Chapter Text
CHAPTER XLV:
Hermione's POV:
The Monday morning following Harry's name coming out of the Goblet had been just as terrible as they'd predicted.
The Slytherins, of course, were all still ecstatic, and as she and Harry had entered the Common Room all the students who'd already finished their breakfast broke out into applause again. The prospect of going down into the Great Hall and facing the rest of the Slytherins, who were all treating Harry as some sort of hero, and the rest of the school, who no doubt were going to treat him as a pariah, was obviously about as appealing to Harry as it was to her. Their year-mates, however, had rallied around them, and as they stepped out of the Slytherin Common Room, Harry had a protective entourage of Blaise, Draco, Daphne, Tracey, Theo, Vince, Greg, and even Pansy Parkinson, Millicent Bulstrode and Lilyan Moon.
It was clear the moment they entered the Hall that despite Harry's protests to the contrary the previous evening, the rest of the school believed he'd entered himself into the Tournament and unlike the Slytherins they were not impressed. Hermione could understand the Hufflepuffs' attitude, even if she didn't like it; they had their own champion to support. She expected nothing less than vicious insults from the Gryffindors– Harry was highly unpopular there. But she had thought the Ravenclaws might have found it in themselves to support Harry as much as Diggory. She had been wrong, however– most Ravenclaws seemed to think that Harry had been desperate to earn himself a bit more fame by tricking the goblet into accepting his name. It was also very clear to her that despite the Oath she'd made to him, Diggory had put to have put in very little effort in convincing his fellow Hufflepuffs otherwise– if he'd even mentioned it at all. Just one Herbology lesson was enough to demonstrate this.
It was plain that the Hufflepuffs felt that Harry had stolen their champion's glory; a feeling exacerbated, perhaps, by the fact that Hufflepuff House very rarely got any glory, and that Diggory was one of the few who had ever given them any, having beaten Slytherin once at Quidditch. And while she could understand them supporting their champion instead of Harry, it angered her to see them treat Harry with such coldness.
Macmillan and Finch-Fletchley, the Hufflepuffs she and Harry had had the misfortune of being partnered with in that one Herbology lesson, and who normally were at least polite to him, even if they were very wary of Slytherins, did not talk to them at all as the four of them repotted Bouncing Bulbs– though they did laugh rather unpleasantly when one of the Bouncing Bulbs wriggled free from Harry's grip and smacked him hard in the face. At least Professor Sprout had seemed her usual friendly self.
After that awful Herbology lesson, Hermione had hoped that seeing Hagrid next would cheer Harry up. Then she remembered that while under normal circumstances it might have, Care of Magical Creatures meant seeing the Gryffindors too– the first time face-to-face since Harry had become champion.
Predictably, Ron Weasley arrived at Hagrid's cabin with his familiar sneer firmly in place.
"I'm surprised to see you here," he said, the moment he got within earshot of them, "and not at some photoshoot somewhere. They better get the pictures done soon, because I doubt you're going to be around much longer....Half the Triwizard champions have died... how long d'you reckon you're going to last? My brothers are organizing the betting pool– I put down five minutes into the first task."
"We're talking about Harry here, Weasley, not you," she spat, icily.
"Are you joking, Hermione?" Draco sneered at the bristling red-head, "Weasley here wouldn't even last thirty seconds." Vince and Greg guffawed sycophantically in response to Draco's quip, and Weasley, now with a face as red as his hair, didn't have a chance to respond before Hagrid emerged from the back of his cabin balancing a teetering tower of crates, each containing a very large Blast-Ended Skrewt. The skrewts were now over three feet long, and extremely powerful. No longer shell-less and colorless, they had developed a kind of thick, grayish, shiny armor. They looked like a cross between giant scorpions and elongated crabs and still had no recognizable heads or eyes. They had become immensely strong and very hard to control. To the class's horror, Hagrid proceeded to explain that the reason the skrewts had been killing one another was an excess of pent-up energy, and that the solution would be for each student to fix a leash on a skrewt and take it for a short walk.
Hermione took advantage of Hagrid's attention being drawn away from the class at large as Weasley started arguing with him.
"I'm going to tear that sniveling, cowardly worm to pieces!" She said darkly, fixing Weasley's back with a particularly venomous look.
"Don't even think about it." Harry said, sternly.
"Too many witnesses." Blaise added casually, causing Harry to turn his glare to the Italian instead.
