Harry had spoken to the cloak like it was a person, telling it to take good care of her. Harry had said the cloak had belonged to his father, that he couldn't replace it if it was lost...
But... Harry wouldn't really do that, would he?
Just hand her one of the three Deathly Hallows created centuries before Hogwarts?
She could say that she felt flattered, but this went way beyond feeling flattered, into making her wonder just what she was to Harry, exactly.
Maybe Harry was the sort of person who went around loaning ancient lost magical artifacts to anyone he considered a friend, but -
But when she thought about which part of his life Harry had said he'd skipped over, the part where he tried to keep her safe and protected...
Hermione stared up at the ceiling of the Ravenclaw dorm. Somewhere beyond her bed, Mandy and Su were talking. She'd turned up her Quieting Charm to where she couldn't hear the exact words, but could still hear their faint murmur; there was something comforting about sleeping in a dorm with the other girls. Harry kept his own Quieter turned up all the way, she knew.
She was starting to wonder if maybe Harry actually did, well...
You know...
Like her.
It took Hermione Granger a long time to fall asleep that night.
And when she woke up the next morning there was a small slip of parchment peeking out from under her pillow which said At half-past ten you will find a bully in the fourth passageway to the left of the hall leaving the Potions classroom - S.
When Hermione entered the Great Hall that morning, her stomach was filled with flying butterflies the size of Hippogriffs; even as she approached the Ravenclaw breakfast table she still hadn't decided what to do.
There was an empty place next to Padma, she saw. That would be where to sit down, if she was going to tell Padma and then ask Padma to tell Daphne and Tracey.
Hermione walked toward the empty place next to Padma.
There were words waiting in her throat, Padma, I got a mysterious message -
And she could feel a huge brick wall inside her, stopping the words from coming out. She'd be putting Hannah and Susan and Daphne in danger. Taking them and leading them by the hand straight into trouble. That was Wrong.
Or she could just go try to handle the bully herself, without telling her friends anything, and that, quite obviously, was also Wrong.
Hermione knew she was being faced with a Moral Dilemma, just like all those wizards and witches she'd read about in stories. Only in stories people always got a right choice and a wrong choice, not two wrong ones, which seemed a bit unfair. But she had the sense, somehow - maybe it came from the way Harry always talked about how the history books would see them - that she was faced with a Heroic Decision, and that her whole life might end up going one way or another, depending on what she chose right now, this morning.
Hermione sat down at the table without looking to either side, just gazing at the plate and silverware like they might have answers hidden inside, thinking as hard as she ever had, and a few seconds later she heard Padma's voice whispering almost in her ear, "Daphne says she knows where a bully's going to be at ten-thirty today."
Doomed.
They were all doomed, in Susan Bones's opinion.
Auntie sometimes told stories which started out like this, people doing something they knew was stupid, and the stories usually ended with someone being doomed all over the floor and all over the walls and getting on Auntie's shoes.
"Hey, Padma," muttered Parvati, her voice just barely audible over the soft impacts of eight girls tiptoeing through the corridor leading to the Potions classroom, "d'you know why Hermione's been sighing all morning -"
"No talking!" hissed Lavender, the harsh whisper sounding much louder than Parvati's mutter. "You never know when Evil might be listening!"
"Shhh!" said three other girls even more loudly.
Utterly, totally, quite extremely doomed.
As they approached the fourth passageway to the left of the Potions classroom, where Daphne's mysterious informant had said the bullying would take place, the eight of them moved slower, the sound of their feet got softer, and finally General Granger made the gesture that meant Halt, I'll look ahead.
Lavender raised a hand, then, and when Hermione turned to look at her, Lavender, looking puzzled, pointed straight down the corridor, gestured to herself, and then tried to sign something else that Susan didn't understand -
General Granger shook her head, and once again, this time with slower, more exaggerated movements, made the sign for Halt, I'll look ahead.
Lavender, looking even more puzzled, pointed back the way they'd come, and made a bouncing gesture with her other hand.
Now everyone else was looking even more confused than Lavender, and Susan thought with some acerbity that evidently one hour of practice done two days ago wasn't enough to remember a new set of code signals.
Hermione pointed at Lavender, then at the floor beneath Lavender's feet, the expression on her face making it very clear that the intended meaning was You. Stay. Here.
Lavender nodded.
Doom doom doom, went the words of the Chaos Legion's marching song through Susan's mind, doom doom doom doom doom doom...
Hermione reached into her robes, and drew out a little rod with a mirror on the end of it and an eyepiece. Very very softly indeed, the Ravenclaw girl crept up to the wall, right next to where the passageway opened off the corridor, and peeked just the tip of the eyepiece around the corner.
Then a little more.
Then a little more.
Then General Granger cautiously stuck her head around the side.
General Granger turned back to them, nodded, and made the hand gesture for follow me.
Susan felt a little better as she crept forward. The part of the Plan which called for them to arrive thirty minutes before the bully had, apparently, actually worked. Maybe they were only slightly doomed...?
At ten-twenty-nine, almost on the dot, the bully showed up. If anyone had been present to hear - though the corridor was apparently empty - they would have heard his shoes clicking solidly through the main corridor, entering the passageway, walking toward where the passageway turned its first corner, turning that corner, and then stopping in some surprise upon seeing that the passageway now terminated in a solid brick wall where no wall had been before.
Then the bully shrugged and turned away, as he leaned back to watch the main passage from just around the corner.
It was the castle Hogwarts, after all.
Behind the hastily Transfigured thin panels they'd assembled into the outward appearance of a brick wall, the girls waited; not speaking, not moving, hardly even breathing, but watching through the eyeholes they'd left themselves.
As Susan's gaze took in the bully, she could feel the tightening of her chest all the way into her toes. The boy looked to be in his seventh-year if not older, and his robes were trimmed in green instead of the red they'd been hoping for, and he had muscles, and after staring for a bit longer, Susan realized his stance had the balance that meant that he dueled.