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What it comes down to	By : melinda1293 Category: Harry Potter > Threesomes/Moresomes Views: 115221 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 7
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 21
- 22
- 23
Chapter 22. Coming Clean

Hermione woke in the morning feeling disoriented. She was on the outside edge facing the window, Harry’s normal spot. It took her a moment to figure out how she got there. It was still fairly early in the morning, judging from the quality of the light in the room, and she could hear Ron snoring pretty loudly from the other side of the bed. Rubbing at her eyes, she yawned, stretching hard enough to make her back pop. Then she rolled over.
She found Harry laying wide awake, stretched out on his back with both hands under his head, just looking up at the ceiling. Staring at him in mild surprise for a moment, she finally spoke, her voice still thick with sleep.
“Morning.”
“Morning,” he replied.
“Did you sleep all right?” she asked quietly and somewhat tentatively after a moment when he hadn’t even turned to look at her, unsure of what mood she might find him in this morning.
“It was fine,” he said noncommittally, still contemplating the ceiling, which didn’t assuage her feelings of trepidation. “I can sleep pretty much anywhere, though. I slept in a cupboard until I was eleven and got my Hogwarts letter. Then the Dursley's moved me to Dudley’s second bedroom out of fear, I think. Did you know my letter actually said, ‘Mr. H. Potter, The Cupboard under the Stairs’?” he asked her, but didn’t wait for a response. Not that she could have given one anyway; she was temporarily speechless at his unexpected and uncharacteristic openness.
“The problem with this spot isn’t getting to sleep, or staying asleep,” he explained, matter-of-factly. “It’s if you wake up first.”
“I take it you’ve been awake a while?” she finally asked with a little smile, which she had to cover with her hand when it turned into a huge yawn.
He seemed to be in a very quirky mood today, she thought with some relief. Harry almost never talked about his life at his aunt and uncle’s house, and he certainly wasn’t this forthcoming about his treatment there. It was as if he was simply thinking out loud and forgot she was there. It made her sad that he was so apathetic at how poorly he was treated by his family, though. It looked as if they couldn’t spare anything for him except the barest necessities.
She knew he’d been treated horribly there, but it always surprised her to hear or see the depth of it. How could anyone care so little for him? How he care so very much for everyone else after that upbringing?
“A bit, yeah,” he answered, nodding his head, which was still cushioned by his hands and still not looking at her, “but I’ve been asleep for several days. I think I’ve had all the rest I can stand for a while.”
His voice still had that hoarse, gravelly quality to it. It was like Harry’s, but not quite. She wondered if it would always be so from now on. It wasn’t bad, exactly. Actually, it sounded kind of interesting. It was a constant reminder, though, of what their capture had cost him, evidence of how much pain he’d had to endure to cause so much damage to his vocal cords.
It wasn’t as if he’d had a beautiful singing voice, and his hopes for a musical career after this war had been ruined, or anything. But it certainly didn’t carry the same strength now, and it was always in danger of failing him if he used it too much.
It was just one more scar to add to the long list she’d started keeping track of in her mind. This scar she could only hear and not see, however, like the ones in his mind that she only heard in their whisperings in the dark, or when they hemorrhaged, bleeding out into terrified nightmares. The ones she saw in his eyes in unguarded moments, or like now, when he was telling his secrets to the ceiling in the early morning, as if someone had dripped Veritaserum in his mouth while he was sleeping.
“I really do feel much better, though. It’s almost as if I didn’t know how bad I was still hurting until it stopped, like I’d just gotten used to it. I think I may owe Madame Pomfrey another box of chocolates, but Christ, that potion was horrible. I’d still refuse to take it again and fight like hell if she tried to make me,” he said vehemently.
Hermione didn’t say anything. She wasn’t eager to remind him any further of the row he had yesterday morning with her, with the healer, and then Ron, but at the same time she felt like she needed to confess her own role.
The only person in the house who hadn’t yelled at, or been yelled at by Harry yesterday, was Dobby, she realized in dismay. But his mood still appeared too volatile for her to step willingly into that conversation just yet, and she wasn’t quite ready to test it. She still wasn’t sure how to react to him this morning.
He’d apparently been awake for a while, although he didn’t look to be in any hurry to get up, and so she lay there watching him staring at the ceiling, listening to his vocalized musings.
