Tuesday, Sept. 10

Despite that their second lesson turned out much better than the first one (which wasn’t really saying much), Hermione and Harry only practiced for an hour. The mind arts put quite a bit of strain on the mind, and with how hard they were both pushing, Hermione to get in Harry’s head, and Harry to keep her out of his, they were both beginning to feel the effects of all that work by then.

Legilimency was not mindreading; she had not understood at first why Dippet’s notes had stressed that, but having done it several times now, the girl had a better idea. In fact, a better name for the art would be mind-invading. Or maybe mind-linking. It didn’t broadcast the target’s thoughts to you, it put you in their head. Literally. That was why her first experience had been so awful; she had lived that memory.

Been Harry for the duration of it.

She was making progress however, had even been able to maintain her separate consciousness by the fourth time she entered Harry’s mind, when she was sucked into a memory of when Harry was six and had broken a plate while doing his chores.

Harry—in the memory—had panicked, but before his aunt could come and inspect the sound, the plate had magically fixed itself before his eyes.

He’d still received a knock on the head from his Aunt Petunia.

…

Petunia.

Vernon.

Dudley.

…

See, what a person is feeling, or thinking about, when legilimency is used on them matters a lot, as it links their mind to memories with similarities to their present mental state; it was why Hermione had gotten such a bad memory the first time. Every memory has some sort of emotion-charged magnetic field around it referred to as a ‘memory pull’, and its strength varies with how poignant the memory is, so when Hermione had cast the spell on Harry while he was talking about using The Killing Curse on Voldemort’s horcrux and how scary it was, well, that had happened.

The same thing that happened today.

With how nervous Harry was that Hermione would see something bad in his head, his mind had inevitably linked to memories of him being nervous, despite his best attempts to block them. And since, amazingly enough, the main instigators of Harry’s nervous memories were actually his ‘family’, Hermione had been treated to a front row seat, and on the three occasions before she succeeded in separating her consciousness from his while in his mind, a very personal experience, of their treatment of her friend.

And it was on this day that Hermione realized that she had never actually hated anybody before. Not even Voldemort or ROB.

Because this thing, this thing she felt in her chest for the people who called themselves Harry’s family, was a whole new experience.

*****

They ran into the Weasley Twins as they entered the common room.

The two redheads had actually been on their way out, but they stopped with big, impish grins at the sight of the two first-years.

“Hello, hello, H and H,” one said.

They’d started doing that ever since Harry called them Bread and Porridge (a nickname which hadn’t really stuck, unlike Hermione had thought it would). The twins had started to come up with all sorts of silly nicknames for her and Harry.

They never stuck on one for long. Over the last week, they’d called the pair everything from Her-ry, to Gra-ter, to Pronger, the last of which wasn’t even a word.

It was all very silly in Hermione’s opinion.

“And where will two little firsties like yourselves be coming from this lovely afternoon?” The other of the red-headed duo asked.

“Better question, brother, would be where Hogwarts little couple is always disappearing off to,” the first one said while waggling his eyebrows.

Hermione simply rolled her eyes; that joke had grown very stale.

Before she could walk off however, Harry spoke, “When are you guys going to get back at me for the Bread and Porridge thing?”

The twins gasped dramatically and affected hurt expressions.

“Why Harry, you wound us.”

“Yeah, we have no reason to get back at you. What’s a little name-calling between friends?”

Hermione didn’t buy their act for one second.

Neither did Harry. “Sure, whatever,” he said tiredly. “Just, whatever you do, make sure it’s not permanent, hurts anybody, or ruin any of my things. And don’t involve Hermione either.”

“We make no promises,” a twin said, and Hedwig, perched on Hermione’s shoulder today, made a deep, almost-growling sound in her chest that startled even Hermione and Harry.

The twins stared at the bird, who was giving them the same kind of look that Harry always shrugged off carelessly, and they instantly folded like Hermione had known they would and promptly fled.

“Thanks, Hedwig,” Hermione said, petting the owl’s head.

“Why else do you think I keep her around?” Harry asked carelessly, and Hermione almost sighed.

He definitely deserved what was coming.

Before she’d even finished the thought, Hedwig dived at Harry, and proceeded to harry the boy across the common room, by beating his head with her wings and pulling his hair with her beak.