"Exactly how many pieces are we talking here?" Draco questioned her, looking sadistically cheerful at the idea.
"...Several... large ones, though– come on, Harry!" she urged her best friend to reconsider. Harry crossed his arms and glared.
"I don't need you fighting my battles." He said, angrily. "I don't your pity."
"Of course you don't need pity." Blaise said, with a roll of his eyes. "Everyone who's ever hurt you, they're the ones who need pity for what we're all going to do to them."
Hermione showed her teeth in a lethal smile. "And they won't be getting any," she said, voice practically a purr.
"And why should they? They deserve it." Blaise added, with a shrug.
"You're all as terrible as each other." Harry groaned. "No cursing them." He added, though. "I mean it. There's no point. Sticks and stones may break my bones–"
"But words can also hurt you." Hermione interrupted. "Especially now," she added, thoughtfully and slightly amused at the thought of it, "now that words are how spells are cast. At least until you've mastered casting non-verbally."
They didn't have time to talk after that, though, because Hagrid had instructed everyone to start, and as the class got to work trying to attach a harness around the skrewts' middles he called her and Harry over, supposedly to 'help' him with one of the bigger ones. His real intention, however, was to talk to them away from the rest of the class, waiting until everyone had set off with their skrewts before turning very seriously to them.
"So– yer competin', Harry. In the tournament. School champion."
"One of the champions," Harry corrected the very large man.
Hagrid's beetle-black eyes looked very anxious under his wild eyebrows. "An' both of you 'ave no idea who put yeh in fer it?"
"You believe I didn't do it, then?" said Harry, and Hermione could easily see through the effort he put into concealing the rush of gratitude he felt at Hagrid's words.
"Course I do," Hagrid grunted. "Yeh say it wasn' you, an' I believe yeh– an' Dumbledore believes yer, an' all."
Hermione very determinedly kept her mouth shut at that– she still suspected that the reason Dumbledore believed Harry was because the old fool had entered Harry's name himself.
"I wish I did know for sure who did do it," muttered Harry bitterly.
The three of them looked out over the lawn; the class was widely scattered now, and all in great difficulty. "Look like they're havin' fun, don' they?" Hagrid said happily. Hermione assumed he was talking about the skrewts, because her classmates certainly weren't; every now and then, with an alarming bang, one of the skrewts' ends would explode, causing it to shoot forward several yards, and more than one person was being dragged along on their stomach, trying desperately to get back on their feet.
"Ah, I don' know, Harry," Hagrid sighed suddenly, looking back down at them with a worried expression on his face. "School champion... everythin' seems ter happen ter you, doesn' it?"
And wasn't that the truth? Hermione thought grimly.
Their extremely trying day had ended with her, Harry and Tom sneaking out of the dorms at nearly midnight, her and Harry under the Invisibility Cloak and Tom under a disillusionment charm, the two of them following the older boy to a bizarre room Tom had called 'The Room of Requirement'. It was, he'd explained to them, something he'd found while searching for the Chamber of Secrets, back in his school-boy days.
The Room was an utterly fascinating piece of magic, located on Hogwarts' seventh floor, across from a tapestry of a wizard called Barnabas the Barmy. To 'open' it you had to walk past the area where the door was concealed three times, thinking of what you needed. Tom had demonstrated for them, and of course the room had turned into something as extravagant as he was. Vast and magnificent, elegant drapes with gold linings hung around the room, various antique-looking adornment placed with care on splendidly crafted tables, exquisite paintings were placed strategically around the room and armchairs were situated in a tasteful arrangement around a grand fire-place that crackled with warmth. And above them hung a beautiful crystal chandelier lined with elegantly carved ivory-colored candles.
After spending a few seconds just blinking, taking in the room in surprised but appreciative silence, Hermione moved over to one of the chairs and perched on the arm, while Harry trailed after her and sat in the seat. Tom left briefly, returning only a few minutes later with a very nervous-looking young man in tow– a man she recognized just barely from black and white pictures published in the old, archived copes of the Daily Prophet in the library as Barty Crouch Junior.
Her first thought on Barty Crouch Junior was that there was something wrong with him, besides the obvious. He was a little bit like a kid, with something inside of him that was just broken.
