The Argument of Minds
December 20th, 1995:
The Fifth-Year student felt surprisingly shaken, as he strode into the Great Hall’s open doors. Despite passing his midterms with gold stars, he still continued to feel as if he was dreading something. He bit his lip prematurely, had he forgotten something?
He began to reaccount for all of his items he’d packed for home. Books, equipment, writing supplies, his broomstick. He’d made sure to triple-check his school trunk just the other night.
Harry Potter settled himself at Ravenclaw table besides his friend.
“Morning, Luna.” Harry said, grabbing for two slices of toast.
“Morning, Harry.” She said, her muffled voice coming from in between her arms, “Have you received your marks?”
Harry spoke crunchily in between bites. “Yep.”
Luna sighed. The girl had taken her exams earlier than Harry, yet she hadn’t received the final word from the Wizarding Examinations Authority. She said something and Harry retrieved some honey butter and two more slices of toast. Slathering the butter on the slices he’d gotten, he offered it to her.
“I’m not hungry,” she waved off.
“C’mon, you have to eat something. The ride home will be long.”
She remained silent for a moment before peeking out of her arms. “Fine, just pass me some pumpkin juice.”
Harry nodded and gave her a cup of the sweet juice. “We leave this afternoon at about two quarters to one. Right now, it’s only nine...”
Harry felt someone grab his shoulder.
“Wonderful morning, Harry!” Said Neville Longbottom, holding his own cup of Pumpkin juice. The boy seemed relieved. His grades must have been delivered just an hour ago by an owl. “Guess who got nothing but O’s?”
“No way.” Harry said, astounded. It was quite a surprise. “Potions, too?”
Neville’s smile wavered, but quickly returned,”It’s an E!”
Harry began to clap for his friend.
“I’m finally out of Potions Limbo, Harry! Can you believe it!”
Neville eyed, the pieces of untouched toast laying on a plate to the side of Luna,”can I have those?” he asked her. She nodded, meekly. “Thanks, Lovegood.”
Her snowy cheeks began to grow pink.
Neville began to rabidly consume the cool toast. “Seamus and Dean are drawing up a game of quidditch before we have to leave. Game?”
Harry nodded, making quick sips of his pumpkin juice,”yeah, just let me get my broom upstairs.”
Neville grinned, heading off to the quidditch field. Harry soon got off his seat, “Gonna come watch?” he asked Luna.
“Sure just give me a moment.” she said, quietly. Harry then started off towards Ravenclaw Tower.
Always left breathless from the long winding stairs, Harry began to grow wary as a certain figure looked down at him from atop the fifth floor staircase. His smile dropped. He continued his journey, stopping at the entrance to the House common room.
“Have you thought about the proposal?” she asked, bitterly.
Harry turned to her as his hand raised to grip the bronze eagle knocker. “Morning, Granger. Have you gotten ready to leave for the holidays?”
The girl gave a blank expression and a short silence. Harry began to grow slightly nervous as he knocked, even more so when the eagle refused to answer his call for a riddle and an escape.
“You’ve had little more than a month to think things over, Potter. This isn’t good.”
Harry was about to knock again, but slowed himself. He withdrew his hand and attempted to bolster some sort of ironclad confidence. “It’s a complicated decision, Hermione.”
“Longbottom, Finnegan and Thomas have joined, Potter. They joined within nearly a week apart from each other, but you?”
“Midterms, Granger. I know you probably steamrolled through them, but I have been busy….”
Granger chuckled, “You know that’s a lie, Potter. If the mutters from the WEA’s meeting room was anything to the truth-right now you’re being evasive.”
Harry frowned, puzzled. “Three floors in counting had been sealed for the single room they were meeting in. The whole corridors had been silenced, blocked and runed,” Not to mention, the WEA enacted a policy so that all rooms adjacent to theirs had to be supervised by a teacher and used for classes. “You’d have to have done a lot of things to have been capable of hearing that from their own voices, Granger.”
She grew a satisfied look. “I’m extending a hand here, Potter. Yes, we may have been in oppositional positions for a long while, I’d much prefer you as one of my friends than as an enemy.”
Harry shook his head,”I believed we were already friends, Granger.”
“So you’d accept?” She raised the end of a smile. Harry took a breath. Just as quickly as her smile grew, it dropped. “You have concerns, then?”
“Yes. Yes, I do.” He said, finally in admittance. The damned Gryffindor had gotten the best of him this time. “I am not that sure about this, Granger. What I’ve heard. What I’ve seen. What you’ve spoken to me.”
The bushy-haired girl grew her attention to Harry,”What about these words, Potter? Are they not agreeable? Are they not simple-as?” Harry’s hand returned to the knocker. “You and I both agree with all of these points. Don’t you?”
Harry turned to see the girl withdraw her wand calmly from her sleeve, he studied her quickly, before letting the knocker loose again. “It concerns me, Granger. Not what they are, but to the heights you’ve taken them to. To an outsider, they are bordering on extreme, radical. I just worry about what everybody else may think about it.”
Hermione Granger walked over to Harry and applied her hand to his shoulder,”It’s okay to worry, Harry. Sometimes, even I, question my own tongue. But then I remember: These ideals, sometimes they’re hard to translate in speech. sometimes they appear as scary, or treacherous, but they’re justified. Is there nothing good of justice?” Harry bordered on something uncomfortable with her touch. She faced him with a look of glory. Her brown eyes like pools of old gold. He brushed her off.
“I must get my broom, my friends are waiting for me. If you’d excuse me,” Harry returned to the knocker, pushing her aside.
He heard a mutterance of words from behind him. It was an incantion, he’d sooner forget. He knocked and the bird finally emerged full of life.
“Two in a corner, one in a room, none in a house, but one in a shelter. What am I?” it asked.
Harry spoke quickly,”The letter ‘R’”.
The Ravenclaw Common Room door creaked open.
He took a step into the doorway before her voice called for one last time. “I will keep my hand held out, Potter. I always will, for you, friend, to the last finger. I can only hope you grasp this, before this decision spirals out of both of our grips.”
Hermione Granger, Fifth-year Gryffindor, most brilliant witch of her age, turned on her heels and left him.
Harry grew relieved. The Granger girl was dangerous. He knew that. She had always been a type of rival to the raven-haired boy. However, her rise of influence on the rest of the student body had caused him more alarm. Not to take into account, her even more recent interest in his own capabilities.
Moving to his school trunk that rested on top of his bed inside of the boys’ dormitory, he placed his wand and whispered a odd and colorful phrase. The trunk’s locks clicked open. He withdrew his recently gifted Nimbus Two-thousand and One and picked up his trunk. To a nearby window, he began to unlatch its locks. Ravenclaw tower was capable of more than a hearty acceleration in speed at its height. He settled the broom underneath him jumped off the window’s ledge.
He found himself falling longer than he normally did. He looked behind and found the bristles of the broom falling behind him twig by twig.