Chapter 3: The Paradigm of Uncertainty

In Hermione's dream, she was in the Chamber of Secrets. In reality, she had never set foot in the Chamber...but she'd heard so much of it from Ginny and Harry that at times she felt as if she'd shared that experience with them. She was standing in a corner, unseen, as Harry battled the basilisk; except it wasn't the prepubescent Harry who had actually done so, it was the adult Harry she knew today, and for some reason dream-Harry was still wearing the mustache and goatee that the real Harry had shaven off several years ago (he'd finally grown tired of hearing her joke that it made him look like Mephistopheles). The giant snake wove and lunged and Harry danced out of its reach, brandishing Godric Gryffindor's jeweled sword with his robe flying out behind him. A woman lay on the floor unconscious, but instead of Ginny it was Cho, decked out in her blue-and-orange Quidditch robes. Suddenly the basilisk turned its lampent eyes on Hermione; she cried out in horror, for instead of the yellow slit eyes of the king serpent, the basilisk had friendly-looking blue eyes. As she watched, its long snout contracted and its green skin paled...all at once, she was staring into the face of Ron Weasely there on the head of the snake. She reached out to touch his cheek, but before she could there was swish and a thunk of metal against flesh and the basilisk's head toppled off. Its body crumpled to the floor revealing Harry standing behind it, the dripping sword dangling loosely from one hand. He looked down at the snake that bore Ron's face and screamed, the sword clattering to the stones.

Hermione jerked herself awake, an unpleasant sheen of oily perspiration coating her body all over and her breath sobbing in and out of her mouth. She sat up, shaking all over, clutching the blankets to her chest, her head pounding and pounding...she blinked and looked around. The pounding wasn't just in her head, someone was at the front door and hammering on it with what sounded like a sledgehammer.

Hermione swung her legs out of bed, slipping her robe over her shoulders as she yanked open the door to her bedroom and hurried out into the gallery. Her room was oval-shaped and occupied the second story of one of the mansion's three towers; it opened onto the second-floor living gallery, a long comfortably furnished casual room that was open on one side and looked down into the glassed-in winter garden room. Laura's room was at the other end of the gallery; her bedroom door was standing open and Hermione could hear her quick footsteps padding down the curving main staircase. The door to the second-floor east wing hallway swung open and a bare-chested Justin stumbled out, rubbing his eyes and hitching up his pyjama bottoms. "Whazzabloodyhell?" he mumbled. They heard Laura opening the front door. Hermione flew down the stairs, her silk dressing gown billowing out behind her.

"What's the meaning of this, pounding on our door in the middle of the night?" Laura demanded stridently. Hermione came up next to her. Standing on the sheltered portico was a tall, bedraggled wizard clutching a broom in one hand, his hat and cloak drenched in the chilly, brackish rain that was half-heartedly falling from the night sky. "What do you want?"

"Is there a Dr. Granger here?" the messenger said.

Hermione stepped forward, clutching her robe tighter around herself. "I'm Dr. Granger." The wizard handed her a damp note, then turned without a word, mounted his broomstick and flew away. Hermione opened the note. Justin had shuffled his way down the stairs and he and Laura watched as Hermione read the message.

"What is it?" Laura asked, her tone hushed. Hermione sighed and crumpled the note with one clench of her fist.

"It's Harry," she said. "He's dead."

**********

Lupin sat in an exquisitely uncomfortable chair, waiting. He was only holding on to his composure with a very conscious effort, and he wasn't altogether sure that he'd be able to keep control of himself when he saw Hermione. Harry's body was lying in the infirmary covered with a sheet awaiting forensic examination to determine the exact cause of his death...of course it wasn't *their* infirmary. As soon as the death pronouncement had been made the entire dog-and-pony show had been moved to a civilian medical facility with regular wizard doctors, so that when his housemates arrived they wouldn't get an eyeful of top-secret locations and clandestine personnel. Argo had hurred off to meet them, concerned as ever with maintaining the secrecy of Harry's position. Lupin was past caring. Nothing here could tip them off, anyway. Hermione and the others knew that Lupin and Harry sometimes worked together, so his presence wouldn't seem strange. As if anything mattered anymore with Harry gone. Lupin was of half a mind to just blurt out the truth so that at least Harry's friends would have the scant comfort of knowing how he had spent the last few years of his life.

