Harry's inexplicable tension around Jake Granger was slowly letting up to tolerable levels as he explained the ins and outs of Quidditch to Hermione's father. Not until he was describing the principles and strategies of the game did Harry have the opportunity to stop and realize how much he'd missed the game during the year. He'd much rather have had a season of Quidditch than the Triwizard Tournament. Things were so much simpler when he was chasing the snitch. An easy answer, a single purpose. Nothing more than snatching that glint of gold from the sky.

Harry had believed he was fairly intent on describing Quidditch in detail to someone who'd never seen the game. He would have thought he'd get lost in the subject, but the second that movement in the hallway registered out of the corner of his eyes he stopped to look.

He'd noticed Hermione and her mother disappearing into the hall earlier. He'd noted it but didn't think much of it. Not consciously, anyway. Only after they'd been absent for a few minutes did Harry realize he'd been on increasingly heightened alert for their return. Or rather, Hermione's. When there was indication of someone returning the raptness of his sudden attentiveness looked him in the face.

Miranda returned to the dining room first and she gave him a strange, sad look. Harry was given pause by that, confused and a little taken aback because Miranda looked remarkably like Hermione when she made that face. Then Harry's every sense jumped to razor-sharp acuity and he sat up straighter in his chair. Hermione came following after her mother, arms crossed, nose red, and eyes swollen. He could tell she'd been crying.

A fierce force rose in his chest at the sight of her tear-streaked face. A strange conglomeration of worry and anger churned violently in his ribcage. He had the insane, ridiculous impulse to pull Hermione behind him, as though a Death Eater stood ready to strike her down.

Forgetting Jake, Harry stood from the table. Hermione stopped in the hallway, lingered in the shadows, and looked at him. She offered a thin smile.

The tide of protectiveness surged anew. If he'd stopped to consider it, the immensity of that impulse would have staggered him, it imbued him with the need to act, and it carried him across the room. He strode to Hermione. She looked up at him with a tired, plaintive, relieved expression as he neared, and Harry was on autopilot. Heedless of Hermione's parents, Harry ushered Hermione back down the hall, into the only place he knew in this home. He took Hermione to his bedroom and escorted her inside. Only once they were alone together did he realize he'd put his hand on her back, that he'd walked so very close to her, that he'd all but tucked her into his side as he took her away.

He'd worry about how that might have looked later.

"What's wrong?" he asked at once.

Hermione turned away, embarrassed by her own tears and perceived weakness. She wiped at her cheeks and shook her head. As she stepped from him Harry had to hold back from shadowing her every move.

Hermione moved a few paces away, arms still crossed over her chest, and turned reluctantly to Harry. "I'm sorry. I told my mum about Cedric."

Harry stilled. He wasn't sure how he felt about that. All of his certitude and resolve, the drive of purpose that he'd had when he brought Hermione to the bedroom, wavered in light of her confession. Somehow this had been more shaking than a Death Eater. At least there was a prescribed response to a Death Eater.

"Are you angry with me?" Hermione asked.

"No." He replied on reflex, but on further reflection it was still the truth. He was pretty sure he wasn't mad.

Hermione bit her lip and watched him closely.

Harry raked a hand anxiously through his tousled black hair. "What else did you tell her?"

Hermione paled and her eyebrows drew closer together. "I… that you were hurt. That'd you had a dreadful year."

Harry couldn't even start to decide how he felt about Miranda knowing even that much.

"I didn't tell her you were…" Hermione's plea died on her lips and when he looked at her there was a kind of panic and agony in her face. She blinked at him, lips pressed tightly together, then she turned her head away and shut her eyes.

Strangely, it made Harry momentarily cognizant of the faint, last lingering aches in his joints from the Cruciatus. He rubbed his arms with his hands and frowned.

Hermione sat down on the end of the bed as she had when she first showed Harry the room. She looked down at her shoes, clearly guilty for what she'd revealed of what might well be considered Harry's personal business.

Harry looked at her and felt stupid for noticing, considering the issues at hand, the way her hair fell in front of her face in brown-gold ringlets.

