Chapters 241-250

Sin

Hermione typed.

When a breeze carried the hymn of the midday prayer into her room, she paused, trying to identify the song. She was getting quite good at that—recognising the hymns based on just a few words. But she also had a lot of practice by now.

Hermione wrote.

She didn’t sleep quite as much anymore and she needed to fight the choking boredom of imprisonment.

Hermione stopped typing and stared at her treacherous hands.

Yes, she thought, not bothering to wipe away her tears. My sin is always before me.

oooOooo

It was Hermione’s 22nd birthday and Snape hadn’t appeared for his classes. The house-elves reported that he was drinking in the dungeons. Minerva met Harry at the Apparition point and led him down into the dungeons. At the door of Snape’s private library, she left him.

‘Good luck,’ she said softly. ‘You’ll need it.’

‘A big wooden hammer would work better,’ Harry muttered.

oooOooo

‘Come to cheer up the grieving widower, have you?’ Snape sneered, without turning his gaze away from a photograph of Hermione he was holding in his hands.

‘Snap out of this!’ Harry shouted. ‘So you think that you ought to have died?’ The air was biting with the sharp tang of Firewhisky. ‘That you ought to have ended up without a left arm, struck deaf, blind and mute? Sorry, mate, but it doesn’t work that way. Do you think Hermione would want you to act like that? Locking yourself away and drinking yourself into a stupor to celebrate her birthday? Do you think you’re helping her any that way?’

For a long moment the room was silent, and all that Harry could hear was his own, heavy breathing. His eyes felt hot and heavy in their sockets.

When he thought that Snape wouldn’t speak again that day, Severus finally replied, his voice almost gentle, ‘Do you really believe that matters anymore? That anything I do—or you do—can help her anymore?’

‘Is that a reason to give up?’

Another long silence.

Then, very softly: ‘No.’

oooOooo

Cato and Alina sat with their backs to the parapet of the Astronomy Tower. It was a Hogsmeade weekend, so Hogwarts was empty except for the Firsties and the Second Years. And none of them dared to climb the Tower. For October and the Scottish Highlands it was an unusually warm day.

Alina’s words formed lazily on the piece of parchment she’d stuck to the stone beside her.

Above them Woodstock was soaring in crazy circles, a brilliant flash of purple, red and gold, playing ‘catch me if you can’ with some young thestrals.

Alina’s first experience with Hogsmeade had been pretty much a disaster. After the secret investigations hadn’t yielded any trace of Hermione, the Minister of Magic had decided to go public with the whole story. Alina—as the heroine of the adventure—was still caught up in the backlash of that decision. When she’d shown up in Hogsmeade with Woodstock on one shoulder, her trusty piece of parchment hovering over the other, she’d caused an Apparition jam with three minor Splinchings, just because so many people were desperate to get an autograph. Cato was not surprised that she’d decided to stay at Hogwarts today.

He looked at the pretty, dark-haired girl and considered carefully the best strategy for how to deal with the difficult Slytherin. In the end he opted for an approach she would not expect.

‘I like you,’ he said simply. Then he hesitated before he added meaningfully. ‘Very much.’ The words simultaneously appeared on his own piece of parchment.

oooOooo

and then he asked if he might kiss me, Alina’s quill spelt out for Geilis. It was past curfew and they were once again ensconced in Alina’s four poster.

Gilly wrote back, green eyes wide.

Alina’s stomach fluttered with a million tiny butterflies when she remembered Cato’s warm lips on hers.

Alina laughed silently. Then she gripped her friend’s hands and widened her eyes at her.

Gilly blinked. Alina giggled even more.

‘Wow,’ Geilis mouthed. Then she pursed her lips and grabbed the notepad.

Alina grimaced. A hot wave of mortification flowed over her at the thought of the embarrassing crush that had turned the last weeks of her Second Year into agony.