Monday, Sept. 9

“So what’s my next move?” Harry asked his Queen, and she quickly suggested one that he followed readily.

Ron scowled. “Harry, stop asking the pieces for moves.”

Harry looked at the scowling redhead. “Why? I’d lose; I have no idea how to play this game.”

“Then learn,” Ron argued. “You’re making the game boring.”

Harry paused. “Boring?” He asked, then looked down at his Queen, “You’re seriously going to take that kind of disrespect from him?

“He said he inherited you guys from his grandfather, right?”

Harry’s Queen, the white, nodded. “Yes, Commander Potter—” he’d asked her to call him that “—that is right.”

Harry nodded like he already knew this, which he did, they all did. Ron was very proud of his chess set, and prouder still that his grandfather had given it to him out of all his siblings.

“So, in other words,” Harry said, “you’ve been playing chess since before he was born. And now here he comes, this wet behind the ears whippersnapper, trash-talking you right to your face, and calling your playstyle boring. Are you seriously just going to sit back and take that?”

The Queen stood straighter and her expression firmed. “No, Commander Potter, we will not.”

“Perfect!” Harry declared, then rose and struck a pose like some flamboyant General, completely uncaring of everyone’s stares. “Now, warriors of the Ancient and Noble House of Potter, show this measly Weasley why he shouldn’t badmouth us. Chaaaaarge!”

As the board descended into chaos, Harry smirked at Ron, “You were saying something about boring?”

Ron just gave Harry a very sour look, then stood up and walked away.

“You worry me sometimes, Harry,” Lavender said, and Harry smiled brightly at her, before turning to look at Hermione.

A small part of her mind noticed that he did that a lot; made a joke and then looked to her for her reaction, even though it was usually just an eye-roll in fond exasperation. That same small part of her mind wondered why he did it.

There was no eye-roll for Harry now, however, because the rest of Hermione’s rather impressive mind was focused on taking in the spark in his eyes; the colour in his cheeks; the rise and fall of his chest; all the signs of life that she could see, all in an attempt to reaffirm to herself that, yes, Harry was alive and well.

It wasn’t really working. And why would it? When she had felt him take his last breath not two hours ago.

Harry’s expression dimmed as he saw hers, but he rallied quickly and settled a small, strained smile on his face as he came to slump into her couch.

It was obvious he wanted to say something, do something, to make her feel better. But it was even more obvious that he had no idea what to do.

It was funny, really, because he was already doing it. And now she was the one who had to do something to make him feel better.

“Tell me about the internet again,” Hermione said.

It was clear that Harry realised what she was doing, but he obliged her all the same.

“The internet, uh?” Harry tsked. “Where do I even start? There’s TikTok, of course. Which gave us such great things like the ‘Kiss Your Best Friend’ challenge.”

“What?”

“Yep, that was a thing. Very popular thing too.”

“Why?”

“I do not know,” Harry said, then after a bit of thought, added, “There’s also 4chan... but, uh, we don’t talk about 4chan.”

“Why, what’s 4chan?”

“We do not speak of 4chan, Hermione.”

Hermione was stumped. “Is the internet that bad?” She couldn’t help but ask.

Harry had only mentioned it in passing on Saturday, what with all the important things they had to talk about, but after describing it as “a network that connects every computer on earth wirelessly,” Hermione had seen it as a positive thing. A miracle even.

Surprisingly, Harry’s response was a surprised, “What? Oh, no, no, don’t mind me, the internet’s great. I mean, it gave us Billie Eilish. And Justin Bieber.

“It made libraries practically pointless—”

What?

“—it made communication stress-free, it’s like... holding the world in the palm of your hand.”

Hermione paused and thought about that. “It sounds amazing,” she admitted.

“It was,” Harry agreed. “And I’m only realising it now that I no longer have access to it.

“I can’t just... run a Google search anymore. I can’t just hop onto Facebook or 9gag real quick for a laugh. No instant, twenty-four hour news.” Then a moment of thought, capped with dawning horror. “Oh, God, no more free movies.”

“Free movies?”

“Uh-huh. The best thing the internet ever gave us; free, practically unrestricted access to any movie. Ever.”

