Forever Knight [Harmione]

Chapter 26: Ghosts

Considering that there was a great possibility that Yasmin hadn’t had any part in the attack of the Hogwarts Express, Harry upped the priority of the Auror Department-sanctioned investigation of it.  It very well meant that there was a mole in the Order, possibly completely independent of Yasmin’s influence.

In truth, he was getting a bit paranoid, and he began to understand why Mad-Eye acted the way he did.  Harry could only take comfort in the fact that he wasn’t so far gone on paranoia that he would suspect just anybody.  Of course, that didn’t mean Draco got to keep his memories of that night in La Senorita, but that was another story altogether. 

He was now going through the file rather meticulously, making notes and marking pages as he went.  There wasn’t anything compelling, and his few interviews of the passengers contributed very little, but the fact that he was doing something obsessively was welcome at the moment. 

Shacklebolt had asked for three days for him to procure an off-the-record Portkey to Bulgaria.  The head of the Auror Department had accomplished such a feat once before already, but having experience didn’t make it any easier the second time around.  Still, Shacklebolt was dependable, and Harry patiently gave him the three days, now he just needed to focus all his attentions on the investigation so that he didn’t have to deal with the issue about Hermione. 

He still hadn’t talked to Hermione about her relationship with Viktor Krum.  He wasn’t acting angry anymore.  He didn’t snub her or treat her badly, but he had been distant, and evasive.  Every time she brought up something remotely personal, or even intimate, he would change the subject, tell her he had something to do or turn to talk to someone else.  He just didn’t feel like dealing with the angst right now. 

Every so often, whenever he would look at her and forget for a few seconds why he had blown his top, he felt the urge to give her a grin and maybe a snog, but then the revelations in the board room would rush back to memory and he’d be annoyed all over again.

“Annoyed” was putting it mildly, but that’s what he liked to call it, anyway.  He got particularly “annoyed” whenever he remembered what happened in the balcony of Elena’s lounge room.  It had been foreplay, and they could have very well picked up from where they left off once they got back to Grimmauld Place. 

And then Yasmin… ARGH!  That bitch!

He’d stabbed quite a few sandwiches, dotted and slashed holes in his parchment, and beat the punching bag out of shape during the many times he’d thought about it. 

At least Hermione didn’t look too happy about any of it, either.  While she didn’t make a big fuss out of his evasions, she wasn’t her usual pleasant self.  Of course, “pleasant” was relative to her vampirism, but she seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time un-smiling, which to Harry was partly reassuring.  It helped too that she kept wearing the ring, even when it made her an easy target for Draco’s mockery.   

Now if only Harry could get over his anger.

He was dying to ask Ron if he’d been talking to Hermione about it.  After all, Ron seemed to have become chummy with her again.  They weren’t getting all kissy-faced with each other, because that would have been terribly strange, but their little spats weren’t bitter anymore, if they even fought at all, and they seemed to have grown comfortable around each other again, like she could quite casually request Ron to hold the punching bag for her while they talked idly of little matters, probably to catch up on the things they should have talked about when Ron was being snappy and mean to her. 

Harry would probably ask Ron about it when Ron’s schedule permitted it. 

Lucien, in the meantime, had been reduced to groveling.  Now that the issue with Yasmin had gotten sorted in its own, gut-wrenching way, Hermione was slowly, but surely, applying punishment, which was, it seemed, in the form of damning kindness.  She was so kind to Lucien that Lucien, in his devotion, punished himself.  This was particularly vicious, because Hermione was doing it to make him feel horribly sorry.  She made it perfectly clear that she was being extra nice to him so that he could very well drown in his guilt.  Solomon, who was probably party to Hermione’s schemes, ensured that Lucien remembered just how much Lucien owed her, and that she hadn’t deserved his carelessness in the least.  So Lucien, wrought with remorse, did everything he could to make up for his transgressions.  He cleaned even when he hadn’t been asked to.  He polished her boots, and Solomon’s, and even Harry’s.  He fetched take-away for the humans; told Draco off when he abused the others and let Draco abuse him, even if it was obvious he wanted to rip into Draco’s throat.  The only reason he didn’t go ahead and kill Draco was because Hermione would always say, “Oh, stop teasing him, Draco.  Lucien, you know you won’t stoop to his level, yes?  You’re too much of a sweetheart for that.”