."
"Gleep?" said Hermione.
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, but loan you, my cloak, unto Hermione Jean Granger. Protect her well."
She stared at the shimmering velvet of the cloak, cloth that swallowed all the light that fell on it except what glinted from small strange reflections, fabric so perfectly black it should've shown dust or lint or something but it didn't, the longer you looked the more you felt like what you were seeing wasn't really there at all, but then you blinked again and it was just a black cloak.
"Take it, Hermione."
Hardly even thinking, Hermione stretched out her hand to grasp the fabric; and then just as her brain woke up and she started to pull her hand back, Harry let go of the cloak and it started to fall and she grabbed at it without thinking. And the instant her fingers touched and held the cloak she felt an intangible jolt run through her like picking up her wand for the first time; and it was like she heard a song being sung, ever so faintly, in the back of her mind.
"That's one of my quest items, Hermione," Harry said softly. "It belonged to my father, and it's not something I can replace, if it's lost. Don't loan it to anyone else, don't show it to anyone, don't tell anyone it exists... but if you want to borrow it for a while, just come to me and ask."
Hermione finally tore her eyes loose from the depthless black folds and stared back up at Harry.
"I can't -"
"You certainly can," Harry said. "Because there's nothing even the tiniest bit fair about my finding this gift-wrapped in a box next to my bed one morning, and you... not." Harry paused thoughtfully. "Unless you did get your own invisibility cloak, in which case never mind."
Then the implications of invisibility cloak finally dawned on her, and she pointed a shocked finger at Harry, though they were close enough together that she couldn't quite straighten her arm properly, and her voice rose with considerable indignation as she said, "So that's how you disappeared from the Potions closet! And the time when -" and then she trailed off, because even with an invisibility cloak she still couldn't see how Harry had...
Harry buffed his fingernails on his robes with artful nonchalance, and said, "Well, you knew there had to be some trick to it, right? And now the heroine will mysteriously know where and when to find bullies - just like she listened to the bullies planning it, even though nobody her age could possibly have turned herself invisible to spy on them."
There was a pause and a silence.
"Harry -" she said. "I'm - I'm not sure anymore that fighting bullies is such a good idea."
Harry's eyes stayed steady on hers. "Because the other girls might get hurt?"
She nodded, just nodded.
"That's their choice, Hermione, just like it's yours. I decided not to do the obvious stupid thing that everyone does in books, try to keep you safe and protected and helpless, and have you get really angry at me, and push me away while you go off on your own and get into even more trouble, and then heroically pull through it successfully, after which I'd finally have my epiphany and realize that blah blah blah etcetera. I know how that part of my life story goes, so I'm just skipping over it. If I can predict what I'm going to think later, I might as well go ahead and think it now. Anyway, my point is, you shouldn't smother your friends to keep them safe, either. Just tell them up front it's predictably going to go horribly wrong, and if they still want to be heroines after that, fine."
It was at times like this that Hermione wondered if she was ever going to get used to the way Harry thought. "Harry, I really," her voice stuck for a second, "really, really don't want them getting hurt! Especially because of something I started!"
"Hermione," Harry said seriously, "I'm pretty sure you did the right thing. I don't see what could realistically happen to them that would be worse for them, in the long run, than not trying."
"What if they get badly hurt?" Hermione said. Her voice felt blocked in her throat; she remembered Captain Ernie saying how Harry had just stared straight into the eyes of a bully as the bully bent his finger back, before Professor Sprout had arrived to save him; and there was another thought that came after that, about Hannah and her delicate hands with the fingernails that she carefully painted in Hufflepuff yellow every morning, but that wasn't allowed to be imagined. "And then - they'll never do anything courageous, ever again -"