Harry walked over and sat down beside her. Hermione looked at him warily. He studied her rich brown eyes a moment before he said, "It's okay."

Hermione scowled, not at him, but at the situation.

Harry couldn't help himself; he reached up and brushed a lock of hair back from Hermione's face. The look she favored him with was gentler, kinder, more open to listening. Harry played his fingertips through the trapped section of hair a second then dropped his hand.

"It's hard to tell them," Hermione started, stopped mid-sentence, then continued. "They don't know that there have been a lot of things over the years I never told them. Now it seems there's just too much to tell."

He was conspicuously quiet a moment. "I never would have pegged you to not tell your parents stuff."

Hermione gave a strange, sour smile. "Well, really, we've been involved in some pretty dangerous things. Truthfully, I was afraid to tell them. What if they knew everything and decided it was too dangerous and didn't let me go back to Hogwarts? I couldn't bear it. All the risk has been worth it to be there." Hermione looked pointedly at him a moment then averted her eyes. She was quiet in deep thought for a while. "Suppose now there's no choice but to tell them."

Harry tried to imagine sitting down, facing Hermione's parents, and having it all told. Everything about Voldemort and the tournament and all the things he had to live but because he was famous never had to say. It turned his stomach and made him unspeakably tired and depressed.

"Well, they're your parents. Whatever you think they ought to know, I think you ought to tell them."

Hermione looked slowly at him and seemed to spend a good minute gauging him, perhaps measuring his sincerity. "Are you sure?"

Harry was sure of very little lately, much less this. He sat there quietly rather than tell her what might be a lie. He trusted her enough to leave it up to her.

"No," Hermione shook her head curtly. Harry looked at her and saw firm decisiveness in her expression. "No, I'll not." She turned glittering, intense eyes on Harry. "It may be mucked up, but it's our world, Harry. I love my parents, but they're…" Hermione seemed to stumble at the leap her next word forced, "muggles. There's not a thing they could do to protect me from You Know Who or his followers. You alone could do more to protect me than the both of them together."

She'd used it as an example, a comment to the effect that one underage wizard was more than two adult muggles, but it had the effect of making something twist painfully in Harry's chest. He caught his breath and his heart hammered. Part of him wanted to scream in panic 'blimey, Hermione, don't say that! Don't depend on me like that!' while another part of him wanted to shake the world to its foundation, tear reality apart to make a new beginning for her. Someplace safer than either had known in their entire lives. It made him want to run, but for one brief moment it also made him want to face Voldemort then and there. To end this now just to not let her down.

Hermione was still turning her decision over in her mind, unaware of Harry's small inner crisis. She was inside her own head, regarding the words she'd said and the proclamation she'd made. And with a calm gravity she made it her truth. Then and there her world schismed off. Where before she had walked the line between muggle and magic as a native of both, as she sat there next to Harry she made the choice. She made the ultimate choice she'd thought she could postpone until graduating from Hogwarts. She chose magic, and it was with so little remorse that he saw her retire from the world of muggles. She'd have her parents, but they would be the last relic of a life she willfully abandoned, a nostalgic timepiece but no longer her place.

Somehow, watching her pick made Harry feel as though a decision in his life he didn't know had been unresolved was settled. He'd never known he had his own uncertainties that tore him between muggle and magic until he saw it vividly in Hermione. He didn't know he was waiting for permission to break free until she broke before him.

"You'll let me help you, won't you, Harry?"

Harry blinked. He'd been so overcome with a strange kind of peace and relief to denounce his citizenship to the muggle world that her sudden words took him by surprise. It was almost impossible to think that something as commonplace as conversation would be allowed after such a monumental event.

When he focused on her she was watching him very intently. There was a need for his consent, whatever this request she asked, that he'd not seen so blaring before in her features. Almost on the spot, without fully understanding her question, he wanted to say yes. Whatever she wanted.

Prudence made him ask. "Help me what?"

Hermione took his hand, eyes never leaving his. "Fight Voldemort."

Harry jerked back. 'No' was his instinctive reaction. Anything but that. In the instant she asked he could only see Cedric… when he thought on it another second it was Hermione instead. Soaring joy and freedom were replaced with a dread and terror more powerful than Harry had ever known.

