Chapter 23
When Harry awoke the following morning, he found that Hermione had shifted slightly during the night.
She was no longer merely lying stretched out beside him, but was laying half on top of him, one of her legs nestled between his and her curves pressing pleasantly against the side of his chest, her head resting on his shoulder like it belonged there. As she was still sound asleep, Harry looked around the hospital wing, trying not to disturb her. He saw that they were the only two in the hospital wing, with the exception of one bed that had the curtain pulled around it, which Harry assumed the real Mad-Eye Moody was recovering behind.
Relaxing back against his pillow, Harry played with Hermione's hair until he finally felt her stirring. Fully awakening, and realizing that Harry was already awake as well, Hermione leaned her head back slightly to look up at him, which put her lips too close to his for him to refrain from leaning down slightly and capturing didn't break apart until they heard the door to Madam Pomfrey's office open, as she hurried over to them to make sure everything was still good with Harry now that they were both awake.
Despite relatively little physical damage having been inflicted upon him and most of that having been healed already by Fawkes' tears, Madam Pomfrey was unable to release Harry from the hospital wing for another day due to Dumbledore's orders the night before, meaning Harry and Hermione had to spend the entire day in the hospital wing, trying not to go insane from boredom. Having absolutely zero interest in being anywhere besides with her boyfriend, Hermione never left his side that day, except for one short trip right after breakfast to go get them both books from the library to pass the time reading while they were stuck there, and when night arrived, once again curled up next to him in his bed to sleep.
When Harry was finally released the following day, he and Hermione walked down to the kitchens to get some food, Harry wanting to avoid crowds for as long as possible, and Hermione not particularly interested in them at the moment either. After that, they headed outside to relax on the spacious grounds, where they knew they could keep their distance from anyone wanting to pester Harry about what had happened during the third task.
~HP~
Over the following week until the Hogwarts Express was to take them all back to London, every time they did cross paths with people in the hallways, or entered the Great Hall to grab a bite to eat (always going at the least crowded times to avoid as many people as possible), most of their fellow students skirted around them (or specifically Harry) as quickly as they could, often avoiding meeting Harry's eyes, or whispering about him behind their hands to each other as they passed.
There hadn't been any articles in the Daily Prophet actually talking about anything that had happened at the third task, only a tiny blurb saying Harry had won that hadn't even mentioned Cedric's death. But as everyone in the castle had been there for the task and its aftermath themselves, Harry and Hermione knew they were connecting Rita's article the morning of the task saying he was insane and power-hungry, to everything that they assumed must have happened in the maze given the fact it had ended with Harry winning and Cedric dying, leaving them all believing Harry to be highly disturbed and dangerous. From snatches of whispered conversations they did catch, they knew many of them were inventing their own wild theories of just how Cedric had died, most of which sinisterly involved Harry doing whatever it took to win the TriWizard Cup, and the thousand galleon prize and fame that came with it.
Worst of all though, perhaps, was Ronald Weasley.
Who had not only been reassured in his own personal beliefs that he'd held ever since Harry's name had come out of the goblet — that Harry was an attention-whore seeking all the fame he could get — and was therefore making up stories that supported this long-held belief, but was also trying to spread those stories as far and wide as he possibly could in order to destroy Harry's reputation before the Boy-Who-Lived could capitalize on everything that had occurred and gain even more attention and fame through it all. So despite the complete tragedy that had befallen Harry during the third task, and the mental and emotional pain he was going through after everything he'd suffered that night, Ron was doing his best to turn everyone against Harry, so he couldn't become even more popular and have even more of a limelight than he already did.
Of course, it probably didn't help that the redhead still didn't know that Voldemort had returned, as Mrs Weasley, like always, thought her children too young to be informed of any such horrors, and so hadn't told any of them. The twins knew, because the afternoon Harry had been stuck in the hospital wing, they had visited him and Hermione to try to cheer Harry up some, and Harry and Hermione (though mostly Hermione) had given the twins a very brief summary of what had occurred the night before, so the two of them would be informed and as prepared as possible for anything that might come. And Ginny had been in the hospital wing when Fudge had come storming into the hospital wing after using a dementor to murder Crouch Jr (or worse — kiss him), so she knew the general idea that He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named was back. But Ron didn't know anything that had actually happened, nor did any of the rest of the castle.