After Harry had lost consciousness in the hallway, Lupin and Argo had levitated him up to the medical wing where the doctors set to work on him at once, whipping out their wands and potions and shouting spells and instructions to each other. Harry had lain there immobile and unresponsive, his skin growing paler and paler. The doctors had begun to panic as his breathing became shallow and finally stopped. They'd at last resorted to Muggle-style artificial respiration but all for nothing...his heart stopped beating and he died, it was as simple as that. Lupin had stood numbly in the corner and watched as they'd drawn the sheet up over Harry's lifeless face. Argo had fled the room to dispatch a messenger to Harry's home, not trusting this news to an interceptible owl. It irked Lupin that in the face of the death of a friend, her first thought was still towards containment, though he understood why she felt that way. When word got out that Harry Potter was dead, it would make the widespread grief that had followed Dumbledore's death look like a picnic in the park.

Raised voices in the hallway drew him from his chair as the door opened and Hermione strode in, cloaked in an aggressive take-charge manner and a stony expression. Trailing behind her were two of Harry's other roommates, looking shocked and grief-stricken. Hermione just looked impatient, nor did she look terribly surprised to see Lupin there. "Remus," she said. "Where is he?"

"Hermione..."

"I need to see him. Now." Her tone brooked no refusals.

"I'm not sure that's such a...." began Pfaffenroth.

"You don't understand," Hermione continued sharply. "Whoever you are and whatever sort of jurisdiction you think you have here, you *will* take me to his body immediately or else 'sorry' doesn't even begin to describe what you will be!"

Argo paused for a moment, then stepped aside to let Hermione pass. She resumed her quick strides, hardly waiting to be shown the way.

The ragtag group arrived at the infirmary, but the weepy and emotional scene Lupin had been dreading never materialized. Instead of breaking down at the sight of the sheet-draped body, Hermione merely paused for a moment then walked right up to it, whipping the sheet back with one swift motion. The others, shocked, hung back in the doorway. Hermione bent over Harry's body, pressing her ear to his forehead, palpating the flesh of his shoulders with her fingertips...Lupin realized she was *examining* him for something. "Hermione...what's all this, then?" he asked, taking a step forward.

She pulled open one of Harry's eyelids and peered inside, not seeming to have heard Lupin at all. Laura came up to the other side of the bed, the tears flowing freely now. "Herm, he's gone. Don't do this to yourself."

"Let her have a look if she needs to," Justin said.

"It can't be healthy," Laura snapped. "We should leave any investigation to experts."

Justin turned to Lupin. "What in the world happened?"

"I don't know. One minute he was fine, the next he was clutching at his forehead in terrible pain, then he just collapsed."

"Any idea what caused it?"

"He's not dead." These three simple words, the first ones Hermione had spoken since entering the infirmary, effectively cut off all other conversation.

Lupin just stared at her. "Excuse me?"

"Oh, you heard me! He's not dead, Remus. I suspected he wasn't, that's why I had to see him. It's designed to fool any observers, even doctors, unless they know what to look for."

"What are you talking about?" Laura said. "Look at him! He's dead!"

"No, Laura. He's in a self-induced necromimetic hypnosomatic stasis." She looked around at their faces, all of them wearing near-identical expression of stunned bewilderment.

"Come again?" Justin said.

"A self-induced necromimetic hypnosomatic stasis. It's a sort of trance. I know because I helped him write the charms that cause it. It's a magical defense against mental attacks. If his mind is exposed to any magic sufficiently powerful to cause damage, the spell automatically goes into action and sends all brain and body function into a sort of holding pattern, protecting him until the danger is past." She bent over him again. "He'll come out of it himself eventually, but I can rouse him now." She pulled up a stool to the bedside and drew her wand out of its holster.