Hermione gripped his hand tighter, refused to let him flee.

"Hermione! I can't. I can't let you. You could be killed. I won't put you in that kind of danger."

Hermione scowled. This time it was at him. "Oh, don't you understand, Harry? Don't you get it? You've not a choice. You can't leave me."

He wasn't sure how she meant it, but he knew how it resonated pure and true in his chest. No, he couldn't. He'd crippled himself with his need for her. She was right, as always. He couldn't let her go. Because he was selfish he'd let her be in that kind of danger.

"I'll save you," he heard himself say, the words like a benediction. As soon as they were out of his mouth he felt like an idiot. He didn't know that he could do that. He didn't even know if he could save himself. He hated to think of lying to her.

But Hermione was watching him calmly, without doubt. She only nodded and leaned closer. "You'll save us. He'll be gone and then we'll be free, Harry."

Harry shivered involuntarily when a strange, wispy image rushed through his mind, as though a half-formed scene in one of Trelawney's crystal balls. Him and Hermione and a day beyond Hogwarts, beyond the threat of Voldemort, beyond so many years he used to think he'd never live to see. The hints of a promise that he couldn't fathom, couldn't comprehend without falling apart. He gasped for breath and Hermione caught him on the exhale with a hand placed softly on his chest.

"We have to win," Harry whispered. The stakes were so much higher now. He'd always known Voldemort might one day take his life. Now it was a matter of Hermione's.

Hermione lowered her hand and her tone conveyed the nonnegotiable. "We will." She paused a few seconds then the moment, the enormity of all they'd said and vowed, seemed to step behind a curtain for safe-keeping. She stood and tugged on his hand for him to follow suit. "Come on. I should give you a proper tour of the house."

❾¾ ❾¾❾¾

"Miri," Jake said as he and his wife were getting ready for bed.

"Hmm?" Miranda murmured as she unbound her wild chestnut hair and grabbed a brush.

"What do you know about this boy Harry?"

Miranda smiled sagaciously. "I thought you might ask once he showed up," she picked up a book on her nightstand and held it out to her husband. "I took it from Hermione's bookshelf; I marked the chapter on him."

"He has a chapter?"

Miranda's smile turned bittersweet. "He is a rather remarkable boy, Jake… though I'm not sure it's really in the best way."

Jake took the book, turned to the bookmarked page, and with an astounded shake of his head sat back against the headboard and began to read. By the time Miranda joined him, ready for bed, his face was a study of contemplative disquiet. He looked up from reading and considered his wife. "I'm not sure I like this, dear."

"What do you mean?"

Jake put the book down. "At the train station today, before we got back to the car, Harry stopped me and… warned me."

Miranda frowned and gave a half-nod for him to continue.

"He told me he was dangerous," Jake glanced at the book in his lap, "rather, that he had very dangerous enemies. I don't know that I rightly believed him. What boy his age could have enemies like that?" Jake shook his head and set the book aside as though it was poisonous. "But he does."

Miranda moved the covers aside and slipped between the sheets. "I'm worried, too." A thick pause. "Hermione told me today that a student was killed at Hogwarts this year."

"What?!"

"I don't think she really wanted to tell me. I kind of cornered her about Harry and she told me. It seems Harry was there when it happened."

Jake was flabbergasted. "What should we do?"

Miranda sighed in defeat. "What can we do? This boy Harry is her best friend; we can't very well tell her to stop spending time with him."

"Why not?" Jake asked a bit petulantly.

Miranda winced as though physically pained to speak it. "You've seen her around him. You've heard the way she's talked about him for years; if we forced her to choose I don't think we'd like her choice, honey."

"Oh, bullocks," Jake grumbled. He knew Miranda was right.

"She's a smart girl… I fear that's the only thing we can trust."

"Maybe she should go to a normal school next year. You know, instead of Hogwarts. Would have to be safer than that magic school, wouldn't it? Without…" Jake picked up the book and shook it to indicate the horror story within that was their houseguest's life.