But even without Ron's help, the castle was quickly putting two and two together and coming to the answer of five that Harry had murdered Cedric just so he could win the tournament, and therefore avoided Harry and Hermione almost as much as Harry and Hermione were trying to avoid the vast majority of the castle. In fact, the only person besides the twins Harry and Hermione spent any time with was Fleur, who like the twins they gave a quick synapsis of what had actually happened after the veela had been transported out of the maze, so she would know the truth and be able to go back to her family and prepare them for the upcoming war.
But in general, Harry and Hermione simply ignored everyone in the castle and their whispers behind Harry's back, letting everyone think whatever they wanted to about Harry like the castle did every time something big happened involving Harry, knowing no amount of truth was going to break through the beliefs the castle wanted to hold about Harry, so it wasn't even worth their trying.
Chapter 24
A/N: Merry Christmas, everyone! Hope you have a wonderful season whatever your celebrations may be.
Finally, the last day of term arrived, and with it the Hogwarts Express back to London.
After saying goodbye to Fleur with promises to owl her over the summer, and then saying goodbye to Krum as well, Harry and Hermione followed the rest of the crowds down to where the carriages were waiting for them. But upon arriving at the horseless carriages, Harry saw that they were horseless no more.
Staring at the strange horse-like, dragon-headed, bat-winged, skeleton-ish beasts, Harry grabbed Hermione's arm to stop her, and pointing at the creatures asked, "What are those creepy things pulling the carriages?"
Hermione looked at where her boyfriend was pointing, before turning to look at the serious, and slightly creeped out look on his face, and then back to where he was pointing again, convinced he wasn't trying to pull some kind of prank on her — it wasn't really the kind of thing he would do, anyway.
"Umm, Harry? I can't see anything. The carriages look as horseless to me as they have every time I've seen them. What do you see?"
Harry described the creatures to her in great detail, including the harnesses attaching the carriages to them. So with a look of curiosity, Hermione slowly stepped forward to the carriage shafts, and hesitantly reached out towards where Harry said the creatures were. Suddenly, she jerked her hand back.
"Well, there's definitely something solid there, and really leathery and weird feeling, but I still can't see a thing," she said, looking back around at Harry.
"I can see them pulling every carriage, and there's definitely one right where you touched it," replied Harry.
"Okay then, so we know they're real, and not some kind of magic making you see something that isn't really there, but since everyone else is walking past them like there's nothing, or at least nothing unusual, I'm guessing they can't see them either. Which means it's unlikely that there's some magic affecting only me that's keeping me from seeing them, either," said Hermione, going into her lecture mode as she and Harry climbed into the carriage they were standing at, so they wouldn't be left behind as the carriages in front of them started moving off down the road towards the Hogsmeade train station.
Once they were comfortably seated in the carriage, Hermione continued on, "But I'm not a magizoology expert by any means, and while I've read several books on the subject, I can't think off the top of my head of anything these creatures could possibly be, that you can see for the first time now and most other people, myself included, still can't see them. I'll go through all my books again when I get home, but I'm thinking I'm going to have to get by Flourish and Blotts and find some more books to figure out what it is you're seeing that I can't, and why that's so."
Reassured by his girlfriend's belief of him, and her determination to find out what it was that he was seeing, and of course the fact she could clearly touch them even if she couldn't see them, Harry didn't feel like he was going crazy like he might have otherwise. He was still very puzzled by the creatures, and why they had either just started pulling the carriages or he could only just now see them, and also why everyone else couldn't see them, but he simply wondered what the answers were and how long it would take his girlfriend to find out the answers, not whether he was starting to hallucinate and crack from all the stress he'd been through in the graveyard after the third task.
Boarding the train once they arrived at the Hogsmeade station, Harry and Hermione easily found a compartment all to themselves, as still no one wanted to be anywhere near them, and certainly not locked in the same compartment as them, even after Dumbledore had told everyone at the Leaving Feast the night before that it was Voldemort who had killed Cedric, and not Harry. And Harry was more than thankful for this. He preferred being alone with Hermione anyway, who's constant presence in the week since the third task had helped him keep his mind off of everything that had occurred in the graveyard, and who had helped him begin to process some of what had taken place when he did feel up to talking about it all again.
