"NO!" Harry screamed for the final time, his voice hoarse.
Dumbledore didn't say anything, he simply picked Harry up with surprising strength for a man of his age and placed him on his feet as Amos Diggory wailed loudly beside them. Harry's leg was still shaking - more so than the rest of him - and he was certain his ankle was broken.
On the far side of the stands, Harry was more than a little surprised to see Hermione struggling to get past a Ministry official. It was clear that she wanted to get down off of the stands, but the official wasn't having it. Hermione locked eyes with Harry, and something told him she was trying to get over to where he - in particular - was standing. All of a sudden, both Harry's leg and scar erupted into pain once more. His leg gave out and he staggered. A pair of ridiculously strong arms caught Harry and immediately started dragging him towards the castle. Moody.
As the professor led him into the castle, Harry looked back at Hermione. She was slowing her struggle and watching Harry leave. Her nose was bleeding.
Harry didn't get back to the common room until about three o'clock in the morning. It was dark in there. The light that sprinkled the room when he opened the portrait hole showed the figure sitting on the sofa. It was Hermione. She was sitting cross-legged, staring stonily into the unlit fire. She looked as though she had been crying, but she wasn't at that time.
"I thought it was you." She breathed as Harry sat down next to her.
"What?"
"I thought you were...dead."
"Oh. Nearly." Harry quietly told her everything that had happened since he had entered the maze. By the end of his story, tears were slowly rolling down her smooth cheeks again.
"Oh, Harry...I'm sorry..."
"Don't be. That won't bring him back."
It took Hermione a couple of seconds to realise that Harry meant Cedric, not Voldemort. "I know it won't, Harry." Hermione said gently,"Nothing will."
Harry met her eyes for the first time since he had come in. Everything started disappearing again, just like it had back in Diagon Alley two years before then, when Hermione had seen Quirrell attacking Harry.
Once everything around them had returned, Hermione looked terrified, "C-Cedric..."
"Hermione?" Harry put his hands on her arms steadily.
"I...I saw him die..."
Harry looked down,"No, Hermione-"
"In your eyes."
He looked up,"Like...like last time?"
Hermione nodded. She wrapped her arms around Harry's shoulders,"I'm so sorry, Harry."
***********
"I won't write, you know I won't write." Ron said as the trio settled into their booth on the train.
"Harry will, won't you?" Hermione turned to him expectantly.
Harry laughed,"Yeah, every day, like always."
Ron muttered something along the lines of,"Waste of bloody parchment..." as the Hogwarts Express began chugging along.
"You know what else is a waste of bloody parchment?" Harry nodded at Ron's pocket.
"Excuse me!" Ron said indignantly, pulling out the two small slips of parchment that had been carefully stored above his heart,"Viktor Krum is a world famous Quidditch player! Of course I wanted his autograph!"
"And the note from Gabrielle that we're still not allowed to read?"
"That...that note was very kind..." Ron went bright pink,"...and informative...on France. Yeah."
"So we can see it?" Harry asked.
"No."
"She's thirteen!" Hermione cried.
"I'm fifteen!"
Hermione rolled her eyes and pulled out the latest copy of the Daily Prophet from her bag. Harry looked at it, unsure whether he really wanted to know what it might say, but Hermione, seeing him looking at it in such a way, said calmly,"There's nothing in there. You can look for yourself, but there's nothing at all. I've been checking everyday. Just a small piece the day after the third task, saying you'd won the Tournament. They didn't even mention Cedric. Nothing about any of it. If you ask me, Fudge is forcing them to keep quiet."
"He'll never keep Rita quiet." Harry grumbled,"Not on a story like this."
"Oh, Rita hasn't written anything at all since the third task." Hermione said in an oddly constrained voice,"As a matter of fact, Rita Skeeter isn't going to be writing anything at all for a while. Not unless she wants me to spill the beans on her."
Ron blinked,"What're you on about?"
"I found out how she was listening in on private conversations when she wasn't supposed to be coming into the grounds." Hermione said in a rush.
Harry got the impression that Hermione had been dying to tell them this for days, but that she had restrained herself for Harry's benefit in the light of everything else that had happened.
"How was she doing it?" Harry asked, suddenly very curious.
"Well it was you, really, who gave me the idea, Harry." She smiled at him gratefully.
"Did I?" Harry asked, perplexed,"How?"
"Bugged." Hermione said happily.
Ron sighed,"I doubt she put those electricky buggy things on you, Hermione."
"Not electronic bugs. No, you see...Rita Skeeter," Hermione's voice trembled with quiet triumph,"is an unregistered Animagus. She can turn-"Hermione pulled a small sealed glass jar out of her bag,"-into a beetle."
The boys gazed at Rita for ages, amazed at Hermione's genius. They made her explain again and again how a beetle tied into all of the situations Rita had overheard. Hermione told them that she had promised Rita she would let her out when they got back to London.
"I've put an Unbreakable Charm on the jar, you see, so she can't transform. And I've told her to keep her quill to herself for a whole year. See if she can't break the habit of writing horrible lies about people." Smiling serenely, Hermione placed the jar back into her bag.
"Blimey, Hermione." Harry grinned at her in admiration.
The compartment door slid open.
"Very clever, Granger." Draco Malfoy sneered. His entire posse was behind him - both boys and girls - and they were taking up rather a lot of space, three of the five of them - that meaning Crabbe, Goyle and Millicent - being rather large. "So, you caught some pathetic reporter and Potter's Dumbledore's favourite boy again. Big deal."