Barty was a young blonde man with a pale freckled face and an odd little tic where the tip of his tongue darted out of his mouth to lick his upper lip. Looking at him, she was reminded of a saying she'd once heard– 'some monsters aren't born, they're created'. Oh, there must have always been a capacity in Barty for violence and anger, but it was Barty's life that had made him into who he was. Specifically, his life with the man he had the misfortune to call Father.
If there was ever another person she and Harry could call kindred spirit, this broken, abused young man was it.
And Voldemort had taken Barty under his wing, shaping the wounded, impressionable young man to his image, with his cause consuming every good part of him left until Barty was left even more broken then before, but held together then by twisted devotion and absolute loyalty.
And Barty Crouch Junior was certainly an asset to the Dark– Hermione wasn't sure about what he was like as a wizard, but the Crouch family was an old one and a very wealthy one at that. No one knew the exact extent of the Crouch estate, but primogeniture would ensure once Bartemius Crouch passed away (or was murdered) Barty would inherit a vast fortune that consisted of multiple unplottable, highly warded houses, manors and even a small castle which was the center of the family's wealth, and the only property commonly known, as it was used to host galas– Bartemius hadn't lived there, of course; he had been a much too paranoid man, and although Hermione knew now it was because of the fact he'd been keeping his son locked away and under the Imperius curse, most assumed it was either his position as a Head of Department in the Ministry, or because of his actions in the War against Voldemort.
His inheritance wasn't the only reason Barty was such an asset, though; as a dead man, Barty was also perfect for committing the sort of crimes and undercover spy work that Voldemort's other followers couldn't, due to their public visibility– undercover work like posing as Bartemius Crouch for the duration of the Tournament, making sure that Harry, the underage fourth champion, had the best possible chance they could give him to come out of the Tasks unharmed.
"So," she said, once Tom and Barty were seated across from her and Harry, "dragons. Fucking, real-life dragons. How the hell are we getting past them?"
"Just the one," Barty corrected her nervously, tongue tip darting out again to wet his lips. "One dragon per champion. They're nesting mothers, and each will have a clutch of eggs that they'll be guarding. One egg will be fake, though, made of gold instead. That's the egg the Champion will need to retrieve, in a test that's supposed to test the Champions daring."
"A Gryffindor designed this. Only they could possibly be this stupid and reckless." Hermione muttered scathingly. "Fine– what breed of dragon will be used?"
"Four different breeds are being imported from a dragon sanctuary in Romania," Barty explained, "a Common Welsh Green, Swedish Short-Snout, Chinese Fireball and Hungarian Horntail." Hermione winced.
"A Hungarian Horntail? That breed is at least twice as vicious as a Common Welsh Green. How is it decided which Champion faces which breed?" She asked.
"Miniature replicas that the Champions pull out of a bag." Barty said. "They're actually kind of cute," he added, with a nervous smile. "The spell-casting department created them– they can breath tiny sparks and little puffs of smoke."
"They're animated?" Tom asked, sharply. Barty flinched slightly as Tom's full attention turned focused on him.
"Y-yes, my Lord," he stammered slightly. Tom's lips curved into a satisfied smirk.
"Excellent." He said, smugly. "That's excellent. A diversion."
"I think you're forgetting the part where Barty said they were miniature replicas." Hermione pointed out dryly.
"Are you a witch or not?" Tom countered, arching a dark eyebrow. Hermione narrowed her eyes at him, even as her mind raced. The answer, when she arrived at it, was obvious enough she almost blushed.
"Enlargement charm," she said. "If Harry makes it big enough, the replica becomes a threat to the dragon. A big one – one much more obvious and threatening to her nest then a small human would be."
"Exactly." Tom said.
"We still need Harry to be able to move fast– he can't outrun a dragon, and once it realizes the replica is a diversion, or that something is disturbing its nest, it's going to turn on him instantly." Pointed out Hermione.
"I, ah, I had a small idea about that," Barty spoke up, tongue wetting his lip again nervously when they all turned their attention to him. "See, the Champions are supposed to play to their skills, use the magic disciplines they're most skilled at, because the judges want a show. The better it is to watch, the higher the scores."
"I don't have any particular magical fields where I stand out," Harry said, gloomily. "Definitely not compared to seventh years, anyway."
"That's not, ah, quite what I've heard." Barty fidgeted with the sleeves of his robes, slightly too long for his thin build, as they were designed to fit his father, not him. "I've heard you're very skilled at Quidditch."