So for once since he'd started attending Hogwarts, the castle's routine shunning of him was turning out to be more of a blessing than otherwise.
~HP~
As the train started rolling a little while later, Harry saw Hermione pull out the morning's Daily Prophet, which she hadn't had time to read at breakfast.
"How long you do you think till Rita publishes something about the third task?" he asked curiously. "I'm surprised she hasn't already. No way Fudge can keep her quiet on a story like this, like he can the Prophet."
"Actually...I don't think that's going to be a problem for him," replied Hermione, setting the paper down on the empty seat on the other side of her, and turning in her seat to face her boyfriend directly. "He obviously has a heavy hand at the Daily Prophet, and controls what they do and do not publish. Which means they won't buy any story from Rita, or anyone else, contradicting the narrative Fudge wants to write. Which in this case is that everything is perfectly normal and Voldemort definitely isn't back, despite any nasty rumors Dumbledore might be trying to spread to undermine the authority of the Ministry.
"And as there isn't any other news outlet in wizarding Britain — Witch Weekly, the other periodical she published in this year, of course having no interest in publishing anything that isn't celebrity scandals — and certainly not any news outlet that could pay Rita as much for a story as the Daily Prophet can pay her not to write any stories, Rita's not going to have any incentive to try to publish any story Fudge disapproves of. All she really cares about is money — not upsetting the status quo like she likes to portray, and certainly not truth — and Fudge is easily the highest bidder here. So she'll gladly do whatever he wants so long as he keeps giving her enough money."
"Oh."
Harry sat there looking at his girlfriend sitting next to him, taking in everything she'd said.
"Guess I didn't think of all that," he finally said. "But it does make sense now that you've said it. Which means the truth is never going to get published, is it?"
"Never say never, bigger miracles have happened, but it doesn't look like it will be spread anytime soon," replied Hermione with a sigh, before shrugging. "But maybe Dumbledore and his allies he sent off are working on something to alert the masses to Voldemort's return, and just haven't done it yet. Who knows?"
Harry and Hermione spent the next hour discussing possible things Dumbledore and the others who knew that Voldemort was back could be doing to alert the people that Voldemort was alive and strong again, capture or kill the Death Eaters still walking free, and otherwise fight the war against Voldemort that had started with Harry's defeat of the Dark Lord in their duel in the graveyard.
~HP~
After lunch, Harry and Hermione were both reading, when the compartment door slid open uninvited. And there stood Draco, Crabbe, and Goyle, looking even more insufferable and arrogant than ever before.
"So…" Draco drawled slowly, walking into the compartment like he thought he owned the place, looking at the couple with a smirk. "Potter's Dumbledore's favorite boy again."
"Was there exactly some point at which he wasn't?" asked Hermione politely, actually rather curious.
She couldn't think of any time since Harry had stepped through the doors of Hogwarts that her boyfriend hadn't clearly been Dumbledore's favorite, and so had no clue what Draco thought he was talking about by saying that Harry was Dumbledore's favorite again. Even when Harry's name had come out of the goblet, the headmaster had automatically believed Harry when he said he didn't enter himself or have anyone do it for him, so it's not like Harry had lost his favoritism then even for a few days or a week.
But Draco ignored her, instead looking mostly at Harry, but also a little at her, and saying softly, "Trying not to think about it, are we? Trying to pretend it hasn't happened?"
"Pretend what didn't happen? That Voldemort didn't return from whatever half-life state he was in before?" questioned Harry calmly. "Uh…no — not really. Voldemort's back, I've told all the adults in positions of authority that I can, and there's nothing else for me to do about it right now. So no, I wouldn't say I'm pretending it didn't happen — there's just nothing a fourteen year old me can do about it at the moment, now that I successfully beat your master in a one-on-one duel. After all, Priori Incantatem went in my direction, not his."
Draco clearly didn't expect this kind of response from Harry, despite the fact he hadn't gotten a single rise out of Harry all year any of the times he'd tried to rile him up (or at least not since Harry and Hermione had started spending all their time with each other, and especially since they'd started dating), and once again it took him several seconds to regain his normal arrogance.
