𝐏𝐎𝐋𝐀𝐑 || H.P

𝟓𝟐

Harry POV;

It's not a lie if he never tells her.

It's not a lie if she never asks.

"She gets to come with you, doesn't she?"

"No, actually," Harry responded to his redhead friend, after making sure he shut the door to the room where Alicia slept soundly. "None of you do."

Hermione had arrived at the burrow that night. "Don't be daft, Harry."

"I'm not being daft!" He urged. "Besides, I haven't told her anything yet."

"Rubbish!" Ron wailed. "She could've snogged her way through all of your secrets!"

"Ronald!" Hermione yelped.

Harry's cheeks heated, and he gulped. "I'm serious, she doesn't know."

Hermione sighed. "It's best if it stays that way."

Harry's eyes glanced between the both of them. "After all that she's done, you still don't trust her."

Hermione shook her head quickly. "It's not that-"

"I don't understand how you do!" Said Ron.

Harry groaned. "Ron, she saved your brother from a werewolf bite. You couldn't even pass first year charms class!"

The red haired boy went silent.

"All I mean is that it is safer for her, and the lot of us if she doesn't know anything."

"I'm not lying to her."

Hermione pursed her lips. "Is it really a lie if you never tell her?"

Harry was many things, but he was not irrational. Alicia Shallow was already on the run from death itself, having escaped it's grasp not more than a mere week ago. Adding salt to her horrid, bloody gash of a wound would lead to something so much worse than her demise. Something Harry could not, nor want to fathom.

It's not a lie if he never tells her.

It's not a lie if she never asks.
-

"I'm running out of clothes because of you, you know."

"Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't think to pack my entire wardrobe when my arm was literally splitting apart."

The number seven was imprinted in bright yellow on the back of my—his red sweatshirt. Harry glared at me from where he was sitting at his desk, fidgeting with a chain. I flipped the comforter onto myself until I was under a fat, puffy cocoon. Only my head stuck out of the sheets as I watched the sun creep up in the distance. Then, I looked to his hands again, which were sort of cradling the locket from the previous chain.

"Where'd you get it?" I asked, mindlessly making conversation just to hear his voice again.

"Hm?"

"The locket. Where'd you get it?"

Harry stiffened in his chair. The square pendant in his hand was now covered by his palm. "Found it... on the ground somewhere."

Now interested, I shuffled around, trying to get a better look at his face, because his words were nowhere near convincing.

"What's wrong?" It seems that I've asked him this question over one hundred times this past week, never getting the correct answer.

"Nothing."

There it is.

"That's not true," I say, with exasperation.

His contemplation was a clear glass window. "You're right. It's not."

And by this, I no longer had any solid predictions.

"Everything is wrong, Alicia. Can't you see? Our entire world is wrong."

"Well, that's sort of far fetched-"

"No." He's almost spilling out of his chair. "You can't say that because I'm telling the truth. I'm telling you what's wrong."

I slide out of the covers, steadily making my way towards the sunrise by his desk; ultimately looking at him instead, placing my hand on his fisted one, containing the locket.

"I think my question was too broad for you to answer."

"I think so," Harry grudgingly replied.

There were so many things I could've asked to clarify.

What's wrong with you?

Are you okay?

Why are you hiding the locket?

However, I didn't apparate myself here just to argue with a wall of dry replies.

"I don't look that bad in your clothing, do I?"

If Harry Potter was a fan of something, it was changing the subject. His eyes relaxed, and so did the rest of his body as he dazed up at my torso. "No, you don't. You look brilliant."

His gaze was interrupted, though, by an owl foolishly slamming into the window, and then falling into the array of flower pots on the windowsill.

We both jerked up and stared at the fallen bird, holding a letter in it's beak. Harry quickly opened the window and retrieved the letter. That motion alone was enough to snap the screwy owl into consciousness, letting it swiftly fly away towards the now risen sun.

"Strange," I murmured.

Harry examined the note before handing it to me. "It's for you."

I hurriedly snatched it away from him, bracing myself for a howler, and the cruel, ruthless words about to be said to me.

Instead, I found the Hogwarts seal stamped at the top, while a medal fell out and clattered on the floor.

Miss Shallow,

It is my pleasure to honor you with the position of Head Girl in your seventh year of studies. The leadership you have shown is strong and can not be undone with a simple hex or curse.

Please take this information to your own regard. I wish you the best and hope to see you at the prefects meeting before the school year begins.

Below is your book and course list for the following year.

Sincerely,

Minerva McGonagall,
Headmistress of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Harry had bent down to pick up the metal object on the ground. He scanned it with knitted brows. "Head Girl?"

Without bearing my eyes away from the note, I nodded. "Do you think she knows?"

He absentmindedly placed the medal next to his now revealed locket. "It's McGonagall. I'm almost certain she knows."

Without saying anything at all, I got the chance to look at the locket. Sometimes it's better to just be patient with him. He could have been congratulating me, hugging me, kissing me, but my eyes were placed intently on the square pendant on his desk.

The green one, which I knew once belonged to Salazar Slytherin himself.