Waiting to see if he would speak again, she contented herself for a moment to simply watch his chest rise and fall, to watch his eyelashes brush against his cheeks when he blinked, and to watch his Adam’s apple slide the length of his throat when he swallowed.
He needed a shave again. His chin and neck were coarse with stubble, the dark hair showing up so clearly against his fair complexion even after a single day. She wanted to touch it, to run her thumb along his jawbone and feel the hairs scratch against her skin, to hear the rasping sound she knew it would make. She curled her fingers into her palms instead to try and control the itching desire that had her fingers tingling to test its texture. Squeezing her hands, her fingernails leaving indentions in her palm, she took a deep breath, trying to quash the impulse to reach out to him.
“You know, this is the way we slept that first night together in this bed,” she told him, breaking the silence and her intense examination of his features.
Finally, he turned his head slightly to look at her.
“Ron had fallen asleep on the bed with you, and I was trying to keep your fever down. It kept rising. I stood here next to you, laying cold rags all over you to bring it down, but it just kept climbing. Then you started having a seizure. You were choking and thrashing, boiling with fever. I panicked. I started screaming for Ron to help me. He took one look at you and grabbed you up off the bed to get you in the tub.”
She paused then, trying to swallow down the remembered fear of that night before she could continue.
“I froze, Harry. I didn’t know what to do when you started convulsing, but Ron did, even though he was only half awake. He held you in the tub until your temperature came down. You did more wandless magic, but you were so weak already, you couldn’t fend him off. Once he was sure it was over, he picked you up out of the bath and laid you back down on the bed, in the middle, where you are now. Then he just fell down beside you. Without a word, he just went right back to sleep.”
Her voice still held the note of surprise and incredulity at the remembered images. “So, once I recovered from my shock and could move again, I slid in next to you on this side and fell asleep, too. Madame Pomfrey came in the next morning and startled me right off the bed.”
She felt the heat creeping into her cheeks at the memory, at the image of Ron and Harry exposed on the bed together when she’d pulled the blanket off with her.
“Ron told me,” he finally said when she’d finished. “Well, some of it. He didn’t say anything about the magic. Did I hurt him, or you?”
“He had blisters on his hands the next morning, but Madame Pomfrey fixed that without any trouble,” she reassured him when he’d winced. “Ron got you calmed down pretty fast, actually. I think you realized who he was and stopped fighting.”
“I don’t remember any of that happening.”
“No, you wouldn’t. It was several more days before you really regained consciousness,” she replied, and then hesitated before speaking more quietly. “We thought for a while…right after we found you… Harry, you’d just lost so much blood, and you were so badly beaten.”
She remembered the horror of finding him in the bathroom, of the agonizing wait for Madame Pomfrey to arrive after they’d dragged him onto the bed. The still vivid memories flooded into her, and she shuddered. She knew the images of that terrible day would be burned in her memory forever, recalled as vividly as if it happened only moments before. The echo of the battle in the corridor, which she knew now was Snape and Bellatrix, ready to begin if she only closed her eyes and listened for it, heralding the start of the worst day of her life.
“Then I think you had a vision, maybe, when You Know Who came back and you saw what he did to Mr. Malfoy… what you told Snape. It went on for so long. I was sure he was killing you, and I couldn’t make it stop. It was so awful.”
“Yes, it was. That I remember,” he said ruefully. “I haven’t gotten anything from him since then, though. Not so much as a twinge in my scar. Not that I can recall, at least.”
“Maybe you’re getting better at Occlumency. You said you successfully fought off Snape when he tried to get into your mind. Maybe you’re holding off He Who Must Not Be Named, too,” she suggested hopefully.
“Maybe,” Harry responded, though he sounded dubious.
Ron snorted loudly. Then he rolled over to face them before throwing an arm over Harry’s chest. After a moment of rooting around on his pillow to get comfortable again, he began to snore once more.
Hermione grinned, trying to stifle a giggle as Harry’s eyes widened in surprise.
“Yes, just like that. That’s exactly how he fell asleep that first night,” she told him in amusement.
“Good lord, he’s dead to the world.” Harry said as he stared at Ron, though he made no move to remove Ron’s arm draped across his chest. “He must’ve slept like crap last night.”
