“I thought about your arguments and I think I am ready to offer you my answer”, Harry nodded.

“I will not even try to refute your arguments themselves. They are too well thought out, and statistical data pool is too shallow. I decided that this course will not be productive. Instead, I might offer something else”

Lyra nodded. “Go ahead”.

“I am the only child of my parents. You are the only child of yours. Our lines are at the risk of extinction if either of us is killed in some accident, duel or if we fail to have children. However, the Weasleys are in no such danger, would you agree?”

“I would. There’s too many of them”, she nodded.

“Exactly. So, my argument is that the wizarding families should work on having at least three children per couple. One is an extinction certainty, because it produces half the replacement. Two replaces the couple in question, but any accident, which becomes a certainty on statistically significant numbers, reduces this below replacement. Only three or more children per couple offer a reasonable guarantee of survival of the magical lines”, he finished.

She thought about it for a while. “What about dilution of wealth? If you split property into multiple family branches, it will dilute rather than concentrate”.

“This is of marginal importance, because it is offset by greater earning power of more contributing wizards and witches. Also, the argument is moot because the alternative is biological extinction. For instance, if you had multiple siblings, the greatest problem would be who inherits the big house. If you are alone, the greatest problem is extinction of your line. Literally, pick one or the other”, he offered.

“Your argument, as far as I can tell, is perfectly valid, and I accept it”, she conceded. “The argument that magical families should have at least three children is water-tight, and any opposition to it is not reasonable”.

He couldn’t believe it. “Wait, I won?” He smiled widely.

“No, we won”, she smiled back. “We solved a problem. It benefits both of us. It keeps our community alive. It prevents our extinction. It makes the war irrelevant and unnecessary. It makes the issue of integrating muggle-born wizards moot. The only problem that remains is marrying outright muggles. I think I can say with conviction that I am not at all happy with how that looks, statistically speaking.”

“I have to agree”, Harry nodded. “Whilst I am pretty convinced that marrying muggle-born wizards will not dilute magical blood, and instead offers a solution to inbreeding of the magical community, marrying non-magical people does solve inbreeding but introduces such a high statistical probability of non-magical births, or reduction of magical potential, that I would be extremely disinclined to play with that kind of fire. So, while this argument isn’t over, I think we can agree that the risk to reward ratio is unfavourable”.

“I have to agree”, she smiled. “So, we now need to start making babies and not stop before three, and hopefully stop killing each other in stupid internecine wars”.

“Look how sweaty we are”, he pointed at their joined hands. “This was stressful”.

“Of course it’s stressful. If we miss something, the price is too big to pay”, she shrugged. “But we can relax now and change the topic to something more soothing”.

“About that; do you want to go with me to the Yule ball?”, Harry smiled sheepishly.

“Of course I do”, she smiled brightly. “I am happy that you thought of me. After all, I was afraid I still occupy a non-girl category for you somehow”.

Harry thought about it. “No, that’s not quite true. Your femininity is an overwhelming force. But you do occupy a special category for me. You are frightening. And I don’t mean it because you’re dangerous or powerful, although you of course are. I mean it because you matter so much, that I get jitters before I come to you with an argument. I hold your hand to see if something hurt you, because I know exactly what your hand does when I do, so I can instantly stop and apologize. I feel that twitch of yours like my own pain. But every other girl somehow fits a completely different group for me, and I don’t know why that is”.

“I don’t like something about this”, she frowned. “It can mean two things, and I really, really don’t like option two”.

…

Lyra walked slowly to their favourite spot overseeing the lake. She wanted to tell him that she understood now about Voldemort. They are now on the same side, but he’s the only one she can tell without fatal consequences. She had a feeling he might be there.

She saw him, but he wasn’t alone. He was with another girl – Cho Chang. She was crying, likely over Cedric Diggory dying. Harry was comforting her. They embraced. Then they kissed.