The four observers watched in silence as Hermione laid one hand on Harry's forehead and raised her wand over his chest, moving it in small figure eight patterns. She stared into space at some point on the opposite wall, her eyes narrowing as she concentrated, murmuring words under her breath. Her wand began to leave a trail of warm, yellow light as it traced its pattern in the air; her eyes shifted to watch Harry's face. She lowered her wand to the skin of his torso, etching the figure-eight pattern onto his body; the glowing lines sank into his flesh and spread, illuminating his form with warm luminescence. Small shining points of energy began to appear in the air around them and were pulled down towards Hermione's wand where they flowed into Harry; they increased in number and speed until after a few moments they had become a dazzling flood of light rushing out of the surrounding space and into his body. Hermione seemed winded, she was breathing in quick gasps as the glow dissipated.

Everyone stood motionless, holding their breath and waiting for something to happen. Hermione raised her head and lifted her wand from Harry's chest. "Wake up now, Harry," she said quietly. Obediently, his chest hitched and he drew in a huge breath, the pink color returning to his skin. Hermione sighed in relief. She reholstered her wand and lifted her hand from Harry's forehead. His scar was flushed a deep red, standing out in sharp relief to the pale skin surrounding it. The others drew closer, amazed. A pulse was beating in the hollow of his throat, and as they watched, his lashes fluttered and he opened his eyes.

"Flipping heck," Justin breathed.

"Can you hear me?" Hermione said to Harry, her voice quiet and calm. He nodded slowly, his gaze coming back into focus. "Do you know your name?" she asked.

He swallowed. "Potter..." he croaked. He cleared his throat, and when he spoke again he sounded much more like himself. "Potter, Harold James."

"That's right. Do you know who I am?"

A small smile creased his lips. "Hermione." He turned his head slightly and looked at her. "I guess it worked."

"Of course it did, you daft git."

Laura straightened up and looked at Lupin and Argo. "All right, now I'd like some answers. Who are you people and how in the world did this happen? I mean..." She would have gone on, but Justin took her firmly by the arm. "Justin! This is ridiculous! They're not telling us anything, we should..."

"I'll explain later," he said under his breath. Lupin watched, suspicious, as Justin shot Hermione a significant glance. *They know,* he thought. *They know about Harry's job, but Laura doesn't.*

"I think we should let the Chief rest," he interjected, trying to send Pfaffenroth telepathic instructions, which had never worked in the past and didn't work now. Fortunately she seemed to agree, and turned to leave the room...*she's probably got better things to do,* he thought, then had to chastise himself for the uncharitable (although probably true) thought.

Hermione sat back down on the stool. "You all go on, I'll catch you up later. I should stay with him," she said. Justin nodded and pulled Laura, protesting all the way, out into the hallway. Lupin brought up the rear; the door snicked shut behind him and he sagged against the wall, relief flooding him from head to toe.

**********

Hermione helped Harry sit up, propping pillows behind his back, and conjured him some pajamas to wear. These tasks complete, she sat quietly for a few moments, thinking how best to attack this conversation. Harry wasn't looking at her; she got the feeling he was afraid of what he might see on her face if he looked too closely.

"Are you all right?" she finally asked.

He nodded. "I'm well knackered, but otherwise fine. At least we know that charm works."

"I could have lived without finding out the hard way," she said. "I think the spell needs adjusting, though. What if I hadn't been here? You would have been taken for dead and probably buried alive before you came out of it."

"Not something I'm anxious to experience."

"What attacked you?"

He shook his head, looking out the window. "I'm not sure."

"Lupin said the pain started in your scar. That hasn't happened since..." She didn't finish the statement, she didn't need to. They both knew that pain in his scar had been pretty common when minions of Voldemort were nearby.

"Would've had to have been pretty intense evil to prompt that kind of a reaction." He looked like he wanted to say more but couldn't without exposing his secret. Another silence stretched out long and thin before Harry began to shift uncomfortably in bed. She said nothing, not wishing to make this any easier for him. At long last he fetched a deep sigh and met her eyes.

"I imagine you're bursting with questions," he said.

"Such as?"

"Oh, I don't know...such as what is this place? How did I get here? Where do I go when I leave home for days on end? What the devil happened to my old Firebolt?"

She nodded. "Well, I'm just going to skip all those small questions and go right to the ten thousand pound question, all right?" Harry nodded. She took a deep breath and steeled herself. "Harry...are you a spy?"