Reaching up, Hermione stroked Ron’s freckled limb affectionately as she watched him sleeping. She ran her fingers over his hand curled into a loose fist on Harry’s chest while Harry’s eyes tracked her progress.
Ron had big hands, strong hands, so much larger than hers. Harry’s weren’t as big but the fingers were longer than Ron’s, finer and more tapered at the ends. Piano hands, her mother would have called them. But even his hands weren’t free of scars. She could see the words Umbridge had forced him to carve into his skin turn white, sitting next to him on the couch when he’d started squeezing the ball the minute they heard Ron and his family on the stairs the day of the party, I must not tell lies pulsing at her with every nervous compression.
“You know, he didn’t mean a lot of the things he said to you yesterday,” she whispered as she continued to stroke Ron’s arm, not looking at Harry. “He said he’d gotten out of the dungeons unscathed, but I don’t think that’s true. Sometimes I think it hurts worse to watch someone you love suffering than it is to actually be suffering yourself. Do you know what I mean? It’s like survivor’s guilt. Sometimes I feel like he actually got the worst of it.”
She pulled her hand back into her chest then and stared up at Harry. “He’s been really great, you know. We lived in fear those first few days. Fear that they would come and find us, fear that you would leave us, fear that he would attack your mind again.”
Harry said nothing, looking down at Ron’s arm again for a minute before he nodded. Then he slid an arm out from under his head and turned Ron’s hand over to examine his palm, looking for the injuries he’d caused him. He ran a thumb over the skin, but it was smooth, the blisters long since healed.
Grunting a bit in protest, Ron muttered incoherently before pulling his hand out of Harry’s grip and curling it back against his own body. Then he went right back to snoring.
“I instigated the sex with him, you know. He never would have…you know that,” she suddenly confessed then. Going red, and wondering if she’d also been given Veritaserum unknowingly while she slept.
“So this whole thing is really my fault. Being in this room, on this bed with you, it didn’t feel…wrong to me. I’m sorry, Harry. If you really want Ron and me to leave, we will. You don’t have to sleep in the middle. We can do something else. We can transfigure the bed into three singles and set the room up like a mini dormitory, or something. I bet I can even conjure some Gryffindor hangings, if it would help,” she offered with a tiny nervous hiccup of laughter.
“That would be kind of cool, actually,” he said in amusement, a smile curling his lips at the image. “I think Sirius would’ve liked that. Having a Gryffindor dormitory spring up in the middle of his parents’ house would’ve been a great practical joke to him.”
“I don’t want to be separated from you, Harry. I don’t want to leave you,” she told him, turning serious again. “It’s more than just being afraid that something will happen to you. We just want to be close to you, Ron and me. Those days in the dungeons, they changed all of us. You said you weren’t the same person anymore, you said you were afraid of what you were becoming. I’m afraid, too. I think we were all changed in there, and we’re trying to figure out how to fit our new selves back together again, trying to reshape the pieces to fit in the puzzle of our friendship. All the while, those relationships are being redefined, too. I don’t want it to be the two of us and you. I don’t want us to be split like that,” she said almost pleadingly.
“You make us sound like Hagrid’s pet Fluffy, or something. Like some three-headed Hydra, as if all of us are attached to the same body. But we’re not. We’re three separate people, Hermione.”
“I know that, Harry, but in a way, we are. You remember what it was like when Ron left? We carried on, but it wasn’t the same. Not for me, anyway. It felt like a mortal wound, a rending apart of my body when he left. It was the same when I watched you lying on this bed so close to death. That same aching, as if a part of me were dying, too, like a harrowing of my soul. Do you understand what I mean? I would be lost without either of you. It would be a permanently crippling blow, a devastation of my whole world. Doesn’t it feel that way to you, too?”
He looked away from her then, staring back up at the ceiling while she waited for his response, her whole body tensed on the bed.
“Yes,” he answered simply, although he looked deeply troubled by the admission.
Sighing heavily, he closed his eyes then, and she began to rub his arm as she’d grown accustomed to doing to calm him. Stroking it like she had Ron’s earlier while they both relaxed back onto the bed, soothing him in the same way that woke him the other night and caused the huge fight between them. She watched him in the growing light, listening to Ron’s continued snores and their own quiet breathing.
“What does it feel like…when you’re in love?” he asked her very quietly, his eyes still closed.