Lyra’s heart froze. She just stood there and her tears welled up.

It was their place. That was supposed to be her. He never kissed her like that. They were together, they were courting for years. They were so intimate, that their thoughts and bodies worked like a single unit. Everybody told her they look like they are already married, and she felt like they were, like it’s a certainty. She turned and ran, didn’t stop until she was alone and she cried. Then she went out, and saw Harry and Cho holding hands in the corridor. He looked at her, saw her, and she couldn’t bear it, so she turned away and ran again. She didn’t cry again; she felt dead, hard, and anger welled up. This was betrayal. It was ugly, dirty, violent betrayal. He threw away everything they had, everything they were, he trampled on her heart, on her soul, and replaced the scary girl for one of the safe, soft ones, the ones that don’t make him scared. The one from the “actual girls” category. She felt humiliated, dirty and ugly, unlovable and discarded, and she felt such hatred of him for making her feel that way that she never thought herself capable of such emotion. And then she looked at him like that, and he froze. She knew him well enough to be able to read his thoughts from his eyes. He’s thinking I decided for Voldemort now that he’s back. Stupid imbecile. Her anger flared even hotter, and he ran away. I guess I’m truly scary now, she thought. Scary, hurt, discarded, replaced, alone, forever. I will never have children. My family name will die with me. I will never again love, or feel loved.

The light in her heart died. Two years of darkness, anger, humiliation and fury passed, when she kept herself alive only for her parents.

And then he struck her, and he shot to kill. His Sectumsempra against her Crucio, and he won. He held her broken, bleeding body, and begged for her to come back to him, that she’s everything to him. And as her life was fading, the light in her heart came back.

Later, she though she may have imagined it, but the light persisted. And then, at the funeral, he came to her, and told her he loved her and was hers if she would have him, and her heart, her soul, her life, it all came back at once and never again went away. Except for those five minutes when she thought him dead. But let’s never, ever think about that.

…

As their third child was born and she looked at her green eyes, she smiled.

Option one. I really, really like option one.

“Nice”, she nodded appreciatively as she saw him approaching her secluded spot overseeing the lake. “I’m glad you wore them”.

“It would be impolite to refuse the gift from my princess”, Harry smiled back. “But why?”

“Those rags on your sublime majesty were an eyesore, my lord prince”, she seamlessly switched into the princess thing. “My honour demanded that something be done about it, and now seemed preferable to later”.

He accepted the hand she offered, and they sat down together. “Hermione made me a list of literature I will need in order to hope to keep up with you”, he grinned. “It’s a big list”.

“Excellent”, she smiled like a sun. “In the mean time, I will teach you self-respect by respecting you as you deserve”.

“You are scary, you know that?”, he nodded in dismay. “But there’s something I would like to talk to you about. You see, it appears that Sirius Black is out of Azkaban and seems to be after me. Can you tell me the history behind all that, because I’m completely clueless and you mentioned that your mother was a Black?”

“I do know a thing or two about that”, she nodded, serious now. “However, none of it makes any sense. You see, the story that goes around now was that Sirius was somehow a secret follower of the Dark Lord, who betrayed your parents, killed Peter Pettigrew and destroyed half a street, and was locked up in Azkaban as a murderer and a Death Eater”.

“That’s the story I heard”, he nodded.

