| Part Four |
Monday morning, the dungeons felt chillier than usual. The Gryffindors huddled together, returning disdainful stares from the Slytherins in the room.
Sharp footsteps and a swirl of black robes announced the Potions Master's entry, prompting the students to take their seats.
Trouble. That's all it could mean when the Head of Slytherin House looked this happy. Hermione must have been right about what she'd overheard.
Thank Merlin for Hermione.
Harry glanced over at the side of the room where most of the Slytherins in the class usually sat. He was thoroughly unsurprised to meet an arrogant smirk from the desk just opposite his.
Malfoy was probably the first to know. Git. The silver gaze held Harry's unblinkingly for a long moment, one eyebrow raised in an appraising gesture.
Harry dragged his eyes back to the front of the room, strangely ruffled by the unspoken exchange. It always got under his skin, the way Malfoy lorded Snape's favouritism over the other Houses.
"Put away your books, and all notes." The professor's self-satisfied smirk settled over the Gryffindors. "You will need a quill and ink."
As Snape passed among the desks, placing a sheet of parchment face down in front of each student, Harry snuck a glance to his left. Ron's face was set and grim, lips pressed together thinly.
"We're ready for this," Harry murmured out of one corner of his mouth. "Thanks to Hermione, we'll be fine."
Ron nodded absently, his gaze shifting to the back of Hermione's head, in front of them.
When the sweeping black robes arrived at their desk, Harry met Snape's stare unflinchingly. "Thank you, sir," spoke Harry with apparent respect as the papers were passed to him and Ron.
The Potions Master's eyes narrowed into a malicious gleam, and he moved on without a word.
"You will have thirty minutes to complete your essay," Snape announced when he had returned to the front of the room. "You may begin... now."
Harry turned over the parchment and read:
Describe, in detail, the properties of Wolfsbane potion. Be sure to include specific examples of why the potion is insufficient as a remedy for lycanthropy, and the ways in which werewolves could still be dangerous to society, even while taking the potion.
Harry started, a surge of nausea accompanying the wave of rage that washed over him as the words sank in. He couldn't think of any manner in which Snape could have sunk lower than this. Snape knew that Lupin had taken off for the Carpathian mountains, for this very reason, and he knew that Harry hadn't heard from him in months.
If Harry did the essay, he would have to say things against werewolves, which by extension could be construed as being against Lupin. If he didn't, Snape would gleefully deduct scores of points from Gryffindor.
Luckily, Hermione had anticipated this topic as a possibility, based on the material taught in recent lessons, and had coached Ron and Harry into ways to answer Snape's questions while making the minimum number of accusations against those unlucky enough to have been bitten.
Harry glared once at Snape's smirking face, the ducked his head to begin writing.
About twenty minutes later, Harry lifted his head and lay down his quill. He hadn't quite finished, but his entire body was tied up in knots. He extended each finger of his right hand, rotated his wrist and then his neck, and stretched both arms up above his head.
Sneaking a glance to see how Ron was faring, Harry sensed trouble. With only a few lines scrawled along the top of his parchment, Ron's hand lay limply on the desk. His face wore a distant, dreamy expression, with eyes directed toward the desk in front of them.
Uh oh.
Harry followed his best friend's eyes, already knowing exactly where they were focussed.
Hermione had really grown into herself over the past few years.
He couldn't say what had changed, exactly. She had developed soft curves, of course, something none of the Gryffindor boys had failed to notice. Still, there was something more: she held herself upright with confidence, possessed a sort of poise that few people ever achieved, yet seemed completely unaffected. She still let her hair flow wildly onto her shoulders, never bothering to smooth it with Sleakeazy's or the like. She could still be found in the library, most afternoons, fingers stained with ink as she hastily scribbled notes from any of a mountain of books that surrounded her.
Perhaps it was surviving the final battle with Voldemort that had cast a slightly darker, older shadow behind her eyes, but instead of leaving her looking empty or haunted, it simply gave wisdom to her gaze. Maybe her poise came from having decided to be proud of what she'd accomplished, both in and out of her studies, without feeling the need to remind anyone else of her achievements. In any case, Harry could understand why Ron was so thoroughly enthralled.
Harry had told Ron the truth on Friday night: he really hadn't ever felt attracted to Hermione the way Ron was, and for that he thanked fate. Even with all the three of them had been through together, they might not have endured that kind of trial of jealousy. If Harry had felt that way for Hermione, he knew he would have fallen hopelessly in love with her, and couldn't realistically imagine either himself or Ron forgiving the other for being the one to win at that particular contest.
Thank goodness it would never be a problem.
Harry had also told Ron the truth about not knowing what it was about Hermione that failed to grab his fancy. He truly loved his friend, knew she was brilliant, and considered her quite beautiful. Attraction was a strange thing, he mused.
He was thrilled, though, that Ron and Hermione had found each other, even if they hadn't realised it yet.
Turning back toward Ron, Harry caught the familiar glint of pale-blond hair in his peripheral vision. The uniquely silver eyes that belonged with that hair were staring back. Harry's eyes were drawn inexorably to the calmly challenging gaze.
Git. Stop smirking at us. Probably hopes we're botching it up.
Which reminded Harry of his own unfinished essay. He scowled at the Slytherin and elbowed Ron to bring the Head Boy out of his reverie.
Returning to his paper, Harry wrote, Wolfsbane potion has only one major drawback, in that its efficacy is limited in time. The afflicted person must take the potion, without fail, on the day of the full moon, or risk transforming completely into his or her werewolf state, regardless of the diligence with which he or she had taken the potion in the past ....