“You love Ginny, Harry. You know how—”
“That’s not what I meant,” he interrupted, his cheeks flushing red. “Never mind I asked…It’s none of my business.”
She felt herself going a little red then, too, suddenly hot all over when she understood his inquiry. Staring at him, Hermione waited for him to look back at her, but he wouldn’t open his eyes. So she scooted next to him to rest her head on his chest, heartbroken for him again.
“I don’t know, Harry,” she told him honestly. “It feels like…like dancing, or flying, maybe, I guess, if I’m describing it for you. It makes me want to throw my head back and laugh or shout out loud, you know? Like when you were a small child on a swing, and you’d swing as high as you could and then lean back and straighten your legs, swooping through the air with your eyes closed and the wind blowing your hair.”
She felt breathless, the slight ache of desire beginning to form in her.
“When his body’s so warm next to mine it feels like a luxury. The touch of his hands sends that tingling feeling all through me, giving me goose bumps, making my toes curl, making my body flush. When we’re together like that, we’re in our own world, and I never want it to end. Like a dream that I never want to wake from. I never want to come back to reality,” she confessed. “It feels like that, Harry.”
They lay silently for a few minutes, both lost in their own reflections while she fought the urge again to reach up and run her hands over his stubbled chin or press herself more firmly against him. She needed to calm the desire that had sprung up in her from the images she’d conjured of their lovemaking. Working to get control of her rapidly beating heart, she concentrated on slowing her breathing.
“Thank you,” he said thickly in a whisper. Then he sniffled, as if he’d been crying, though if he had, he’d been completely silent. It made her want to cry, too.
She could feel her eyes stinging, desperately sad for him, wanting so badly to comfort him.
“Why won’t you let Ginny in, Harry?” she asked. “I know how you feel about her. She feels the same about you. Why are you denying yourself that chance to be happy?”
“She doesn’t know,” he whispered. “She doesn’t know what I did.”
“And no one will ever tell her, Harry. Ron and I will never tell anyone what we were all forced to do there to survive. You saved our lives, and that’s the end of it, as far as I’m concerned.”
“I will know. I’ll always know what they did to me and what I did to you. I can’t lie to her. What kind of relationship can we have if I’m keeping horrible secrets from her?” he asked, sounding anguished. “How can she love me if she doesn’t know the truth about me? Even if you can forgive me, I can’t forgive myself. She deserves better than me. I’ll only corrupt her, too.”
Hermione sat up on her elbow, leaning over to look down on him then. Giving in to the urge finally to touch his face, she ran her hand along his jaw to turn his head to her, forcing him to look at her.
“What you did was sacrifice yourself for us, Harry. You gave yourself up to them to protect us. There’s absolutely nothing to forgive. Stop punishing yourself for it,” she said, glaring at him.
“I think I’d like to get up now,” he replied, trying to force the conversation closed. “I need the bathroom.”
“Don’t leave, Harry,” she pleaded. “Please don’t run away.”
“Boy, you and Ron sure think a lot of me, don’t you?” he asked angrily. “You think I’m a coward, too, do you?”
“Of course not! Stop trying to pick a fight with me,” she shot back, her voice rising in anger. “You’re the bravest man I’ve ever known, but you want to think the worst of yourself, and I’m not going to let you. We’ve been having a beautiful morning. Stop trying to ruin it. I’ll shut up about Ginny.”
He stared at her in some surprise before he finally gave a soft snort and raised his hands in surrender.
“Okay, okay,” he conceded, half annoyed, half amused. “I’m sorry. You can stop scowling at me, all right? I don’t want to fight with you this morning.”
Her raised voice must have disturbed Ron because he grunted in frustration and shifted again, burrowing closer to Harry so that he was now sandwiched between them. Then Ron’s hand snaked onto Harry’s belly, sliding upwards as Harry’s eyes widened again, his hands still raised in mock surrender.
Hermione’s face broke into a grin at the look on Harry’s face, the absurdity of the scene too much for her to hold onto her irritation with him.
“Jesus! He wasn’t lying about having horny hands,” he choked out. “I really do need to get up before this goes any further. Otherwise, we’ll have to tell his parents we’ve started dating now. I don’t think I need a demonstration of what you described.”
Slapping a hand over Ron’s, Harry flattened it against him to stop its wandering progress up his stomach.