Harry's cheeks went pink at the praise and Hermione hid a smile– Harry was incredibly modest and shy about praise for pretty much everything except his talent at Quidditch.
"I– I am good on a broom," he said, which was an understatement, if anything, "but that doesn't really help me when I don't have my broom."
"No," she said, slowly, "but you do have your wand." Harry looked confused for a moment before his eyes widened.
"A summoning charm!" he exclaimed, and she smiled.
"A summoning charm." She confirmed.
"I might actually survive this after all," Harry said, actually looking a bit stunned. Hermione couldn't help her laugh, and even Tom snorted.
"Don't worry– we wouldn't let the dragon get you." She said, "You're far too pretty for us to risk being disfigured or incinerated."
"Thanks Hermione." Harry said, voice thick with sarcasm. She smiled sweetly at him.
"Oh you're welcome Harry. But you do know what this means."
"Oh yes," Harry said, expression going grim. "I'm going to have to do a lot of practicing, aren't I?"
"Summoning charms, enlargement charms and dodging practice." Tom confirmed, with a very sadistic smile in response to the pained expression on Harry's face. "And that last one, at least, is going to be fun."
Which was in no way reassuring to Harry at all, she knew– because Tom had very different ideas of what constituted as 'fun'. It was going to be a very long few weeks for poor Harry.
-
Her prediction had been correct, and Harry's misery wasn't solely caused by the torture otherwise known as Tom's training either. The rest of the school were still awful to him, some of the worst it had been during her time at Hogwarts – the closest she could remember it being like this was during those months back in their second year when a large part of the school had suspected Harry of being the Heir of Slytherin and attacking his fellow students.
There were a handful of students outside of Slytherin who believed Harry, though– Luna, for one, and Fleur too. And Longbottom, who much to her surprise had taken the whole thing quite well. The boy had just shrugged when he and Harry met up and said he didn't care if Harry had chosen to enter himself in the Tournament or not– "Though I didn't really think you would have," the Gryffindor had added with another shrug. "It didn't really seem like something you'd do. I'd expect it more from you, Gra– Hermione," he'd corrected himself, a touch of pink to his cheeks as Harry gave him an encouraging look, "to be honest."
"Really?" Harry asked doubtfully, giving her a teasing look. "Well, I suppose you haven't heard all her rants about the Tournament, and how the magical schools are using their students as unpaid diplomats, competing in dangerous tasks to foster mutual goodwill between antagonistic ministries."
"Oh not to compete," Neville clarified, "so you could embarrass Professor Dumbledore by public ally outsmarting him." Hermione hadn't been able to hide her amusement there.
"I don't hide it well, do I?" She said, referring to her intense loathing of the headmaster.
"Neither of you do, not really anyway." Neville shrugged in response. "If you know what to look for, it's there."
Later, she commented to Harry that Longbottom could be shockingly insightful. "Makes me think there's hope for him outside an extra body between you and anyone who wants to hurt you."
"You're terrible." Sighed Harry.
"Guilty as charged." She agreed.
But despite those that supported Harry, the rest of the school's attitude had gotten so bad that Snape had actually asked them to stay behind after Double Potions.
"How are you both coping?" he'd asked, clearly concerned, and from where he was standing at her right Harry had given a huffed laugh.
"Well, I haven't been cursed, and Hermione hasn't killed anyone yet, so I suppose we can count that as a victory."
"Oi," she'd said, elbowing him gently in the ribs.
"The feat of not killing anyone is indeed a victory, I suppose," had agreed Snape, who no doubt considered killing multiple people, multiple times a day. "Just remember you can always come to me, if there's anyone making you feel particularly... homicidal. Slytherins stick together."
"Thanks sir," Harry had said gratefully. She herself hadn't said anything, because she didn't want to lie to her favorite professor and she very much doubted that she was going to get through this rather trying time without cursing someone.
Snape's long-suffering look as he had dismissed them both had told her that he was fully aware of why she hadn't answered. Though with Harry refusing to let her maim anyone, she'd had to turn to alternate means of getting revenge, which made her remember an earlier conversation she, Harry and Tom had had. After all, she blamed Dumbledore for this current mess they were in, and while she couldn't curse the headmaster, she could at least embarrass him in front of the other schools. And what better way to do that, then to pull a very public prank?
Harry had turned out to actually be rather keen on his idea, and with Tom's help, they started planning some truly epic mischief.