The hundred-odd times she'd imagined herself asking him this question she'd thought she'd anticipated every possible reaction, but she'd never thought there wouldn't be one. He just sat there, staring calmly at her, her words still hanging in the air like the unpleasant smell of burned popcorn. Finally he turned his head slightly away and she could see the muscles in his jaw clenching and unclenching. He looked back at her, a small sardonic smile on his face. "I don't particularly care for that term, actually. We prefer to call ourselves 'intelligence wizards.'"

Although she'd been about ninety-nine percent sure that Cho had been telling her the truth, hearing him say it had an odd effect on Hermione. Her last, stubborn, lingering perceptions of him as the young boy she'd once known were shattered like so much plate glass. Before, she'd been able to observe his increased height, his deeper voice, his stubble if he didn't shave and the increased squareness of his features...but at some level, in her mind, he was still the boy she'd met on the train who had been swimming in Dudley's hand-me-downs and didn't understand his place in the world he was about to enter. The boy who had needed her to scold him for putting off his homework till the last minute, who had ignored her warnings not to sneak out to Hogsmeade, who had bravely waded in where others feared to tread simply because he didn't know how to be a coward.

But that boy was gone...and for the first time, she really knew it. Harry was a grown man, with a man's responsibilities, and he probably didn't even remember what it had been like to be twelve when his greatest worry had been beating Slytherin at Quidditch...but he *still* didn't know how to be a coward.

Now that his secret was revealed, Harry looked both tired and extraordinarily sad, as if he'd lost something very precious to him. "I should have known I couldn't keep it from you," he whispered.

"You did, though," she said. "I had no idea."

He frowned. "How did you..."

"Cho told me," she said, trying and failing to keep the bitterness out of her voice. Its presence was not lost on Harry. He leaned forward and fixed her with a stern look.

"Hermione," he said, his tone scolding. "Please tell me you didn't for one second believe that I'd tell *her* while keeping it from *you.*"

"What else was I to believe?"

"Do you have any idea how many people she knows or has dated at the Ministry? She could have found out on her own...must have, in fact, because I certainly never told her. I never told *anyone.*"

"You told Lupin," she said.

Harry smiled. "Well, he works for me. I couldn't very well hide it."

Hermione's mouth fell open, then she just shook her head with a sigh. "Oh, Harry. There's so much I don't know about your life."

He sat back, nodding in agreement. "I know, and I'm sorry. But that's all over. Now that you know, you should know everything. Anything you want to ask me, I promise I'll tell you the truth."

Hermione thought for a moment. After days of wondering and puzzling, to be suddenly confronted with the answer to every question she'd ever had was a little disconcerting...she wasn't sure where to start. "So...you really are a spy?" she managed, somewhat lamely.

Harry didn't seem to mind the repetition, nor did he correct her terminology a second time. "That's right. I work for the Intelligence Division of the International Federation of Wizards."

"Not for the Ministry?"

"No. They don't do much espionage. They're too busy concealing *us* from Muggles to worry about what's going on in secret within the wizarding world."

"Whom do you spy on? Other wizards?"

"In a way. About ninety percent of what we do involves keeping tabs on the dark forces. I spend most of my time looking for dark magic activity and the wizards who've gone to the other side. When I find them, I deal with them."

She felt a shiver building at the base of her spine. "Deal with them? How, exactly?"

He shifted in the bed. "You're asking if I've ever killed anyone." She hesitated, then nodded. "Yes, I have," he said, looking straight at her. "But only when I couldn't avoid it. My main concern is to keep practitioners of dark magic from organizing into a force that might pose a real threat. When I find dark wizards, first I try to scare them away from it. A lot of them are just power-hungry and insecure, it doesn't take much to make them recant...at least temporarily. Otherwise I take them into custody and lock them up where they can't do any harm."

"In Azkaban?"

Harry laughed. "Oh no. Azkaban's for public relations and to frighten children. When I put a dark wizard away, no one will ever find him again. That's why we try to make sure they can't be rehabilitated before we imprison them." He sobered. "But there are times when things don't go as planned. If they fight me, I have no choice but to fight back. If that happens...well, they usually lose." He said this with no trace of hubris, just regret that it ever came to that.