When he finally did, he sneered, "You've picked the losing side, Potter. I warned you — I told you you ought to choose your company more carefully, remember? When we met on the train, first day at Hogwarts? I told you not to hang around with riffraff like that mudblood!" Here he jerked his head at where Hermione sat leaning back against Harry's side, Harry's arm wrapped around her shoulder, a look of complete and utter boredom on her face as she looked at the Slytherin scum taking up space in their compartment. "Too late now, Potter! She'll be the first to go, now the Dark Lord's back. Mudbloods first. Well — second — Diggory was the first."
"Which really, when you actually stop and think about it, doesn't really make all that much sense, though," commented Hermione conversationally. "Cedric was a pureblood, and yet Voldemort had Pettigrew kill him immediately just because he was there. So the whole purebloods, or at least those not actively opposing Voldemort — because Cedric wasn't 'on our side' as you so eloquently put it, as to the best of my knowledge Cedric never did a single thing in his entire life to try to stop Voldemort from returning — but the idea of purebloods being safe, or at least safer, from Voldemort, doesn't really hold any water. For all Voldemort knew, had Cedric been given an opportunity to become a Death Eater, he gladly would have. But Voldemort had Pettigrew kill him without a second's hesitation, never giving Cedric a chance to bow his knee to him once the tyrant had returned to a body.
"And Voldemort very easily could have, you know. Had Pettigrew bind Cedric like he did Harry, and waited until after he'd regained a body to see which side Cedric chose, and then killed the Hogwarts champion if he refused to bow. But despite Cedric's purebloodedness, he didn't. He just offed him without caring."
"And also," followed up Harry before the Snake could even wrap his mind around everything Hermione had said, "Do any of us here seriously believe that if I'd befriended you on the train ride up here, that I'd be any safer? That Voldemort would have let me, the boy who destroyed his power as a baby, join the Death Eaters? Please — give me a break. There was no winning side for me here, Draco, and you know it. I befriend you, and once Voldemort regained his body, he'd just come over to your house one day when I'm visiting and kill me there; or I don't befriend you, and he tries to kill me first, second, and fourth years like actually happened. The only thing that was never an option, is where he lets me live."
Before Draco could even try to begin to reply to that, there came a cool voice from the corridor outside. "Are you bothering our friends?"
Draco turned and found the twins standing behind him and his cronies. Outnumbered and out-yeared, Draco wisely just gave Harry and Hermione one last contemptuous sneer, before heading back out of the compartment and to whatever hole he'd slithered out of, brushing roughly into the twins as he passed, Crabbe and Goyle following in his wake.
Once they were gone, the twins stepped into the compartment and closed the door behind them, sitting down across from Harry and Hermione.
"Causing you much trouble?" asked Fred.
"Nothing we couldn't handle," said Hermione. "So what brings you two to our humble compartment on this fine afternoon?"
"Bored, and wanted to come see if you'd care for a few games of exploding snaps," answered George. "And also just to make sure Harry was still holding up okay."
For the rest of the afternoon, the four of them amicably passed the time by playing exploding snaps and chatting, Harry and Hermione happy to have company that didn't believe Harry to be the next dark wizard, worth more fear than He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named himself.
And as the conversation drifted into the TriWizard tournament in the midst of their chatting, Harry said, "You know, I think the oddest thing about this entire tournament, at least that we haven't figured out yet, is why Bagman was so interested in trying to get me to win. And then never even congratulated me after I did — in fact, I never even saw him again after I entered the maze."
"You know, we can actually help you with that one," replied Fred gloomily.
"Turns out, Bagman owed a lot of money to the goblins, and in order to pay it off, placed a bet on you winning the tournament," continued George.
"And we found this all out because Bagman payed our Quidditch World Cup bet in leprechaun gold, and then refused to cough up, or even just return the money we'd bet, after said gold disappeared," added Fred.
"But the goblins are as dirty as him, and claim that you drew instead of winning outright, so Bagman pulled a runner right after the third task, taking all hopes of us ever recovering our gold with him," finished George.