Hermione found that hard to believe. They just gave away movies for free? How did actors make any money?

And then Harry said the line that explained everything.

“I mean, it’s kind of illegal, but that’s not really the—”

“So, it’s piracy.”

“I prefer to call it free sharing of information,” Harry tried to counter, but Hermione wasn’t budging, and her judgmental look said so.

“Oh, come on, Hermione, moviegoing is expensive. I mean, the MCU alone releases like three films every year. Who’s going to pay for all of that? And you’re not even allowed to bring your own food. Do you have any idea how much popcorns cost in theaters by 2021? It’s robbery.”

Hermione simply shook her head at his impassioned, but thankfully whispered, spiel and asked, “What’s the MCU?”

She felt like she may have made a mistake when Harry smiled and said, “The best thing that ever happened to Hollywood. Now, brace yourself, this’ll take a while.”

He was right. It did.

However, by the time he was done and dinner came around, the memory of the cupboard had faded some, and she didn’t even think of it again before bed.

It still didn’t stop the nightmares though.

As she sat in her bed, sweaty and panting and trying to push away the clinging memory of her dream—an amalgamation of all the terrifying things she’d recently learned, that made no sense but served to scare her senseless all the same—Hermione heard the sound of something landing on her nightstand, and shortly followed after by a soft hoot.

Hedwig!

Hermione quickly pulled open the curtains of her bed to see with the owl with a small note in her beak.

She took it, and using her wand for light, read the note.

I told Hedwig to only give this to you if she knew you weren’t asleep. Guess you’re not.

I don’t really have anything to say to you really, I just couldn’t sleep and I thought maybe you would like to talk.

—Harry (duh)

Hermione swallowed. Harry couldn’t sleep. And it was her fault. He had gone up to his dorms because he knew that she would stay with him if he slept in the common room. And now, he wasn’t getting any sleep.

She grabbed a pen and a notebook.

There was a lot she wanted to say, so much, but she felt like a note wasn’t the best place to try to convey it, so she decided to simply reply:

Hedwig perched just as I woke up (I wonder how she knew).

I don’t mind talking, though I don’t know if Hedwig won’t mind the repeated trips.

—Hermione (obviously)

Hermione tore out the page she wrote the note on, folded it, and handed it to Hedwig.

“You don’t mind the trip, do you, Hedwig?” She asked worriedly, but the owl just gave her an unimpressed look, before taking the note in her beak and flying off.

She returned with Harry’s reply in less than a minute.

Meh, she doesn’t seem to mind it much. But you’re right though, we need a way to communicate. Maybe we could make communication mirrors? It’s basically magical video chatting. Like a telephone but with video. My Harry’s dad and his friends had some they made themselves, so I know it can’t be too hard.

What do you think?

—Harry (clearly)

Communication mirrors? That sounded complicated. Unless...

I think it’s a wonderful idea; we do need a way to contact each other.

I think the communication mirrors you’re talking about might be a little complex though. Maybe we could start with something simpler?

I was thinking we could charm two notebooks, so that anything that is written on one appears in the same place on the other.

What do you think?

—Hermione (evidently)

I think that’s a great idea. Certainly much easier than mine. We would need to use the exact same kind of notebook though, right? So everything aligns properly.

I was thinking we could use The Protean Charm. Though that’s a N.E.W.T spell, so who knows?

—Harry (duh)

You’re right about the notebooks, I didn’t even think of it.

As for The Protean Charm, I’m sure we can find an alternative if it proves too difficult. Although, it would be the best option, wouldn’t it?

Come down to the common room; bring two notebooks with you...

Maybe more, just in case.

—Hermione (apparently)

PS: I win. You said “duh” twice.

When they met in the common room a scant minute later, the first thing Harry said was, “Evidently and apparently obviously don’t mean the same thing.”

Such a sore loser.

It took two hours, and they had to use a much weaker alternative to The Protean Charm; The Rewrite Spell, a spell originally made for cheating in exams that had a four second delay and could only link two pages together, so they ended up having to enchant all forty pages on both books individually, but even so, they made it work.

And the first message they sent with it was, Hello, World.