-
It was nearly a week after their conversation with Snape that the preparations for the prank had been completed. Dumbledore often made announcements on Fridays at the start of dinner, so they'd planned their prank for then.
Sure enough, Friday evening as everyone congregated at dinner Dumbledore stood up to address the school.
"Students," he said, that damnable gentile smile on his face, "I would–" he paused suddenly, and Hermione could barely keep the vicious smile off her face at the sound of a loud thud over on the Hufflepuff table, followed by screaming and scrambling.
The badger, which had fallen off the silk banner hanging over the table and grown from a two-dimensional shape to three-dimensional, was huge, nearly six feet long and looking rather miffed, making odd barking, growling noises as it shuffled forwards, knocking over bowls and platters as the students in black and yellow panicked– loudly– and threw themselves away from it.
The Gryffindor table was next to start screaming, as the embroidered lion peeled off the banner and grew to larger then life-size, the letting out a bellowing roar as it landed on all four feet. Its paws were the size of the dinner plates, and even standing on all fours its head was level to a grown man's.
Ravenclaw's mascot wasn't even half as scary, seeing as everyone was used to birds flying around the hall, but Slytherin's mascot... well, even her fellow Slytherins were scrambling away from the pissed off snake, stunning as it was with its shining silver scales and gleaming emerald eyes.
::Stupid mudbloods! Who dares awaken me?:: the huge serpent, over twelve feet long and thick as a child's torso, demanded. Hermione made an amused sound at that– trust Salazar Slytherin's snake to be a blood purist.
The snake turned its head from side to side, hissing ferociously. She was a touch startled when the vibrant, iridescent green eyes turned to her direction and fixed themselves unnervingly on her ::You have unclean blood:: the serpent declared.
::And suddenly I'm glad nobody else speaks Parseltongue:: Harry hissed quietly beside her, the sibilant sounds lost to all but those closest to him in the bedlam. Hermione agreed, but didn't have time to reply, because what happened next happened very quickly.
The snake lunged at Hermione, fangs bared, and she barely had time to throw herself out of the way, before the snake was striking at her again. She bit back a cry of pain as long, curved fangs dug into the skin of her shoulder– several inches over and the bloody serpent might have ripped out her throat. Her shoulder felt like it was on fire and could feel something burning in her veins– the venom she was guessing. She fiercely blinked back the tears threatening to spill and grabbed onto the snake still attached to her shoulder by its gangs, fastening both her hands around its thick girth and digging her fingers in as hard as she could in a move that turned out to be useless, as the snake's scales were too hard to pierce.
Her mouth tasted like copper.
::STOP:: she demanded, furiously. ::STOP NOW!::
She could hear Harry's panicked shouts, but her attention was focused instead on the snake that had stilled in its attempts to murder her. It drew back slowly, pulling its fangs from her shoulder, and fixed its sight on her, staring unblinkingly with far too-intelligent iridescent eyes.
::You speak the noble tongue:: it hissed slowly.
::I speak the noble tongue:: Hermione agreed, warily letting go of her hold on the snake now it didn't seem like she was about to be attacked again, moving her hands to instead press against the wound on her shoulder leaking hot, wet crimson. The snake moved back on the table now, apparently satisfied.
::I am yours to command, Mistress:: it hissed happily.
::Go fuck yourself:: Hermione hissed back grimly as she sat back down heavily on the bench.
"Hermione?" Harry asked frantically and Hermione turned to see him staring at her, white-faced.
"What?" She asked, frowning in confusion. Harry reached forwards and gently touched her cheek. It was wet and Hermione was confused– she thought she'd managed to hold back the tears– until he pulled his hand back and she saw the blood. She was crying blood. Well, she was leaking blood from her eyes anyway.
"Ah. The venom must have contained a hemotoxin." She said. Her mouth did taste suspiciously copper-ish. Picking up one of the folded napkins she pressed the cloth against her mouth and spat in it. Pulling the napkin back, she was unsurprised to see blood.
"What the hell is a hemotoxin?" Demanded a somewhat panicky Harry. Before Hermione could answer a rush of dizziness had her leaning forwards and bracing herself against the table and blinking away the reddish fog.
She didn't remember a whole lot after that, just a whole lot of shouting. Her next really solid memory was blinking awake in a white room she quickly recognized as the hospital wing.