"That's terrible!" exclaimed Harry. "I'm so sorry. That was all your savings, and he just up and stole it. Too bad the Ministry doesn't seem to have an actual police force to report crimes like that to."
But Hermione had suddenly had an idea. Leaning over, she whispered into Harry's ear, "You still don't want your TriWizard money, do you?" When Harry shook his head, she continued, "Give it to them. Let them use it to start their joke business. You can't fix what Bagman did, but you can help them out."
So Harry immediately jumped up and dug around in his trunk, until he found the sack of gold Mr Crouch had thrown at him before storming out of the hospital wing following the events of the third task. Turning to the twins, he held it out.
"Take it. I don't want it, I have far more than I'll ever use in my vault in Gringotts, and I really didn't deserve this in the first place," he said. "Consider it start-up money for your joke shop, four years worth of Christmas and birthday presents, whatever you have to to take it, I don't care. Just take the money."
Fred and George stared at him in disbelief for several seconds, before George hesitantly reached out to take it.
"You're sure?" he said in awe.
"More than," answered Harry. "I just can't believe I didn't think of it sooner — or think of it at all, as you actually have Hermione to thank for suggesting the idea."
"Thank you. And thank you," said Fred first to Harry, and then to Hermione.
"Just glad we can help make the world a little brighter place," replied Hermione with a smile.
~HP~
When the Hogwarts Express pulled into Kings Cross Station, Harry and Hermione hung back in their compartment for a while, to let everyone else deboard first.
They had made it this far avoiding most of the crowds who, despite Dumbledore's speech at the Leaving Feast, still seemed to be rather distrustful of Harry, like he might murder them at any moment to further his fame. And Harry and Hermione saw no reason to push their luck now that they'd finally made it back to London and were almost free of all their fellow students for two months. They would of course have to face them all again after a summer of Fudge denying Voldemort's return, but they would deal with that when the time came. Additionally, it was their last chance to snog for a while, and they weren't about to waste that opportunity.
But eventually they had to exit the train themselves, and return to the muggle world from whence they came. Walking though the platform barrier, they found Mr Dursley waiting for Harry, along with Hermione's parents waiting on her a little further along the platform. As Harry stopped in front of his uncle, Hermione drew him in for one final hug and kiss before parting ways for the summer.
Letting him go, she waved over her shoulder as she walked off towards her parents, saying, "See you, Harry."
~The End~
Chapter 25: Pt 2 Start - Summer Before 5th Year
A/N: Continuation of 'What Are You Doing Here?', covering the summer before 5th year. ~37k words, 19 chapters.
A/N 2: Sorry for taking forever to get this out here, I've been working on other stories and just been lazy on this one.
Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived, was going crazy.
I would be better off called the Boy-Who-Was-Going-Insane, he morosely thought to himself as he lay flat on his back in the dirt underneath the living room windowsill, hidden from the world by an overly-perfectly trimmed row of shrubbery.
Harry hadn't realized just how much he had been relying on Hermione to keep him grounded and sane until he no longer had her around. So far this summer he'd swung from being too depressed about Cedric's death to do anything, to feeling overwhelmingly guilty, as if it had entirely been his own fault that Cedric had died, to recklessly wanting to hunt Voldemort down himself, and back through the list again several times over — and it had been less than forty-eight hours since he left Kings Cross station with the Dursleys.
But the lazy afternoon silence was slowly replaced by the sound of someone whistling cheerfully as they walked down Privet Drive. While this mildly peaked Harry's curiosity, as no one ever walked down Privet Drive whistling (he thought there might be some kind of law against it), let alone cheerfully (that, he was positive was illegal), he was too determined to maintain his current mood of being too depressed to do anything to move to see who it might be. His resolve was sorely tested when the whistling seemed to turn up the Dursleys' walk, but he remained strong. That is, until his unobstructed view of the lovely blue sky was suddenly obstructed by waves of bushy brown hair framing an attractive, and quite familiar face.
For some inexplicable reason, Hermione Granger's face (and hair) was staring down at him from out of the sky. Then after blinking a few times, trying to make the mirage go away, Harry finally realized that his girlfriend's face was not, in fact, floating in the sky above him, but that her entire body was standing on the other side of the shrub, here at Number 4 Privet Drive.
