Hermione didn't say anything to that, but she was thinking back to something Godric Gryffindor had written near the end of his very short autobiography. Briefly and without any explanation, because the scroll had been meant to be copied by hand, centuries before the Muggle printing press had inspired wizards to invent the Reading-Writing Quill.
No rescuer hath the rescuer, Godric Gryffindor had written. No Lord hath the champion, no mother and no father, only nothingness above.
If that was the price of being a hero, Hermione wasn't sure she wanted to pay it. Or maybe - though it wasn't the sort of thing she would have thought, before she started hanging around Harry - maybe Godric Gryffindor had gotten it wrong.
"Do you trust Dumbledore?" Hermione said. "I mean, he's right here in our school and he's the most legendary hero in the whole world -"
"He was the most legendary hero," said Harry. "Now he sets chickens on fire. Honestly, does Dumbledore seem reliable to you?"
Hermione didn't answer.
Side by side, the two of them began to climb huge wide spiral stairs, the steps alternating between bronze metal and blue stone; the final approach to where the Ravenclaw portrait waited to guard their dorm with silly riddles.
"Oh, and I just thought of something I should tell you," Harry said when they were about halfway up. "Since it affects your life and all. Think of it as a sort of down payment -"
"What is it?" said Hermione.
"I predict S.P.H.E.W. is about to retire."
"Retire?" Hermione said, almost stumbling on one of the stairs.
"Yeah," Harry said. "I mean, I could be wrong, but I suspect the teachers are about to clamp down hard on fighting in the corridors." Harry was grinning as he spoke, a glint in his eyes behind the glasses hinting at secret knowledge. "Cast new wards to detect offensive hexes, or start verifying reports of bullying using Veritaserum - I can think of several ways they might shut it down. But if I'm right, it's something to celebrate, Hermione, you and all of you. You kicked up enough public ruckus that you got them to actually do something about the bullying. All the bullying."
Slowly, then, a smile began to creep up her lips, and as she reached the top of the stairs and began walking toward the Ravenclaw portrait for her riddle, Hermione felt rather lighter on her feet, a wonderful lifting feeling spreading through her like she'd been pumped full of helium.
Somehow, despite all the effort the eight of them had put in, she hadn't expected that much, she hadn't expected it to actually work.
They'd made a difference...
It was the end of breakfast-time on the next morning.
The students from every year sat very still in their benches, all heads turned in the same direction, toward the Head Table, before which one lone first-year girl stood rigid and motionless, her head tilted back to stare up at the Head of House Slytherin.
Professor Snape's face was twisted with fury and triumph, vindictive as any painting of a Dark Wizard; and behind him the other Professors sat at the Head Table, watching with faces as though carved from stone.
"- permanently disbanded," spat the Potions Master. "Your self-proclaimed Society is outlawed within Hogwarts, by my decision as a Professor! If your Society or any member of it is discovered fighting in the hallways again, Granger, you will be personally held responsible and expelled, by me, from the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry!"
That first-year girl stood there, before the Head Table where she'd been called before only to receive commendations and smiles; stood there with her spine held tall and upright in its curve like a centaur's bow, giving nothing to the enemy.
That first-year witch stood there with all tears and anger bottled, her face still, nothing changing of her outward appearance, while something slowly broke inside her, she could feel it breaking.
It broke further when Professor Snape gave her two weeks detention for the crime of violence in school, sneering with the contemptuous face he'd shown them all on the first day of Potions, and with a little twist in the corner of his smile that said the Potions Master knew exactly how unfair he was being.
Whatever-it-was inside her cracked all the way through, from top to bottom, when Professor Snape took one hundred points from Ravenclaw.
It ended, then, and Snape told her she was dismissed.
She turned around and saw that at the Ravenclaw table, Harry Potter was sitting still in his place, she couldn't see his expression from here, she saw his fists on the table but she couldn't see if they were clenched white like her own. She had whispered to him, when Professor Snape had called her, that he wasn't to do anything without asking first.
Hermione wheeled back again to look at the Head Table, just as Snape was turning away from her to resume his place.
"I said you're dismissed, girl," said the sneering voice, but there was a pleased smile on Snape's face, like he was waiting for her to do something -
Hermione strode forward another five steps toward the Head Table and said in a breaking voice, "Headmaster?"
Utter silence filled the Great Hall.
Headmaster Dumbledore said nothing, didn't move. It was as though he, too, was just carved from stone.
Hermione turned her gaze to look at Professor Flitwick, whose head, barely visible above the table, seemed to be staring down into his lap. Beside him, Professor Sprout's face was very tight, she seemed to be forcing herself to watch, and her lips were trembling, but she said nothing.
Professor McGonagall's chair was empty, the Deputy Headmistress hadn't shown up to breakfast that morning.
"Why aren't any of you saying anything?" said Hermione Granger. Her voice was trembling with the last of her hope, the last desperate reach for help from that place inside her. "You know what he's doing is wrong!"
"Two more weeks' detention, for insolence," Snape said silkily.
It shattered.
She looked at the Head Table for a few seconds longer, at Professor Flitwick and Professor Sprout and the empty place where Professor McGonagall should've been. Then Hermione Granger turned and began walking toward the Ravenclaw table.
There was a babble of voices starting up, as the students came unfrozen from where they'd sat.
And then, as she was almost to the Ravenclaw table -
The dry voice of Professor Quirrell cut through everything, and that voice said, "One hundred points to Miss Granger for doing what is right."
Hermione almost fell over her own feet; and then she continued forward, even as Snape shouted something furious, even as Professor Quirrell leaned back in his chair and began to laugh, even as Dumbledore's voice was saying something she didn't catch and then she was sitting down at the Ravenclaw table again next to Harry Potter.
Harry Potter was frozen beside her, he looked like someone who didn't dare move.
"It's all right," her voice said to him, automatically without there being any choice or thought involved, although really it wasn't right at all. "But can you see if you can get me out of Snape's detentions, like you did yourself that time?"
Harry Potter nodded, a single jerky motion of his head. "I -" said Harry. "I - I'm sorry, this - this is all my fault -"