Hermione ignored his pleas for help.

They showered, changed, then sat together to relax for a bit. When their brains felt lighter after the events of the afternoon, they did their homework, headed down for dinner five minutes before it started at 7:00, then returned to the common room with their fellow first-years to sit by their fireplace to study coursework two years advanced, while their classmates did their homework.

They went to bed by 10:15, and a nightmare woke Hermione at 12:22; this time, it featured the Dursleys helping Voldemort torture Harry. She knew, of course, that this was impossible, since she understood that Voldemort would be more likely to kill the Dursleys than anything else, but her subconscious had never really worked on logic.

Neither did her heart apparently, because the nightmare scared her all the same.

She held her Notebook (she was perfectly fine with calling them The Notebooks in her head, but had already decided to call them I.M.S.C.U.M around Harry for as long as she could, just to keep seeing his reaction) in hand with a page open, but she hesitated to write. If she did then Harry would know that she was awake and he would blame himself.

The Notebook vibrated.

Hermione jumped, but managed to restrain her impulse to shriek and fling it away. It was supposed to do that. And it meant that Harry was ringing to see if she was awake.

Hermione flipped to the inside of the front cover, where the word ‘RING’ was written boldly.

She tapped the word twice with her pen; this would cause Harry’s own notebook to vibrate, letting him know that she was awake, then she flipped to the newest page and watched as his words formed like they were being written by an invisible pen.

Hello, night owl.

Hermione shook her head fondly at his words, even as she felt a moment of pride at what she and Harry had created with a few hours of work.

All because of magic.

If the entire world had access to things like The Notebooks... well, Harry had told her what such a world looked like.

Scary, yes. But undeniably amazing.

Hello, Harry. Hermione wrote back.

Harry— Dreaming of me? ;-)

She knew what he meant, and she appreciated that he was trying to make a joke about it. But she also knew that her answer would just make him sad, so she asked instead:

What does ;-) mean?

Harry’s reply took a bit longer than she would have thought.

Harry— Wow, I just realized that I’m going to have to teach you chatting lingo. Well, to start with, ;-) is an emoticon; the winky face one. It’s pretty old school but sorry, forgot I was in 1991 for a sec.

Hermione— Are there other emoticons?

Harry— Yeah, there are. But I only know winky face ;-), smiley face :-), and lol (laugh out loud) :-D. I know emojis much better. They’re like these little cartoon faces with different expressions. Not just faces though, all sorts of things. Animals, places, fruits, even sports. Everything has an emoji.

Hermione— So if you said something I thought was funny, then I should reply with :-D?

Harry— If you want. Or you could just use lol. Most people use that. Or lmao (laugh my ass off). There’s also lmfao (laugh my fucking ass off).

Hermione— Does everyone curse in 2021?

Harry— Lol. Pretty much.

Hermione shook her head, Harry was probably just lying.

Emojis did sound useful though. Hermione remembered a lesson back in her former school where her English Language teacher had talked about how it was difficult to express emotion in writing, because inflection and gestures were impossible, so, it was important to improve your vocabulary so you had more words to express yourself with.

Emojis solved that problem. Like, for example, if there were an eye-roll emoji, then she would have a quick, convenient way to reply to half the messages she was sure Harry would be sending her.

Hmm.

Do you think we could make our own emojis? She asked Harry.

Harry— Well, yeah, sure. But not with the notebooks though. Not as they are now.

Hermione— (shrug) We did always plan to improve them, didn’t we?

Harry— Fair enough. And did you seriously write shrug in a bracket?

Hermione— What? I don’t know the emoticon for it.

Harry— Just so you know, I’m l-ing my f.a.o right now.

And Hermione really needed that eye-roll emoji.

They spent several minutes talking about everything and nothing, subconsciously focusing on the more light-hearted moments they’d had over the last week, until, inevitably, they talked about Spirit, the young unicorn they (and practically all of the Gryffindor first-years) had befriended, and Harry went unresponsive for almost half a minute before writing words that chilled Hermione to the bone.

Hermione, what are we going to do when Voldemort starts killing unicorns?

A better question, Hermione thought, even as her blood ran cold, was, how on earth they had forgotten something that important.