“I need to get off this bed before I start feeling all tingly and my toes start curling.” He smirked, making her go red at hearing him speak her own words back at her.
“Oh, shut up,” she huffed, rolling away from him and sliding off the bed.
Hermione watched then as Harry tried to extricate himself from Ron’s limbs without waking him, biting down on her lips to keep from laughing as Ron had now thrown a leg over Harry’s, making it more difficult. Harry might not be feeling tingly, she thought, but he was definitely flushed trying to get out from under Ron.
When he’d managed to fight off Ron and crawl off the bed, Harry glared at her amused expression a minute before turning and marching into the bathroom.
Chuckling, she looked back at Ron, who had pulled a pillow to him then, snuggling up to it in Harry’s absence. It made her think of the two of them on the bed together again when Madame Pomfrey had come in, and then of them hugging yesterday morning with Harry gripping the back of Ron’s neck, his mouth near Ron’s ear.
She felt warm all over at the intimacy of the image and at the remembered expression on Ron’s face when Harry had pulled away. Maybe it wasn’t just her that was having conflicting feelings about Harry anymore, she thought hopefully.
She was still standing there, not having moved from the spot, when Harry returned from the bathroom. He came over to stand next to her, looking at Ron, too, for a minute and then at her.
“I do think we need to show a little Gryffindor love in this Slytherin house,” he announced as he stared around the room. “Let’s do it. Besides, it will freak Ron out when he wakes up. The grabby git.”
Stepping behind her, he collected their wands from the side table, handing hers over. She grinned up at him, enjoying the quirky playful mood he was in today. Then they both raised their wands.
They giggled like children as they worked, and when they were finished, three single four-poster beds stood side by side against the wall, the two side tables between them, replicas of their beds at Hogwarts down to the blankets and the curtains. It was a little cramped in the room now, but it looked wonderful. It really did remind her of Hogwarts again. Hermione missed being there so badly sometimes.
Ron had slept through the whole thing, which was fantastic. He lay on the bed closest to the door, still snoring happily, oblivious to the transformation.
“This looks brilliant,” Harry told her, appearing delighted with their spell work. “I can’t wait to see his reaction.”
Hermione nodded in agreement, pleased that it had been her suggestion.
“Is this what the girls’ dormitories look like as well? I never saw your rooms since boys aren’t allowed in there. Do you remember when Ron tried that one time?” he asked wistfully, sounding nostalgic.
“It’s mostly the same, but with less Quidditch posters. Well, except for Ginny’s room. And there were certainly no pictures of Muggle girls in bikinis decorating the place,” she replied, pointing to the numerous pictures Sirius had affixed to his walls with permanent sticking charms.
“Of course, you were a lot more likely to find a real scantily clad girl wandering around. Honestly, some girls had no modesty. Romilda Vane, for instance, and Ginny as well, really.” she added after thoughtful consideration. “She was always pretty comfortable in her own skin.”
“Oh, come on! That’s not even fair,” Harry whined petulantly.
“There were more Witch Weekly’s lying around, you know. And it was a bit neater, of course, but otherwise, it’s pretty much the same,” she continued with a laugh. “And yes, I think everyone remembers when Ron tried to get upstairs. The fool,” she said with great affection.
“You should have seen the look on his face when he came sliding back down the stairwell on his back. I can’t even remember now why he was so hell bent on getting up there.”
He chuckled at the memory, a faraway look in his eyes.
“Oh, Harry,” she cried suddenly, throwing her arms around him and kissing him full on the mouth. “You’re my best friend,” she told him when she pulled back, her hands still linked behind his head. “I’ve missed you terribly.”
He looked momentarily stunned, frozen from shock, with one hand pressed between her shoulder blades and the other in the small of her back. Sliding his hands away from her then, he took a nervous step back.
“Yeah, well,” he mumbled, looking uncomfortable. “I’m sure it’s only temporary. I’m just feeling momentarily euphoric at the absence of pain. I feel like I’ve just been cut loose from my anchor.”
“I’ll take whatever I can get.” She smiled up at him again, trying to break the awkward tension she’d created. Then she turned to look at Ron again. “I don’t think he’s waking up anytime soon. I’m going downstairs to get a shower.”
“I think I’ll join you.”
She raised her eyebrows at him, and he turned crimson immediately.