Harry wrote it. He also called The Notebooks (I still think Innovative Means of Sending Conversations Using Magic [I.M.S.C.U.M] is a better name, Harry) the first working prototype of Harmony Industries.

And when she asked why he thought she would want to start a company with him, and why he would choose Harmony Industries as the name, he simply smiled.

*****

The Next Day.

Tuesday, Sept. 10

They continued occlumency, well, legilimency lessons on Tuesday, but it was clear to both children now that, after the fiasco of the first one, these lessons would be much more than they’d both assumed.

They’d known, of course, from an intellectual standpoint at least, but now, both of them, well, Hermione, had a visceral understanding of just what that entailed.

Ironically, that understanding did not make her want to pull away, if anything it made her more resolute.

She had known that things were bad for Harry before, but to think that that... oh, to hell with it, arsehole, had simply murdered him and dropped him here with nothing but a letter and that stupid T-shirt; argh! It made her want to want to scream in rage and call that ROB person some very rude words.

And it also made her want to know everything Harry had been through, because she felt as though it would help Harry if she did, by lightening the burden on him.

So, no, Hermione wasn’t hesitant for legilimency lessons on Tuesday. Harry was.

Not for himself, no, he had no issue casting the spell on her. He just wouldn’t let her do it to him.

He had even gotten the spell to work four times in a row now, picking up some trivial memories of hers, all of them times when she was frustrated or irritated, a perfect echo of her current mood. And when she got angry enough to push the issue, he picked up a book and held it up to his face, pretending to read.

“Harry!” She called in anger.

“Hmm?” He murmured from behind the book she knew he wasn’t reading.

“You’re being childish, Harry,” she said, wishing for once that Harry was like other boys their age.

Harry scoffed. “Yeah, that’ll work,” he said, and even though he was still holding the book to his face, she just knew he was rolling his eyes.

Hermione came a second away from ripping the book out of his hands, but somehow, she managed to hold herself back and think.

In a twisted way, Harry was doing this for her sake. He was doing this because he thought he was protecting her, when he was actually just wasting time that they could be using to practice instead.

And she had no idea how to make him see that he wasn’t helping right now.

“Harry, put down the book,” she said, but he ignored her. “I’m not going to cast the spell, Harry. Just look at me, please.”

Hermione thought he wouldn’t do it, but he did.

He still didn’t meet her eyes however.

“You need to learn occlumency, Harry.”

“I think I’ve given you enough nightmares, Hermione,” was his simple reply.

“I’m fine,” she said.

“Are you?” He met her eyes now, and it was Hermione who looked away.

“I’m fine,” she repeated, trying as hard to convince him as she was herself.

Harry didn’t look like he bought it.

Hermione tried a different tack. “This isn’t about me, Harry.”

“Yes it is,” he disagreed immediately. “Yes, it is. Snape kicked you out of his class because of me; you need to learn occlumency because of me; you can’t sleep because of me; all I’ve done is make things worse for you since I got here.”

“That’s not true.”

“Yes it is.”

“So, what, nothing bad ever happened in the books?”

Harry opened his mouth to speak, then shut it and scowled.

Didn’t think so.

“Don’t you see, Harry? This is a good thing.”

Harry gave her a look of unadulterated disbelief.

“It is,” she argued. “You told me yourself that in the books, everyone spent half their time stumbling around, looking for clues, but we don’t have to do that now because we know what’s going to happen. We’re already preparing.”

Hermione could see her words were beginning to have an effect, so she pushed.

“First, we learn occlumency, make sure nobody can read our minds, then we—” a slight pause here, because they didn’t really have a plan beyond learn occlumency at this point, but Hermione carried on “—we use the knowledge to our advantage. Make sure that Voldemort doesn’t get the stone.”

Harry looked at her for a long time. Finally, he said, “I can’t actually talk you out of this, can I?”

Hermione didn’t even dignify that with a response.

“Fine,” Harry accepted grudgingly.

Legilimency lessons that day were rather awkward after all that, but on the bright side, with how hard Harry was trying to keep some of his ‘worse’ memories from her, he actually made quite a bit of progress in learning occlumency. And with how determined Hermione was to get at those memories, her legilimency improved by quite a lot.

Harry actually had the gall to call her an overachiever.