A Promise Unspoken

CHAPTER 3

She had been silenced and Hermione Granger could not be more livid about it if she tried. First she had been summoned to the Headmaster's office, receiving his owl at breakfast the day after the incident in the library, where she had been told that she had done to right thing of reporting the senior students. Then she'd been told that though it had been the right thing to put a stop to such behaviour on school grounds and that she wasn't in trouble for doing so, she'd been asked politely not to tell anyone else what she'd seen.

Hermione had been beyond appalled when Dumbledore had gone on to explain that the Board of Governors were unhappy with things at Hogwarts after an incident of teenage pregnancy the year before. That if the story of more sexual behaviour taking place on school grounds was discovered, the school might be forced to close. That the students involved had both been given detention and had their privileges suspended until after the New Year. He'd also told her to be on her guard lest the Slytherin boy involved – Thorfinn Rowle – or any of his friends tried to intimidate, hurt or hex her.

She'd been told to report anything they did to her and they would be dealt with accordingly. Told that she wasn't to mention to anyone else what she'd seen in the library.

As if that hadn't left a bad enough taste in her mouth – not that she'd planned on blabbing to anyone else that she'd seen a boy's genitals for the first time or that she'd witnessed such transgressions at all – she'd then been asked to stay back at the end of class after her Potions lesson. Professor Snape had seen fit to inform her that tattle-tales were not taken to kindly within Hogwarts and that she would do well to stop being such an insufferable know-it-all and to mind her own business.

By the time she'd left his office after the verbal dressing-down and the veiled threats he offered her when it came to her conduct pertaining to his Slytherin students, Hermione had been in tears and had been shaking with fury and a little fear. The man was scary at best, not to mention horrible. To add insult to injury, he'd also reiterated that she shouldn't speak of anything like that again and that unless a student's life was in danger, it was no concern of hers what other students did in their free time on school grounds. He'd even hinted that she had best be on her guard when it came to Thorfinn Rowle because the boy was likely to exact his revenge on her in a most unpleasant manner.

Since then, Hermione had been on edge. She saw people breaking the rules and she didn't say anything. She kept her hand down and didn't offer to answer any more questions in Snape's classes and she had trouble even looking in Dumbledore's direction. She was positively disgusted with the actions of both teachers. They were essentially condoning illegal behaviour for the sake of avoiding investigation of the institution and the sake of disgusting, perverted boys who happened to be good at Quidditch. Rowle hadn't even been removed from the Quidditch team or had his captaincy stripped from him, despite his behaviour.

He was extremely creepy and Hermione found herself rather alarmed at all times whenever there was even the faintest chance that he might hex her or say something to her or even hurt her. She'd spotted him watching her across the Great Hall a few times, a cruel little smile on his face as though he were amused by something pertaining to her. Not knowing what he had planned was like torture and Hermione gained a new depth of understanding when it came to the psychological effects of anticipation as she waited to see how she would be repaid for dobbing on him.

She'd begun paying attention whenever she was in the corridors, always on the lookout for the hulking blonde boy. He was hard to miss when he was actually around, given his size. Taller than everyone in the entire school except for Hagrid, the Groundskeeper, he towered over his classmates and most of the teachers. His golden blonde hair gleamed in the firelight, cascading haphazardly around his shoulders like a huge lion's mane, untamed and rather intimidating, making him look all the more fierce and wild somehow. Like he was a lion himself, just waiting to pounce upon his prey.