"Uh...hi," he greeted her ever so eloquently.
"Hi, Harry!" she replied as cheerfully as always, as if finding her boyfriend lying in the dirt behind some bushes was nothing out of the ordinary. "Planning on inviting me in anytime soon?"
Just as eloquently as before, he said, "Uh...", but this time he at least began to stand up.
Hermione reached down and grabbed his arm and helped pull him up, pulling his face to hers as soon as he was on his feet, kissing him passionately. Releasing him several seconds later, she asked, "So why were you lying in the dirt behind the bushes?"
"Avoiding my aunt and uncle," replied Harry, thankful that said relations were in the kitchen and not sitting in the living room at the moment. "So what are you doing here?"
Taking his hand and twining her fingers in his, Hermione replied, "Thought you might like some company, so I took the train over to visit you."
Squeezing Hermione's hand to show her his appreciation, Harry opened the door with his other hand, and let her in. Taking the risk that his aunt and uncle would be polite to a girl, even if Vernon did remember her from the train station two days earlier (or if they weren't polite, that Hermione would set them in their places), Harry led her down the hall and into the kitchen, hoping to pilfer for them some of the lemonade that he knew his aunt made every afternoon, but never let him have any of.
~HP~
Vernon and Petunia Dursley were sitting in their kitchen enjoying a cold glass of lemonade, when they heard the front door open.
Knowing that their dearest Dudleykins was at the Polkisses' for tea, and wouldn't be home until much later, they reasoned that it must be the other boy who lived in their house, who was under no circumstance supposed to be in said house during the day. Hearing footsteps approaching the kitchen, Vernon was about to launch into his best tirade when he caught site of the attractive girl following not-Dudley into the kitchen, and the words died on his lips.
She was dressed in a tight pair of jeans, and an equally fitting t-shirt that hugged her medium figure — in short, a completely normal, good-looking teenage girl that would do well for their Duddykins.
Something nudged at the back of Vernon's mind saying that she looked too familiar, and there was also the thin stick poking out the top of her back jeans pocket that didn't seem quite right, but she was too normal looking for either Vernon or Petunia to really notice either of these things. After all, if she had been one of his kind, it would have been much more obvious — his kind stood out like sore thumbs, or people who cheated on the water ban.
Meanwhile, as the Dursleys were staring at their unexpected guest, Harry walked over to the refrigerator and poured two glasses of lemonade, handing one to Hermione.
"Want to go up to your room?" asked Hermione as she took the glass from him, before turning around and walking sultrily out of the room with her hips swaying, towards the stairs that she knew must lead up to Harry's bedroom based on the small amount he'd told her over the four years she'd known him about his home life.
Taking advantage of the Dursleys' continued temporary stunned silence at everything, Harry quickly hurried after her, his own lemonade in hand.
As soon as Harry entered his room room after her — and she'd taken both of their drinks and set them down on his desk — Hermione lost no time in pouncing on her boyfriend, knocking him over backwards onto his bed. Several minutes later, having thoroughly greeted him properly (and needing to come up for air), she sat back on her knees, looking down at Harry.
"So how have you been?"
~HP~
Several hours later, Harry and Hermione were lounging on Harry's bed, reading.
Their new booklists were still at least a month away from being sent out based on the previous four years, but as Hermione didn't want to spend the entire afternoon snogging (not that they hadn't done their fair share), and Harry wasn't in the mood that day for talking about the night in the graveyard, they had settled on reading Harry's fourth year books over again. Besides simply being good review during the time in which neither of them could actually practice any magic since they were both in all practicality muggleborns and didn't have at least one magical adult in either of their houses to prevent the Trace from being usable, Hermione also thought that if Harry could have a better understanding of the theory behind Potions before going into the new school year, and therefore be more proficient at the subject once classes started, then Snape would have less ammunition to abuse Harry with — not that Snape would ever actually leave Harry alone, but it would be harder for the greasy-haired bat.
Harry's concentration on a particularly tricky little concoction was interrupted by the bushy-haired bookworms' voice asking him curiously, "I've been meaning to ask you something, Harry. I know you've said you have more money in your vault than you could ever need, and you had no hesitation giving the TriWizard money away, but just how much do you have in your vault? — If you don't mind me asking," she finished hurriedly.