“Well, here’s the thing. It’s good that you’re sitting because this is going to be hard to hear. The actual Death Eater in the house of Black was his brother, Regulus. He disappeared after being disillusioned about the Dark Lord, which means he was probably killed for treason. Sirius, on the other hand, was known as the family traitor of the house of Black. He didn’t want to have anything to do with them and their obsession with the Dark Lord, pure blood and dark magic. I’ve frequently visited their town house with my mom and I can understand why. The place was grim and dark, full of dark artefacts, and even their house elf was mostly insane and weird, regardless of how politely he treated me and called me ‘the young mistress’. My mom saw it all as background and seemed not to perceive it, but I found it creepy. Apparently, Sirius would agree. He mostly hung out with your father as a kid, and they were inseparable. Snape hates both of them, because there seems to be some bad blood between them, and Peter Pettigrew was some kid who followed them like a pathetic creature. Sirius Black was your godfather, Harry. He was the best friend of James Potter and Lily Evans. The Death Eaters continue to see him as a staunch enemy. There is absolutely no reason for me to believe that he ever switched sides, or felt anything but hatred and contempt for the Dark Lord. There’s something seriously wrong with that story. I think you should be very careful, just in case I’m wrong, but you should ask questions first, and reserve curses until you know what’s going on and who the actual enemy is”, she finished.

Harry was stunned. “He’s my godfather?”

“Yes”, Lyra nodded. “I am not certain enough to actually bet my life that he was framed by the death eaters, but close enough”.

“Is there anything you don’t know, princess?”, Harry managed a smile.

“I don’t know who actually betrayed your parents and framed Sirius, my lord prince”, she grinned. “However, I think asking Sirius himself might be the best way to find out”. She thought for a second. “Anyway, how did you find me here?”

“Wizard, remember?”, he grinned. Also, he thought, in possession of the Marauder’s map, that showed a solitary dot labelled “Lyra Malfoy” by the lake. But why did it also show the name Peter Pettigrew near Ron? Also, why are we still holding hands?

“Did you survive?”, Ron looked up towards Harry as he entered the common room.

Harry looked at him in silence for a few breaths. “Ron, that was the most frightening experience I ever had, and I met Voldemort in person”, he whispered.

“Did she curse you?”, Ron rose in alarm.

“I wish”, Harry smiled, as Hermione joined them. “Being cursed, hated, beaten and bullied is something I can deal with. This was like talking to Dumbledore, only if in the end I wiped Dumbledore’s tears away and hugged him to make him calm himself. It’s nothing like I ever experienced in my life. I can’t share what we talked about, because it’s private, but man…”

“You mean, the enemy has a point?”, Hermione smiled.

“I don’t think the enemy is the right word any more. She feels like a library of books I’ve never read, with ideas I never thought of, arguments the power of which I never imagined, and all the ideas are expressed and finished by a mind I cannot hope to match. Even if she’s wrong somewhere, she’s better and smarter than me, and she’s also a better person than me. I feel completely, positively dwarfed. It’s not that she has a point. She has such a mind-bogglingly good and devastating point that I can’t even figure out how to approach arguing with it”, Harry sighed. “I think she could beat Dumbledore in an argument. I’m like nothing next to her.”

“Good”, Hermione nodded. “I’ll make you a list of books to read. This will force you to stop slacking”.

“Oh, the mail is arriving”, Ron perked up.

A package for Harry arrived. “Where did that come from?”, he wondered. “There’s a note, it says: ‘For next time; LM’. Emporio Armani? What the heck?”

Hermione giggled. “Let me see. Yeah, she got you proper clothes, and they seem to be exactly the right size. She’s good”.

“Blimey”, Ron looked miffed. “Why can’t I have a scary girlfriend who buys me clothes?”

Hermione slapped him on the head and smiled. “Step up your game, Weasley, and things might happen”.

“Hello, princess”, Harry smiled, approaching Lyra who was reading something in the hallway.

“Your graceful lordship honours me with his presence, my lord prince”, she closed the book and curtsied elegantly.

Harry froze and fumbled incoherently. “I’m, sorry, it was supposed to be a joke”.

“Oh come on, Harry. It was funny, and I went along with it. For someone who is friends with Granger, I would expect you to be able to keep it running for at least three lines”, she smiled brilliantly. She offered him her hand and he took it effortlessly, as they sat down.

“There’s a lesson for me: don’t joke with a girl who’s smarter than you”, he grinned.

“I’m not smarter than you, Harry. It’s just that I wasn’t raised in a barn.”

