HEATHENS - Harry Potter ✔

CHAPTER EIGHT

Kiera, Hermione, and Ron sat among forgotten classroom equipment. Due to their lack of a shared common room and the library being a no talking zone, they had had to go elsewhere to spend time together. Harry had recommended the Room of Requirement, of course, but Kiera and Hermione had concluded that it was an unreasonable distance away and since they had found an abandoned classroom that wasn't on the seventh floor, they had started to meet up there.

The only issue was the curfew, but as Harry had the Invisibility Cloak and the rest were prefects, in the case that they were caught, they could safely claim to be doing duties. The classroom seemed to be used for storage space, most likely of things that Peeves broke, because three legged chairs and desks had been piled up along the walls, and there were items from unidentified students that the poltergeist must have nicked.

It was late on Saturday evening and the three of them were seated on plush (though either doxy eaten or torn with the filling poking out) cushions that Ron had found squished into drawer. They were waiting for Harry to return from his first lesson with Dumbledore, and to pass the time, Kiera was writing her essay on the principles of re-materialisation with her Transfiguration book open on the floor next to her, Hermione was trying to summon random objects around the room using non-verbal spells, and Ron was reading Quidditch Through the Ages in hopes of finding tips for try-outs that he would have missed the last three times he had read the book.

Kiera's brow furrowed, a line of confusion etching across her forehead. "Hey, Mione –?"

"Don't call me that," she snapped before Kiera would finish asking her question.

"What? Mione?"

"Yes," Hermione said impatiently.

Kiera smirked, though managed to force it off her face quite convincingly. "You don't like it?" she asked with a credible tone of innocence, knowing she could annoy her with it. "Well, I think that 'Hermione' is a bit of a mouthful –"

"If I'd wanted to have a nickname, I'd have made it happen by now," Hermione retaliated. "If you call me that, I'll start calling you Aldi,"

"You wouldn't," Kiera gasped with feigned shock and offence.

"Then don't call me Mione."

"Okay, okay, Hermione –?" she began but just then the door opened, and Harry entered the room.

All questions about re-materialisation gone, the three immediately stopped their various activities and sat up straight eagerly. He had barely taken a step into the room when Ron already said, impatiently, "Well? What did he teach you?"

Sitting down, Harry said, "Nothing really."

All three excited expressions morphed into confusion.

"He showed me memories."

He told them how Dumbledore had shown him a memory of Bob Ogden and his unfortunate interaction with the Gaunt family, who just happened to be Tom Riddle's relatives, and how Merope Gaunt had used a love potion on Tom Riddle Senior, how they had gotten married and she had become pregnant, how she had then seized the use of love potion in the belief that the Riddle had fallen in love with her properly, and how he had left.

No one interrupted Harry as he spoke, and it took all of five minutes after he had stopped talking for the silence to be broken.

"Wow ... I mean – wow – this is all so fascinating," said Hermione. "Seeing into Voldemort's past like that. I bet no one's ever done that before, apart from Dumbledore of course."