Miranda didn't answer right away. "I've thought that too, several times over the years… but could you really do it? Tell her not to go? I couldn't, and I've tried. I've gone so far as standing at the door to her room to tell her we were putting her into public school. You know what stopped me? An owl. Just then one of those mail birds brought her a letter, and she jumped up to fetch it, and I knew I could never take it from her. It's not just a phase she's going through, it's who she is. She'll always have this in her, a part of her, and wouldn't it be terribly phobic and myopic of us to think we could just stick her in a normal school and have everything fixed?"

Jake grunted unhappily. "I don't want to admit you're right." After a time scowling he sighed in resignation. "I don't know if I care for this Harry kid."

"Always or just since you read that book?" Miranda asked pointedly.

"Oh fine. But still, there's something a bit dramatic about him, isn't there?"

"Perhaps that's what comes of living through the things he has."

"They're children! He shouldn't have, and he oughtn't to bring our Hermione into it."

"Oh, Jake, she brought herself into it. You know she wouldn't get involved any other way."

"Well, I—" whatever Jake began to say was cut short when there was an inhuman screech within the house, followed by a loud crash.

As one, Jake and Miranda leapt out of bed, rushed out of their room, and with two short strides down the hall were at the scene of the disruption.

Miranda gave a squawk and Jake grabbed his wife's arm as though to brace her.

The guest room door stood open, giving full view of the spectacle within. Harry's trunk was open on the floor and somehow articles of clothing had ended up all over the room, as though they'd leapt from his suitcase the moment it was unlatched. Harry and Hermione were both standing in the room, both still fully dressed from the day, Hermione closer to the door. When Jake and Miranda showed up they both looked toward the adults with mixed looks of surprise, confusion, and self-recrimination to have brought the attention of the parents. In the window frame was the reason Miranda had yelped. A creature, short in stature with large, bat-like ears and globe-like green eyes, wearing a pair of blue silk boxer shorts like overalls, stood in the windowsill with thin arms and legs spread wide like a goalie guarding the net. Its wide eyes were locked on the mass of white on the floor of the room. Hedwig was there, wings spread like a circling wrestler's as she screeched and snapped her beak angrily at the strange creature standing in the open window. White feathers littered the floor as though the bird and creature had tussled and Jake and Miranda had walked in on a détente. Completing the cast, Crookshanks was on Harry's bed watching the goings on, and were it not for the slightly raised hairs on his back would have seem utterly unmoved by the incident.

"What the…" Jake gaped. He couldn't tear his eyes from the small creature. "What is that?"

Hermione answered brusquely, like it was a secondary matter to the issue at hand. "She's a house elf. She was assigned to watch over Harry this summer. That's Kimmy, Dad."

"Wa-the dog?!"

Miranda asked, "What is going on here?"

Harry edged closer to the obvious stand-off between Kimmy and Hedwig.

"She must not go, Mister Harry Potter," a resolute Kimmy stated, still spread wide to block the window.

Hedwig screamed indignantly.

Harry knelt beside the owl and said gently, "All right, Hedwig?" He glanced in concern at the errant feathers on the floor and dresser. Hedwig tucked her wings to her sides and clicked her beak. She shuffled on her feet and glared at Kimmy. She appeared fine aside from being in a terrible temper.

Kimmy barely lowered her arms. "Harry Potter's owl is easy to recognize. You must not allow her to leave the house as she is, the wrong type could see her return here."

Hermione stood back and watched without comment. Crookshanks sat down, lifted a paw, and began to clean himself. His manner would suggest complete disinterest were it not for the fact he kept his eyes fixed on Harry and Hedwig the entire time.

Harry looked sadly at his bird then at Kimmy. "But surely she doesn't have to stay inside all summer?"

"Of course she doesn't, sir. I must needs only to transfigure her appearance a bit. Then they wouldn't recognize her."

Hedwig screeched again. Obviously that was an insult of immeasurable proportions.

"What kind of 'transfiguration' are you talking about?" Harry asked warily.

"Her color foremost, sir. A snowy owl is far too easy to see. Even at night she's so easily spotted."