"I've never had a chance to count it," replied Harry honestly, as he thought hard, trying to picture the inside of his vault in his mind. "But I do know there are several mounds of gold roughly the size of Hedwig's cage over there, tall columns of silver going up to the stony roof, and heaps of knuts haphazardly strewn in between. And that's just what I've seen from the doorway and stepping in to fill my money bag. The back of the vault's always been in the shadows, and I've never really looked past the obvious piles I could see."
Hermione nodded slowly, clearing thinking to herself, but she didn't ask any more questions, and after a while went back to reading, so Harry did the same. Whatever his girlfriend was thinking, she would tell him when she was ready.
Late that afternoon, Hermione departed Privet Drive with a final kiss and the promise to return within a few days, as soon as she could. Spirits buoyed by her visit, and the promise of not being stuck alone all summer, Harry contentedly ignored the dirty looks his aunt and uncle started giving him, suspicious of who this female was that was willing to hang out with him.
Chapter 26
It was three days before Hermione was able to make the trip again.
But the day before she was available to meet him again she sent him a letter via Hedwig letting him know she'd be coming, so Harry wasn't left alone long enough to resort back to his moody, temperamental self that he'd been the day and a half before she'd come for her first visit. Deciding it best to avoid his aunt and uncle as much as possible, Harry returned the owl with a note telling her to meet him at the park she'd passed on the way from the train station to his house on her first visit. As hot as it'd been so far that summer, Harry knew there was little chance of them being overheard by anyone at the park, since no one would be there.
Walking through the empty, desolate park, he kicked a few dried-out weeds, when he heard someone yelling his name. Looking up, he saw that Hermione had entered the park from the other side, and was waving and yelling at him from under the only tree in the park, and the only semblance of shade in a several mile radius.
Harry had barely sat down next to her when she exclaimed almost accusingly, "You never told me you own Sleekeazy!"
"Own what?" asked Harry, completely confused — he didn't own anything, a full vault at Gringotts excluded.
"Sleekeazy's Hair Potion! When I told you after the Yule Ball last year about how all the girls in my dorm were using Sleekeazy to fix their hair up for the Ball, you never told me that you own it!"
Harry stared at her in surprise for several seconds, before answering slowly, "If I do, I certainly didn't know it. Are you sure?"
"Of course I am, Harry," admonished Hermione. "Your grandfather started the Sleekeazy Corporation in 1926, and it's still in the Potter family. Which means you now own it, since you're the only remaining Potter. Also, the Potters were already a very wealthy, very powerful wizarding family before Fleamont ever started Sleekeazy. Your parents and grandparents never lived lavishly by any accounts, which means all that money still has to be somewhere."
"How did you find all this out?" asked Harry, still staring at her in shock. He knew Hermione was a walking library, but he'd never heard anyone mention Potter in connection to Sleekeazy, and it seemed an odd bit of trivia to pick up from school books.
"After you mentioned how much money you had in your vault, it got me thinking, and I tried to do some rough calculations based on what you said of how much your vault's value probably is. So when I came to a rough estimate of fifty-thousand galleons, and possibly more than that, I got my mum to take me to Diagon Alley the next day to find some books that might explain why you'd have thatmuch money as an eleven year old.
"That was too much money for both for a moderately well-to-do family, and an extremely well-to-do family. Had it only been twenty or thirty-thousand, then I would have said your parents were moderately well-to-do, and just left you the whole thing since it was easier than trying to split it up into different vaults. But if their entire worth was fifty-thousand, that's enough to give you ten or twenty-thousand for school, and then the remaining thirty or forty-thousand once you came of age. Now, if they were the Malfoys, it'd be one thing for them to leave you with an extravagant amount of money, but your parents seemed like they'd want to raise you to be reasonable with money — which you definitely are.
