How to Prevent a War

Starting Summer

Harry still held his grade card in hand even as he situated himself with his friends in the train. He'd done great. All E's, except for Astronomy which was an A and Defence Against the Dark Arts and Care for Magical Creatures, which he had scored O's. Harry was pretty proud of himself, since he knew of only two who'd done better than him in their year: Hermione and, top of their year in every class, Tom of course.

Tom had all O's and could take any NEWT class he felt like taking while Hermione had a single E in Arithmancy, but still was number two, followed, Harry thought, by Octavian, Coral Rudderfort and Rosetta Diggory to make up the top 5. After seeing the list, Harry was pretty proud of himself for having scored 7th best in their year, right after Ellis Sandberg and before Lyall Lupin, who was the first Gryffindor in the list. The others in the top 10 were John Abbot and Clara Weasley.

Ron was being very disgruntled about only having placed 21st and kept complaining about how Harry had allowed himself to be 'converted' by Tom and Hermione, which only caused Hermione to scold him more for slacking so much while praising Harry for finally getting his priorities straight.

The others had all done pretty great as well. Ginny was number 11 in her own year and Fred and George were numbers 15 and 16 with each a total of 6 NEWT's. They both could have done better, but they'd been having far too much fun playing pranks to bother with homework.

Right now, though, he was a little less than happy with the conversation his friends were holding.

"I'm telling you, it wasn't Tom!" he exclaimed angrily.

"Then how do you explain the Dark Mark?!" Ginny hissed back.
"Four people died in the past month, Harry. And three of them were students!"

"I don't know," Harry confessed scowling.
"But it wasn't Tom! He was with me for two of the murders!"

"He could have had some of his Death Eaters do it for him," Fred suggested.

"Nicolas Lestrange for example," George agreed readily.
"Didn't Hermione read he'd kill his own brother for Tom?"

"Nicolas is a good guy. He won't kill anyone," Harry argued.
"And neither would Tom. At least not without a good reason."

"Love makes blind, mate," Ron told him shrugging.

Harry gave an aggravated groan and buried his face in his hands. Hermione sighed and smiled weakly at him.

"We all want to believe Tom is innocent, Harry," she told him softly.
"But you have to admit it's all very convenient, isn't it? Maybe we've been underestimating him."

"It's not Tom," Harry grumbled stubbornly, glaring at the brunette.

"Alright, I trust you," Ron replied grinning, stretching out.
"I don't trust Tom, but if you say it's not him, then it isn't."

Harry smiled gratefully at his best friend and wanted to thank him when the door to their compartment opened and Alphard's head popped in. The dark haired teen grinned widely when he saw Hermione and stepped in, planting a smacking kiss on his girlfriend's cheek and making the brunette giggle a bit.

"Hello, beautiful!" Alphard greeted.
"And others of course."

Megan leaned in too, along with Dimitri and Nicolas.

"Cosy," she said.
"Mind if we join?"

"Go ahead. George and I were just leaving anyway," Fred told her.

He and his twin got up and after a short goodbye to their friends and siblings, were off to find Summer and her friends. Nicolas and Dimitri gladly took their place while Megan planted herself right on Ron's lap, making the others laugh.