Chapter 12.5- Doom Days

“You’re good at this”

“Oh Harry. Of course, I am. I am your best friend. No one knows you as well as I do” I smiled even wider at the statement she’d just made. She had to be fooling herself if she thought that was even vaguely true. Anyone who knew Potter so well should have been able to tell that his body had been taken over and that he was only a third of the personality captaining this ship.

“Best friend, huh?” I asked with a self-depreciating chuckle. Acting was so easy, I was coming to learn. Definitely easier than duelling Flitwick, for sure.

“Oh Harry. Ron will come around. He just needs a bit of time, you know?” She said with a sigh. Harry’s memories made it clear that the secret to speaking to Hermione was not to speak. In complete sentences. Just lead her towards whatever answer you wanted her to get and she would come the other half of the way. It was how her brain worked.

“Does he? I’ve heard the things he goes around saying. Those don’t sound like the words of someone who just needs some time.” I said next, lying with the charming ease that had made Tom Riddle so dangerous in his youth. The truth was hadn’t paid any attention to either Hermione or Ron in the last month, but I did have years of experience with knowing them. Maybe it came from being the youngest of Six boys, but Ron never knew how to quietly hold a grudge. He had to make sure everyone around him knew about his problems. Maybe it was his own ay of begging for attention. Harry had found it quirky. I found it pathetic.

“Well, you did tell everyone that you cheated your way into the tournament. While I can tell that isn’t the case, Ron has never really been…”

“Particularly bright?” She chuckled at that, reaching out to swat my arm. I saw it coming, and allowed it happen.

“No. Well, yes. But no. He’s still our friend, Harry”

“He’s yours. I’m not particularly forgiving these days”

“But you’ve forgiven me?” She asked.

“I abandoned you just as much as you abandoned me. Don’t think I didn’t notice you trying to follow me around all this time” I said. Even during the time I was preparing for the first task, she’d made a few attempts to follow me to the chamber.

“Part of me wants to be angry. Part of me wants to hold what the House did against you, but to be perfectly honest, I don’t particularly care. It’s been a month I’ve had time and space away from all that. Not living in the dorms gives me more freedom to train and practice my magic as needed. Not having to abide by a school schedule means I get to do what I want, when I want. Things like curfew don’t matter to me. Even Pince lets me stay in the library for as long as I want and I basically breeze in and out of the restricted section at will. This castle is so much more fun when you are unshackled, and I have Gryffindor house and the abandonment of my friends to thank for that. So while I could be angry and hold a grudge, what’s the point of that?” I said with an airy tone. I was being presented with an opportunity here. I could feel it.

There was a Fanon theory that Dumbledore had used Harry’s friends as Spies, and while I doubted Ron had the subtlety or the intellect to be a competent spy, Hermione, I was less sure about. She seemed genuine in the memories I had of her. But then what good would a spy be if they couldn’t manage to seem genuine. What I was taking the risk here with was the fact that even if she wasn’t the spy, then it was likely that Dumbledore would legilimens his way into her mind. At least, I felt like it was likely. So that meant that everything I told her was likely to make its way to him one way or another. I needed to avert his fears of me being some sort of dark wizard in training to prevent him turning against me the same way he’d turned against Riddle, and to do that I needed to offer an alternate explanation for the changes that he would have noticed.

An explanation that didn’t include Riddle’s horcrux taking me over. That’s if he even suspected me of having the horcrux in my forehead already. Something told me that the happenings of Harry’s fifth year went a long way to confirming that theory. But then Dumbledore had known to avoid Harry right from the beginning of the year so he had some inclination about it from earlier on.

“So that’s why you seem so different now? Just coming to terms with freedom?”

“Exactly. First it was the Dursleys, and then being a student here. This is the first time in my life that I feel in charge of my own life. Agency has a way of changing the way you view things.” I told her finally.