“Well, about that. I have a question for you. I understand that you were brought up as a pureblood aristocrat. You’re actually a proper Princess. It doesn’t even feel like a joke. I also had the chance to feel your kindness, sophistication and respectfulness. It’s absolutely lovely. However, it seems to be restricted to a very select group of people, like myself, and when you’re addressing people like Ron and Hermione, you feel like a completely different person, and I find it jarring and hurtful. Why is that? What’s your actual problem with them? You seem to think Hermione is smart”.

“Of course she’s smart. She’s smarter than me. I could hold my own in most cases but she would eventually outclass me. Her brains don’t have anything to do with it. I don’t think she’s stupid. I think she’s an existential, extinction-level threat to our civilization and our way of life”, she replied seriously.

“But why?”, Harry was utterly shocked. “She’s a good person. She’s kind, generous, protective, brave and perceptive. She would never hurt anyone”.

“It’s not about her as a person, Harry. I would actually agree with your assessment of her. However, I will have to ask your permission to use an analogy that you might find offensive or hurtful”, she looked at him expectingly.

“Go ahead. I really want to know what you really think”, he nodded.

“Do you know what a mule is?”

“An offspring of a donkey and a horse”, he offered.

“Exactly. It’s also sterile, in a sense that it can’t have offspring of its own. We wizards and witches bond for life. Unlike the horrid muggles, we don’t have marital infidelity, divorce, pre-marital sex and other horrors. Every boy and a girl is a virgin until marriage. We usually don’t re-marry if our partner dies before us, and stay alone and faithful until death reunites us. So, if we commit to the person we can’t have children with, or the child is sterile, or non-magical, two separate, precious lines of our magical world, with ancient traditions and heritage, unique stories we tell our children before bed time, magical jewellery, books and artefacts passed across untold generations, it is all gone, lost forever. There’s few of us. Each of us is precious and unique. We can’t be replaced with similar specimens. We can’t be replaced once we’re gone. Hermione is a threat to us the way a mule is a threat to a horse that mates for life. Once he commits to her, his heritage is lost forever to the sands of time, Harry. It’s potential tragedy. Not certain – there are cases like your mother, who married a pureblood wizard, and they had you. You are a glorious victory that was snatched from the jaws of a potential horrible tragedy, because if not for you, magically powerful and precious as you are, the Potter line, ancient almost as this castle, would have been lost forever”, she finished emphatically, with incredible passion reflecting in her beautiful face. Harry was stunned, completely out of words.

“I will have to think about this. I never even considered any of the possibilities that you mention. Thank you for telling me this, Lyra”, he nodded appreciatively.

“But what about Ron and his family? They are purebloods? Why the contempt? I’ve seen how your dad feels about Ron’s dad. I don’t understand the implication, other than it’s about poverty”.

She took a few breaths to calm herself down after her passionate speech. “Yes, it’s about poverty”, she nodded. “Some in the pureblood community use a term ‘blood traitor’ for magical families who don’t care about blood purity, and Weasleys qualify. However, neither I nor my father care about that”, she continued. “Arthur Weasley had many offers of promotion at his job in the Ministry. Those would come with a significant increase in earnings and prestige. He turned them all down. Do you know why?”, she prompted.

“He has an interest in muggles”, Harry offered.