"But from what I calculated, they left you fifty-thousand or more in a vault you theoretically had access to from the moment they were murdered when you were only fifteen months old. It just didn't make any sense. And it's not like your parents' murder came as a surprise to them, and they died without ever having the chance to set their affairs in order. They knew Voldemort was after them for a substantial amount of time before their actual murders occurred, and there was a war going on since long before you were born that was constantly claiming people's lives unexpectedly. My point being, it's not like they mistakenly assumed they were going to be able to raise you your entire school years, and so hadn't prepared for their deaths and your upbringing at all, and you ended up with the entire amount all at once.
"Because estimating from my own four years of experience attending Hogwarts, removing my love of books from the equation, to make it through seven years of school, or really only six until you come of age at seventeen, you need less than a thousand galleons. So even to make sure you weren't lacking anything during school, five to ten thousand would be more than enough. So them giving you the full fifty thousand or more that's in your vault, if that was their entire worth, didn't make any sense. The interest alone over seven years should cover your schooling needs, and as a wizard you could legitimately live off of fifty thousand galleons your entire life — far less if you were a Weasley. And I'm not sure all nine of them combined will go much over that — but I'm getting off topic.
"Getting back to your vault, Sirius told you when you stopped Pettigrew and rescued him, that your parents appointed him as your guardian in case anything happened to them. And Sirius then offered to let you come live with him, which means he has a house and the resources to raise you for what would have been the next three or four years, depending on whether you count your of-age seventh year — which knowing Sirius as we do, he definitely would have included your final Hogwarts year when he invited you to go live with him. And that's all besides the fact he bought you the nicest racing broom that's ever been built as a Christmas present, which was a very pretty penny. So he can't be hurting for money, either.
"Which means it's not like your parents would have thought you'd need money to pay for somewhere to live if they died. And even if they had wanted to make sure you did have money for that just in case it was necessary, it would make more sense to have a separate vault just for that scenario — kind of like the Bribe-the-Ministry Vault I'm sure the Malfoys have and keep well-stocked. And it's not in the least bit difficult to set up a vault at Gringotts — I could even as an underage muggleborn witch if I wanted to. Because my parents actually asked about setting up a vault in Gringotts for my schooling the first time we visited the summer before my first year. They were turned down because only wizards are allowed to set up vaults, but the goblin said that I could set one up if I wanted to. They didn't decide to go that route with me, but my point being, vaults aren't that hard to set up.
"So given all of that, when I went to Diagon Alley on Tuesday with my mum, I got some books on prominent wizarding families of the nineteenth and early twentieth century to see if I could find any Potters. And the very first one I looked through proved true my suspicions that that can't be your only vault. The book was on major wizarding inventions of the past couple centuries, and your grandfather, Fleamont Potter, invented Sleekeazy hair potion — which is still a very prominent business to this day, something anyone who hangs around in girls dormitories much at all knows. It's just that the Potter name has never directly been attached to the company, so most people don't know it's the Potters', because they don't read about things like that.
"But as I continued reading through all of the rest of the books I bought, it turns out your family's actually a lot more important than they've appeared over the past couple generations. The Potters used to be a very prominent family, which in the wizarding world has always meant money. So while I can't give any guesses as to what you're actually worth, it's a whole lot more than the galleons you've got in your vault that you've had access to since first year."
As Hermione wrapped up her story, Harry simply sat there staring at her, still trying to absorb everything she'd told him. After letting him sit there like that for a minute or two, she leaned over and pecked him lightly on the lips to bring him back into reality and out of his shock.
"So...you're saying I'm wealthy beyond my dreams?" Harry asked slowly, trying to comprehend everything Hermione had just told him.
"Well, I certainly can't say for sure, Harry," answered Hermione cautiously, "but from what I've read it seems possible. Probable, even. But we should visit Gringotts to find out for sure. Also, I need to look up the creatures you saw pulling the carriages, that I didn't have time to do on Tuesday."
"I don't know how happy my relatives would be about me leaving Privet Drive, though," said Harry.
"Do you normally ever see them during the day?" asked Hermione.
When Harry shook his head, she continued on slightly mischievously, "Then I don't think a little day trip they never know about will hurt anyone. And you could definitely stand to get away from this place for a day."
So Harry and Hermione spent the rest of their day together walking the streets of Little Whinging, talking and planning their excursion to Diagon Alley and Gringotts. By the time Hermione left to catch the last train back home that evening, they had everything all planned out.