I Learned Your Pulse

"You've helped me in tenfold, Hermione."

"Wow," said David, setting down his pencil and notepad (which he laid face down, for future reference).

She'd come bursting into his office after telling the other competitor of the first task and leaving Brant and Viktor to the quarrel they'd gotten in about different types of brooms. She'd explained the entirety of the stage, everything about it, so quickly she had to start over and try not to get worked up. Her nerves were frayed badly. She was jittery and suspicious of everything, but felt safe when the classroom doors were closed and it was just her and David. Her shouts had left her speechless, and she sat on a desk, leaning back and closing her eyes, massaging her temples. David, sitting on his desk casually, who'd been looking outside at the ever-fainter sunlight, had immediately put every quite literally aside and listened intently, never once telling her to calm or slow down, which she appreciated immensely. If he had, she'd probably have lost her temper for no good reason whatsoever; and while they had a strict agreement that they were partners outside the normal schooling hours, it might've put the strain on her grades in his class, though she knew he'd never stoop so low.

"Wow," Hermione agreed.

"Well, it's not that bad," David said. "I can enchant a mirror to show you things you want, though I'll never be able to do something as strong as the Mirror of Erised, and we can have to practice fighting off a boggart -"

The idea of her facing her worst fear and of him seeing things she wanted sat her upright, and she said, "I can fight off a boggart just fine and I know what I'd see in the mirror." LIES! Her conscious screamed, but she continued. The main problem is opening the mirror. I didn't even know it could be opened," she added, mostly to herself.

"Oh, it can be opened," he said lightly, slipping easily off his desk and beginning a walk around the room.

"How do you know that?" Hermione demanded. "I didn't know that."

"History nobody thinks important enough to teach, and really, it's not," he said simply, striding in a calm way close to the walls, occassionally running his fingers softly over something. She watched him curiously. "So, you'll need a plan."

"Yes," she agreed. "I was thinking that I'd try a simple summoning charm first."

"A summoning charm?" he paused, his fingers on an old-looking box. "They'll have protections against that, won't they?"

"Maybe, but I'm guessing they won't," she said honestly, nodding once to emphasize her point. "It is a very basic spell, they might not have thought of it at all when putting up protections."

"Alright, fine," he agreed, moving again. "What would you summon?"

"A lock, if I see it, the boggart if I don't," she replied. "The boggart would have to leave the mirror to come to me, opening it firsthand but mostly ridding the mirror of it and allowing me to work my magic."

"Wise," he said. "Sounds like a plan."

"But what if they have enchantments against it?"

"What?" he paused again, his fingers back on his notepad now.

"What do you mean, 'what'?"

He smiled at her use of his own catch phrase. "You devised a plan based on sound reasoning, why question it and cause yourself more work?"

"It's sound, but skeptical. There are too many variables to have just one plan."

"Do you always plan like this?"

"I try, yes."

He sat back on his desk, looking thoughtful. "That's an awful lot of planning for a teenager," he said.

"As of right now, I am your equal in age and intelligence and everyting else," she said, purposely sounding snotty and turning hr nose up at him.

He turned his nose up at her, too, trying with great difficulty not to grin. "Not blood," he responded.

Had he been anyone else, she'd have been severely offended and would have ignored him entirely. But knowing he meant it jokingly and in mockery of the people she was also mocking, she laughed.

He laughed.

They both laughed.

And soon, they were both laughing so hard they could barely stay on their desks, and the room echoed their laughter heartily, adding something to the room that wasn't there before, though Hermione couldn't place it. They laughed and giggled and chuckled and chortled and snorted and guffawed to their heart's content. When neither could breathe because silent laughter was racking the last of the oxygen from their lungs, they gasped and sputtered for air, both of them seeing how the sky outside the window had darkened considerably. But it wasn't from nightfall, oh, no - the gray clouds had fallen over the bue sky menacingly, threatening to release tons of water in a minute or so. How the day had gone from gorgeous to depressingly dark was beyond her, but with an enormous CRASH! of thunder and CRACK of lightning, raindrops obscured the view of outside, leaving wet trail marks on the window, reminding Hermione, oddly enough, of George's face, looking at his twin as he lay dead on the ground before, the bare thread of existence from his last laugh fding from his sightless eyes.

That dampended the mood a bit.

Hermione walked over to the window, pausing only as she reahced it. She could smell how the rain smelled; that smell of nothing, of purity, of taking away all bad things, of fresh, wet grass, of trees that whispered as their leaves shook of dew drops into the sodden ground below. She could see nothing but the rain and hear nothing but its repeated roaring as it poured onto the roof, but she felt something else; something inside her chest grew light and feathery and floted upward, only to get caught in her throat. But it was a pleasant catch, nothing so big she was going to cry or so small it was irritating. It was a clean catch.

A large and pleasant hand placed itself upon her shoulder, and she need not have looked up to see David, staring out the window just as she did, that somthing caught in his throat to.

"Thank you," she said softly, "for helping me with this."

"You've helped me in tenfold, Hermione," he said, his voice gentle but not smooth; more like a fluffy pillow than a velvety ribbon.

They stared out the window, never fully realizing that the sky was dark of its own accord and that was why they couldn't see. Neither thought of what lurked behind the trees; neither thought of the meaning of David's words; neither thought of anything but how light they felt in that moment when surrounding by heaviness. Light and together. Partners.

Partners.