“I meant up here…I didn’t mean…” he stuttered, looking mortified.
“I knew what you meant,” she responded with a laugh, grabbing up her bag and tossing it to him. “Here, get what you need out of it.”
She didn’t have the heart to take the mickey out of him any longer. God, it was so beautiful to see him doing anything as normal as being embarrassed in front of a girl, though. It made her want to start crying again as she watched him rummaging nervously in her bag for his things, still deeply red in the cheeks.
When she got out of the shower, Harry was downstairs alone in the drawing room, having come down the stairs on his own, apparently. His chin was once again shaved smooth, which was a shame, she decided. She liked him looking a bit roguish. A little stubble with that messy too-long hair really suited him, in her opinion. It gave him a bit of a devil-may-care look.
“Ron’s still asleep?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he replied. “I didn’t want to wake him.”
“You could have waited for me. I would’ve helped you down.”
“I’m fine, really. I can manage on my own now.”
It was late in the morning and long after they’d returned to the drawing room after their breakfast before Ron finally made an appearance. Having had another fit of madness, she and Harry had transfigured it into as close a replica of the Gryffindor common room as possible, since they’d missed Ron’s reaction to the bedroom.
He looked gob smacked when he came into the room, his mouth falling open as he stared around.
“This is bloody fantastic!” he said in awe. “What the hell has gotten into you two?”
He stared between their identically grinning faces for a moment before his eyes began taking in the room again, landing on different transformed features on by one.
“We were beginning to wonder if you were ever going to wake up, Ron,” she teased. “It’s almost lunch time.”
“Yeah,” he mumbled, his eyes darting nervously to Harry for a moment. “I had some trouble getting to sleep.”
“Well, you didn’t have any trouble staying asleep this morning. I don’t think anything could have woken you,” Harry informed him.
“Right, well, like I said, I had a bit of trouble. So, um…Why did you two decide to turn the bedroom into a dormitory again?”
“Well, after this morning, I decided it wasn’t safe for me to sleep next to you either,” Harry answered.
“Huh?” Ron asked in confusion. “What are you on about?”
“You had your damn hands all over me! The next time I let you grope me like that, I’d better at least get dinner or something first. I’m not some trollop, you know,” Harry replied in mock indignation.
Hermione couldn’t contain her laughter at the look of astonishment on Ron’s face, with his mouth hanging open again in stunned surprise.
“Just because I went to bed with you, doesn’t mean you can take whatever liberties you like with my body, you rogue.”
“Piss off,” Ron muttered finally.
Harry started laughing then, too.
“Someone’s in a better mood this morning,” Ron said, looking cross himself. “I’m starving. I’m going down to the kitchen to see if I can have some of whatever it is you two have been into this morning.”
Then he turned on his heel, the back of his ears and neck going red as he marched to the doorway.
“It’s nearly lunch, Ron, why don’t you just wait,” she called after him, but he just waved her off on his way out of the room.
He was only gone about twenty minutes before he came walking back in, carrying a stack of toast and a couple of pieces of bacon in one hand, and a glass of orange juice in the other. Plopping down in one of the transfigured armchairs, he began to eat, staring around the room, taking in the details more closely.
“We are going to leave it like this, right?” he asked, waving around a half-eaten piece of toast.
“I dunno why not,” Harry answered. “I like the looks of it a lot better this way.”
“Me, too, but can you imagine the shrieking that portrait of Sirius’ mum would make if she saw what it looked like in here?” Ron asked.
“I hadn’t considered that,” Hermione said, staring quickly around the room. “It’s a good thing there aren’t any other portraits in here that she could come and visit. I bet we’d never get her to shut up.”
“Oh, my, God!” Harry yelled suddenly, jumping to his feet, surprising Ron and her both into silence. “The portrait!”
His eyes shone with excitement as he stared at them.
“Dobby can get into Hogwarts!”
“Yeah…so?” Ron questioned slowly, narrowing his eyes in confusion at Harry’s enthusiastic statement of the obvious.
“Phineas couldn’t bring Dumbledore from Hogwarts into the other portrait we took, but Dobby can get Dumbledore’s portrait for us, and bring it here,” he explained when it was clear from their expressions that they had no idea what he was on about.
“Then we could talk to Dumbledore and get all the answers we need. Or, if the portraits can’t be removed from the walls, or something, he could bring us the Pensieve. Dobby,” he called before either of them could say anything.