"Get out." Harry growled.
"Trying not to think about it, are we?" Malfoy said softly, looking around at all three of them,"Trying to pretend it hasn't happened?"
Hermione stood up. She covered the space between her and Malfoy in a few strides and put her face right up in his. "If you don't get out of here right this second, you will regret ever saying a word to Harry at all, do you understand me, ferret?" She snarled quietly.
"Would you help me, Pansy? I seem to have some dirt stuck to me." Malfoy drawled, earning himself multiple sniggers from behind him,"You've picked the losing side, Potter! I warned you! I told you you ought to choose your company carefully, remember? On the Hogwarts Express for the first time? I told you not to hang around with riff-raff like these two." He jerked his head at Ron and Hermione,"Too late now, Potter! Mudblood'll be the first to go. Then...ooh, no, she'll be second. Diggory was the f-"
It was though someone had exploded a box of fireworks in the doorway. Malfoy, Crabbe, Goyle, Pansy and Millicent were all on the floor, unconscious. Ron, Harry and Hermione were on their feet, all having used a different hex. Nor were they the only ones.
"Thought we'd see what those miserable sods were up to." Fred and George deliberately stepped on the pile of mildly disfigured Slytherins as they came into the compartment.
"Interesting effect." George grinned,"What hexes did everyone use?"
They all looked at Hermione, as though expecting her to tell them herself.
She sighed, trying to hide a smile,"Well, I used Anteoculatia."
The boys all stared blankly at her.
"It's a Horn-Growing hex." Hermione snapped,"Um...someone used the Furnunculus curse - Harry?"
"Guilty." Harry raised a hand, grinning at her genius.
"Someone used Jelly-Legs." She continued,"Pus-Squirting hex...and is that the Instant Scalping hex too?"
"Yeah." Fred smirked.
"Nicely done, Hermione." Ron applauded her.
Hermione beamed proudly.
"Now, how are we going to move this lot?" Harry asked, kicking the side of Pansy's stomach gleefully.
Fred and George shared a grin."Levicorpus!" They chorused.
Though the Slytherins' ride to the next compartment was short, it was extremely bumpy, courtesy of the twins.
Once Fred and George returned, they challenged the trio to a game of Exploding Snap. They were about twelve games in when Harry asked about what the twins had been up to with Ludo Bagman. They explained to them that they had made a successful bet with Bagman on the outcome of the Quidditch World Cup, and Bagman had paid them in leprechaun gold. They had passed it off as a mistake and written to him, but Bagman had refused to pay up. He'd gotten all nasty about it and told them they'd been too young to gamble in the first place and that he was keeping the money they had bet on the final.
"But that was all your savings!" Ron gasped incredulously.
Apparently, Bagman was in debt with the goblins too. He had borrowed loads of gold off of them and hadn't paid it back. And - to pay it off - Bagman had put a bet on Harry to win the Tournament. He had won, in the end, so the goblins didn't have to pay Bagman anything, although the goblins had insisted Harry had drawn with Cedric, so it didn't count. Bagman had made a run for it with the twins money.
As Ron and Hermione left the compartment at Kings Cross, Harry thrust his bag of Tournament winnings into George's hand. "Take it."
"What?" Fred looked flabbergasted.
"Take it." Harry repeated firmly,"I don't want it."
"You're mental." George said, trying to push it back at Harry.
"No I'm not. You take it, and get inventing. It's for the joke-shop."
"He is mental." Fred said in an awed voice.
Harry frowned,"Listen, if you don't take it, I'm throwing it down the drain. I don't want it and I don't need it. But I could do with a few laughs. We could all do with a few laughs. I've got a feeling we're going to need them more than usual before long."
"Harry," Fred said weakly, weighing the money bag in his hands,"there's got to be a thousand Galleons in here."
"Yeah. Think how many Canary Creams that is." Harry grinned,"Just don't tell your mum where you got it."
"Harry..." George started, but Harry pulled out his wand.
"Look," he said flatly,"take it, or I'll hex you. I know some good ones now. Just...just do me one favour, okay? Buy Ron some new dress robes, and say they're from you."
He left the compartment before they could say another word. Harry almost bumped into Hermione.
"That was a really honourable thing you just did." She whispered, lips tickling his ear,"Really honourable."
Uncle Vernon was waiting angrily for Harry on the other side of the barrier.
"Have a nice summer, Harry! Don't read too many books, Hermione!" Ron cheered obliviously, skipping over to his parents.
"Harry - thanks." Fred said weakly, George nodding fervently at his side.
Hermione squeezed Harry's hand - which he had not realised she had been holding until then - and whispered,"What will come will come. There's a storm coming, Harry, and we all best be ready when she does."
"I know." Harry sighed,"I can't believe it's already been another year. I'll miss you."
"I'll miss you too." She smiled sadly at him,"I don't think phoning me is a good idea, anymore. Apparently calls can be traced now..."
"That's all right. I'll send you a letter every day."
"I don't doubt it." Hermione laughed weakly,"Goodbye, Harry." She kissed him on the cheek before turning and hurrying towards the crowd.
Sighing heavily as he watched her walk away, Harry thought about her. He knew what he had told Viktor was true - he really did like her - but he didn't know how to tell her that. He was going to miss Hogwarts over the summer; he'd miss everything about it - he always did. But, above all, Hermione was the thing Harry missed most about Hogwarts while he was gone. After all, what's a wizard without his best friend?