It took her a few moments to remember what had happened, and why she was laid out in one of the cots. She'd been attached by a snake with hemotoxins in its venom. Hemotoxins destroyed red blood cells, disrupted the clotting process and caused tissue and organ degeneration, all of which caused massive hemorrhaging to ensue.
"Fantastic." She muttered, which caused the half-asleep figure slumped over her bed to jerk back into full consciousness.
"You're awake!" Harry exclaimed, looking adorably tousled and very relieved.
"Awake and embarrassed." She said, with a grimace. "I was defeated by a snake."
"Well... yes." Harry admitted, and she appreciated him not sugarcoating it.
"A fucking snake!" she repeated unhappily. She supposed that 'pride cometh before the fall' and all that– she had been getting too confident, and this had been her wake-up call.
"When you think about it," Harry rushed to try and soothe her, "snakes can move up to eight times their own body length in a second– that means the snake that attacked you had the potential to be able to move nearly a hundred feet in a second. There was no way you could have reacted in time."
"That's not exactly how it works- the body weight and mass of the snake would have to come into consideration too. And that really doesn't make me feel any better about what happened," Hermione muttered darkly, though privately she did feel a touch mollified. Still– "god, how embarrassing." She groaned.
"Oh, I don't know," Harry said. "The Durmstrang students were all very impressed by your Parseltongue. Plus, you had a very concerned visitor." He gestured to what was either a glass or crystal vase on her bedside table, filled with different flowers all in shades of pink. "I know it's a lot of pink." Harry said. "But Fleur Delacour does strike me as the sort of person to like pink."
Hearing the flowers were from Fleur, Hermione examined the bouquet with increased interest, and it was the presence of peonies that gave her the hint. "Le langage des fleurs," she murmured, looking at the flowers closer in an effort to identify the separate types present. "I'm pretty sure she used floriography here."
"Floriography?" Harry asked.
"Because of their fragrance, color and impermanence, flowers have been used for centuries as a way to convey emotions without words." She explained. "The exact emotions being represented vary from culture to culture, and sometimes from person to person. I'm assuming this one is Victorian Era flower language, developed mostly in the nineteenth century."
"How the hell do you know these things?" Harry asked her and she laughed.
"The libraries I used to linger in when I was younger, for their warmth or air-conditioning. I read a lot of books during those times, and the more obscure ones were usually the more interesting ones– one of those was a floriography dictionary called 'Le Langage des Fleurs'. It was published in France in the early nineteenth century and one of the books I read when I was teaching myself French. Here," she motioned to the peonies, "see those ones? They're peonies, and they're for healing. The gladiolus signify strength of character, the hydrangeas perseverance, the pansies affectionate thoughts and the pink roses admiration and appreciation."
"That's actually really sweet– and flattering too." Harry said, impressed.
"It really is," she mused, examining the flowers. They had been arranged beautifully, and even though she wasn't exactly a huge fan of pink, or of mostly useless things, she was quite touched by the gesture, and she could certainly appreciate the beauty of the arrangement.
"You actually really like her," Harry said, suddenly. There was a big grin on his face as he declared that and she rolled her eyes fondly at him.
"Well, maybe. But she's even cleverer then I first thought, you know. When I was in the library working on that Runes extra credit Babbling assigned me last week, she came over and all she had to do was just look at it and she figured it out like that." She snapped her fingers.
"You're probably going to have to talk to Tom," Harry said. "I mean, I can't see him being against it, but it really sounds like it's going somewhere serious."
Hermione nodded. "I will." She said. "Now how long do you think it will be until I can get out of here?"
Harry laughed. "Not until Snape has the chance to yell at you for scaring him, I'm guessing. He saved you, you know– he summoned a bezoar and pushed it down your throat. Madam Pomfrey said that if he hadn't been so quick, you could have suffered severe damage– that snake was really poisonous."
"Venomous," she corrected absently, before lowering her voice. "Does he know it was us?" she asked quietly. Harry shook his head.
"The professors think it was a seventh year because the magic used was really advanced." He whispered back. "They also think it was probably a Gryffindor, because you were attacked. And we sort of got our wish– you getting so badly hurt at the dinner must have really humiliated Dumbledore."
"Then one good thing came out of it, at least." Hermione said, immensely satisfied by that. Harry nodded.
"Yeah, it did. But we're never doing something that could get you hurt like that again."
"Deal," Hermione agreed.