The little elf popped into the room.
“What’s the matter, Harry Potter, sir?” Dobby asked, looking around the room in panic, searching for the source of whatever had Harry yelling.
“Nothing, Dobby, everything’s fine,” Harry assured him quickly, kneeling down to the elf. “Listen, do you think you can do me another huge favor?”
“Anything, Harry Potter. Dobby would do whatever Harry Potter wants him to do.”
He stared up at Harry with adoration as she and Ron scooted to the edges of their chairs.
“Great! That’s great, Dobby,” Harry said eagerly. “I need you to bring me something from Hogwarts,” he started, but Dobby’s ears had already begun to droop. “Can you get into the Headmaster’s office?”
“Dobby can, sir, yes, but he cannot takes things from Hogwarts. House elves isn’t being able to steal, even for their masters.”
“I don’t want you to steal anything, Dobby,” he replied. “I just need to borrow something. I need Dumbledore’s portrait. You can put it back once we’ve finished.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” Dobby apologized, near tears. “Objects that belongs to Hogwarts is being magically protected. Dobby cannot takes them from the castle without permission.”
He looked miserable at the disappointment on Harry’s face.
“Okay, what about the Pensieve? It belonged to Dumbledore, not Hogwarts. Can you bring that?” he asked, looking hopeful again.
“No, sir,” Dobby answered, shaking his head.
“Harry, almost all of Dumbledore’s possessions were left to Hogwarts. Dobby won’t be able to bring the Pensieve either,” she told him. “It belongs to Hogwarts now.”
“Damn it!” Harry growled in frustration, causing Dobby’s enormous eyes to spill over into tears, and he began to sob uncontrollably.
“I’m sorry, Dobby. It’s all right, really,” Harry apologized, grabbing Dobby by the arms to ward off any attempts at self-flagellation by the elf. “I’m not angry with you. I just got my hopes up is all,” he reassured the elf, looking pained at having caused Dobby so much distress. “Don’t cry. It’s not your fault. I’m sorry I asked you. Okay?”
“Dobby would do it if he could, sir,” he said, sniffling.
“I know,” Harry soothed. “I know you would. It’s all right.”
Harry fell heavily back into his chair when he’d finally calmed Dobby down, letting the look of deep disappointment show on his face at having his hopes dashed once Dobby returned to the kitchen.
Dobby had left with a determined gleam in his eye, making Hermione feel sure that lunch, and possibly dinner, would consist of all of Harry’s favorites in an attempt by the elf to please him. She could predict with as much certainty as if she were Trelawney herself that a treacle tart would appear in their very near future. Her inner eye was pretty clear on that without even having to consult her tea leaves or her star chart.
“I was so sure for a moment there that I had the solution,” Harry told them bitterly, running a hand through his hair in frustration before slamming a fist down on the arm of the chair.
“It was a good idea,” Ron said fairly.
“Well, I think we should put off trying to find out what’s in those memories for the time being. Dumbledore didn’t want you to have the information just yet anyway. I think we need to get back to the tasks he did clearly set out for you, Harry,” she told him. “We need to stop speculating on what he might have wanted you to know and concentrate on what we know he asked you to do. The Horcruxes should be the only thing we’re concerned with right now.”
“Well, seeing as I can’t do much about the memories right now anyway, I guess I have to agree,” Harry conceded.
“Good, because I’ve been thinking, and I believe I might know where another Horcrux is,” she announced. “Or at least who has it.”
“Who?” Ron asked in amazement.
She stared at Harry, worried for his reaction, afraid she might plunge him back into blackness, but she had to do it. She’d been holding off for some time, but she was almost sure of it, and she couldn’t wait any longer.
Hermione hoped against hope that Harry’s good mood this morning would be enough to counteract the impact of her next words.
“Bellatrix,” she said bracingly. “I think Bellatrix Lestrange has one.”

~ . ~

Sorry this one was a later coming out than usual for me. I slacked off a few days. It’s a bit lighter than normal for me, too. I hope they didn’t seem too silly here, but I thought they all needed a bit of a break from all the ranting at each other they’ve been doing lately. It will go back to wallowing in angst again soon, I’m sure.
Greycie
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What it comes down to

Chapter 22. Coming Clean