“Exactly. He is treating his job as an extension of his hobby. He is ‘following his passions’, as they would put it. He’s just trying to be happy. Essentially, due to his childish selfishness, he is condemning his family to a life of poverty and squalor, because he cares more about his hobby and ‘being happy’ than the wellbeing of the family that’s been entrusted to him. He’s a terrible patriarch, and thinking about how he allows his children to suffer brings tears to my eyes, Harry, and it makes my father furious”, she looked at him with eyes full of both tears and perfect honesty. “Harry, they are all about ‘feeling good’ at the moment. Molly is all about everybody having nice food, a warm bed and feeling happy. They don’t care that they can’t buy decent clothes, new books, that Ron couldn’t buy a new wand in his first year and instead had the broken one that backfired spells at him. Do you understand how much seeing this hurts my feeling of duty, decency and propriety?”, a tear dropped down her cheek. “I want to wake them up somehow and make them remember their duty and what’s right. However, they are so self-righteous that they never listen, always raising the issue of the Dark Lord as if it has anything to do with it. We are furious at them because we see those precious, wonderful pureblood children in rags and squalor while they should be princes and queens. I could never get tired of beating Arthur Weasley with a stick, even if my hand hurt”, she managed to laugh through her tears.

Harry thought he was stunned before, but never in a million years would he suspect this to be her actual reason.

He wiped her tear with his finger. “I’m really, truly sorry for misjudging you, Lyra”, he said and bowed to her, the way he saw the professors bow to each other, and hoped he did it right. “You are absolutely precious”.

She embraced him and just held him until she calmed down.

“Can I please join you?” Harry addressed the beautiful platinum blonde in Slytherin uniform sitting alone at the table.

“Potter. It will be my honour”, she bowed lightly and smiled.

“Again, I must apologise for my behaviour. Your… intervention yesterday reminded me that you’re actually a girl”, he started.

She just looked at him with the look of trying to understand if that’s some kind of a joke. “I would expect my physical appearance to leave little room for ambiguity in that regard”, she smiled.

He blushed. “I’m sorry, that sounded incredibly dumb. Of course it’s absolutely obvious that you’re a girl. What I meant was that I thought of you as some kind of a hostile bully figure without emotions or a soul, intent on offending people just for entertainment; someone powerful who oppresses the weak and the defenceless”, he fumbled.

“And you saw yourself as the noble knight, defender of the downtrodden, slayer of the impersonal soulless bullies of all kinds?”, she grinned.

He was obviously uncomfortable. “Unfortunately, that does sound too close”.

“So, we might as well start with the obvious. I am very much a girl. I am a daughter of Narcissa Malfoy, née Black, and Lucius Malfoy. I am thirteen years old. I grew up in the Malfoy Manor, as the only child of my parents, who treated me with utmost love and care my whole life, and I love them with all my heart. I am a pureblood witch, from an unbroken line of pureblood witches and wizards reaching back for untold centuries. You are very much a boy. You are a son of Lily Evans, a very talented muggle-born witch, and James Potter, a pureblood wizard from the ancient pureblood line reaching back to Ignotus Peverell. On the wizard side, your blood line is as ancient and respectable as mine; in fact, it’s all-but-worshipped and wrought into legend. You father was a talented Chaser, also in Gryffindor, and the apple obviously didn’t fall far from the three. Your personal fortune is one of the greatest in the wizarding world, second only to that of Malfoy and Lestrange families. All in all, in the wizarding community you and I are both famous, esteemed and powerful. So, will you please explain how does one of the most powerful, noble, revered, influential and wealthy persons in our world get to consider himself an underdog in the noble fight against a girl of identical social status?”, she smiled with the exquisite charm he never noticed before.

“You really did your homework on me. In fact, you seem to know more about me than I do”, he scratched his ear. “Peverell”?

“They were one of the first great families that went extinct in the male line. This means they only had female children and their family name died out. This fate, unfortunately, awaits my family due to the fact that I’m a girl, and the only child of my parents” She looked almost guilty. “Eventually, their line produced you as the final surviving heir”.

“So you are saying that I am the last heir of the Peverell line, and you are the last heiress of the Malfoy line, and we are some kind of wizarding nobility?” He all but expected her to say that she’s joking.

“Quite so. We don’t actually have nobility in the muggle sense, but you and I would be the equivalent of a duke and a duchess”, she confirmed. “With the difference that there’s no royalty above us”.

“Damn”. He rubbed his forehead. “There goes my claim on the noble underdog status”.

“Welcome to the rarified summit of the oppressor class”, she joked. “We might go hunting foxes one day, to complete the impression”.

“So let me get this straight. You have approached me as an equal because we’re both some kind of wizarding royalty. I treated you horribly because I saw you as some kind of a spoiled princess who treats lower people like second class citizens. You got annoyed because you found that horribly offensive. And you’re really quite nice when I stop growling and sneering at you and talk to you like a normal person”, he smiled.

“Oh, I’m probably quite spoiled. I can’t say you’re wrong. I was isolated in a very narrow social circle and this school environment is quite new for me. I’m still learning the implicit assumptions and expectations of people from different communities and social environments. I keep making blunders, but please don’t ascribe this to malice. I have my background, and you have yours. I would assume you didn’t have it easy either”.

“You are right. I still keep pretending to know what I’m doing, but almost every day there’s something new, and completely unfamiliar, while everybody expects me to know everything”, he shrugged.

“So, how about this. Let’s compare notes, and I promise not to judge you. If you could show me the same courtesy, I would be grateful. We can teach each other. I was born and raised among witches and wizards. You were born and raised among the muggles. I suspect neither of us can fully comprehend what that even means. So, I recommend that we just talk, compare notes, tell the truth, not judge or attack each other, and enjoy each other’s company over pumpkin juice and apple pie. I actually like you very much, or I wouldn’t have been offended by the way you treated me. Trust me, if someone unimportant treated me that way, I wouldn’t even notice. But since you’re important to me, I was furious” She looked at him with that clean, sincere look that was the trademark of her personality.

“I would like that very much. Your yesterday’s stunt made quite an impression on me. The first part was that you are brave, smart, dignified and not to be messed with. The second part is that you are a gentle girl with feelings that can be hurt, and not some generic monster I imagined”, he smiled.

“I do have feelings”, she smiled back. “And they can definitely be hurt. Especially when people assume that the powerful part of me means that I don’t feel the blows. I am well known for crying into my pillow when my feelings are hurt. I would greatly appreciate it if you didn’t treat me in ways that would make this a common occurrence”.

“Can we do something that would prevent this? Hurting a girl’s feelings is not something I am proud of.”

“We can learn more about each other, and promise to protect each other’s feelings from harm as if they were our own”, she nodded.

“I would like that. What exactly do you have in mind?”

“For instance, be aware that I never used knowledge about your family to try to score a point. It’s off-limits, because I know it would hurt you, and I don’t want to do that. I assume your parents are sacred to you, the way mine are sacred to me.”

“You are a better person than me, I’m afraid. I did attack your parents on multiple occasions, and if that had you crying into your pillow, I apologise. However, I have a problem here. Your parents are closely connected to Voldemort. If they are actively politically involved in this project, it might be impossible for me to grant them the kind of immunity that I would otherwise gladly give them in order to protect your feelings”.

“This is fair”, she conceded. “Purely political attacks are valid, and if my parents happen to be involved in things you find hurtful or offensive, it is a legitimate target for you. I might still cry into my pillow because of it, but I promise not to take it against you”, she smiled.

“I am really regretting the fact that I missed out on this for two years”, Harry sighed ruefully. “You are just very nice to be with”.

“I’m glad to hear it, and it’s the same on my part”, a brilliant, glowing smile illuminated her face.

“Your hand was cold and sweaty yesterday”, Harry noted. “I took it as proof that you were truly stressed because you honestly thought that I might choose to kill you”.

“You are correct”, she nodded. “I never jest with those things. If I offer you an option to take my life, the option is real. I did, however, put my trust in your gentlemanly decency, hoping it would protect me, as it did in the end”, she smiled. “As for you holding my hand, I in fact enjoyed the experience, because it was the first time you treated me with respect, and I like being treated with respect, rather than being sneered at”, she gave him a lopsided smile.

“I promise to keep treating you with respect. But about that, what can I call you?”

“Please, call me Lyra. You can call me Malfoy if you want to be formal for some reason, but between us, I feel more comfortable being on a first name basis”.

“Call me Harry, then. Potter only if I mess things up, I guess”, he smiled.

“I will keep it in mind”, she smiled back.

“You are such a nice girl. I’m really sorry to have treated you poorly before”, he confessed.

“Thank you. Let’s eat something, I’m starving”, she smiled.

…

“So, how was she?”, Ron was curious.

“Polite. Nice. Sincere. Very open about being hurt by my rudeness. Smart as Hermione, honestly. I had to focus to keep up with her, like I’m in class and it’s a professor speaking. She speaks like they do – complex, large sentences, all of it perfectly thought out. I feel dumb as a brick compared to her. I only had Hermione so far make me feel like I have to actually work to follow her, but Lyra is like that too”, Harry reminisced.

“Blimey”, Ron mumbled. “I half expected she’ll stab you or poison your pumpkin juice”.

“Oh no, it was nothing like that. It felt like talking to a professor who is being very nice, but you need to take remedial lessons because you messed up”, Harry laughed. “She knows more about my family than I do. Also, she sees the world in a completely different way than me, and there seems to be much more to her pureblood pride thing than I suspected. I thought it’s just a hate group like the Skinheads. But they are more like classic nobility with lineages, ancient books, stories and legends.”

“Skin what?”, Ron was confused.

“Skinheads. A muggle thing with thugs shaving their heads and hating foreigners and all kinds of other people”, Hermione sat with them. “I surmise you survived lunch with the enemy?”, she turned to Harry.

“Honestly, she doesn’t feel like an enemy. She feels as smart as the professors, or you”, Harry greeted her, and she slightly squirmed at the compliment. “I’m not completely comfortable with her yet because we hardly know each other, me keeping the distance for two years and all that, but I feel like I missed out. Also, there’s something about her that makes me feel inferior in every way, although it’s not anything she’s doing”.

“She’s not dumbing herself down or making herself smaller for anyone”, Hermione nodded wisely. “You’re not inferior to her. From where I’m standing, you two look very much alike. But while she’s being her full self, you’re being barely more than half, in a normal interaction.”

“What does that even mean?”, Ron wondered.

“It means that she’s honest on a level I have never seen. You’ve seen the stunt with challenging Harry to be done with it and just kill her if he hates her so much. That kind of honesty, courage and straightforwardness. None of us are that brave or honest. We’re all protecting our feelings from hurt, we’re not being direct, hiding behind humour and that stuff. She would openly say things we would be too weak or ashamed of to say out loud. It’s the kind of emotional courage that makes us all feel small and inferior, not just Harry”, she finished, nodding.

“Wait, are you actually impressed? I though she hurt your feelings with her insults?”, Ron scratched his head in confusion.

“I am, and she did. However, I’m objective enough to be able to distance myself from the situation and judge it properly. You saw her yesterday – speaking in complicated, adult language of nobility, with authority that made Professor McGonagall stand at attention and obey her, and raising the stakes so high that she offered her life. Who wouldn’t be impressed?”, Hermione looked at him directly.

“Well, I definitely was. In fact, more ashamed of myself than impressed, but definitely impressed”, Harry added.

“She definitely wants to be friends with you, Harry, and I think it’s because she considers you her social equal. I know, you consider everybody to be your equal, but that’s not how she was raised. She has a very aristocratic view of society and almost nobody is her equal in the hierarchy she was taught, but you seem to be, and she cares very much about your opinion. Don’t think she’d do the yesterday’s stunt if it was someone else”.

“How do you know so much about it and you never even talked to her properly?”, Harry was stunned, because she was right on the money.

“I pay attention, Harry. I have eyes. I was there yesterday”, she rolled her eyes.

“We were all there yesterday, but you’re just wickedly smart”, Ron concluded.