Hermione both did and did not want to pursue this topic further. She opted for "not" at that moment. "How long have you been doing this?" she asked quietly.

He looked away. "I was recruited almost a year after we graduated." Hermione's mouth dropped open. "I know, I know..."

"Eight *years?*" she exclaimed. "You've managed to keep this from me for eight *years?*"

"It wasn't easy, believe me. Not just because you're too bloody smart for your own good..."

"Don't flatter me, it's cheap!"

"...but because I *wanted* to tell you, every day," he continued. "I'd *never* kept anything from you before, and there were times when I felt like my career wasn't real. How could it be, if you didn't know about it?" Hermione sighed, somewhat appeased. "You remember our first flat?"

"How could I forget that four-story slog...but it was a nice place. The roof garden made the climb *almost* worthwhile."

"That first year I very nearly went mad. I had so many job offers I couldn't sort them out, and I had no idea what I wanted to do. And the rub of it was that not one of those offers had anything to say about *me* or my qualifications...they just wanted the name and the bloody scar. Then one day while you were at school, I had a visitor..."

**********

Harry straightened up and stretched, the back of his neck warm from the sun. He could have used a charm to weed the garden, but that would have been too quick...anything to occupy his time was welcome these days. He turned to go downstairs and wash his hands, then jumped with a small cry.

Standing directly behind him was a woman. She was of average height with a severe slicked-back hairstyle and a strong, expressionless face. She was just *looking* at him. He had no idea how long she'd been standing there. "Good Lord!" he exclaimed. "You scared the life out of me!"

"Are you Harold J. Potter?" she asked him, calm like they were meeting in a park somewhere.

"Um...yes."

She narrowed her eyes and regarded him a little more closely. "Do you have any identification?" Without a word, Harry lifted his bangs to expose his scar. The woman looked at it, eyebrows raised. "That looks rather nasty. How'd you come by that?"

Harry just blinked, completely stumped, and let his hair fall back down over his forehead. "You don't..." He cleared his throat. "You don't know who I am?"

"Well, if you're Harold J. Potter, then yes, I do. Why, is that scar supposed to mean something to me?"

"It does to most people. I'm..." He hesitated again, not used to having to explain this. "I'm famous after a fashion, among wizards."

"That so? I don't get out much. And I try to have as little contact as possible with regular wizards."

Harry grinned, enjoying this. "I'm so pleased to meet you," he said, meaning it. He tried and failed to remember when he'd ever met a wizard who didn't have a preconceived notion about him. Even Muggle-raised Hermione had read about him in some of her books. "So who might you be, then?"

"My name's Pfaffenroth. I've come to offer you a job."

"What sort of job?" He'd heard nothing about her offer and it was already more intriguing than any of the offers he had downstairs.

The woman cleared her throat and began pacing slowly, hands clasped behind her back, in a professorial fashion. "I work for the International Federation of Wizards. I'm head of the Intelligence Division."

"Intelligence?"

"That's right."

"What, do you mean like 007?" She just looked at him blankly, apparently not understanding the reference. Harry rephrased. "Spies?"

"We prefer to call ourselves 'intelligence wizards.' I have an opening in the Department of Counterintelligence and Covert Operations. Are you interested?"

Harry sat down on the edge of the roof, amazed. "You want me to be a sp...an intelligence wizard, is that right? Well, that's certainly a new one." He looked up at her. "If you didn't know who I was why did you come to me?"

She reached into her pocket and drew out a card, holding it out to him. He took it and observed that it was a Tarot card. The King of Cups, to be precise. He turned it over...written on the back in neat, block printing was his own name. "What's this?"

"It's a card from an enchanted Tarot deck that keeps track of wizards who have a particular aptitude for our line of work. I believe a similar device controls admissions to Hogwarts, a quill that records the name of every magical child born. This deck came from the same divinator who enchanted the quill. Whenever I need to recruit a new operative, I take out the deck and do a reading. One of the cards always has a name printed on it. Yesterday, the deck gave me your name."

"And you just came here, knowing nothing about me?"

"The deck has never steered me wrong before. I myself was chosen by it, years ago."

"So I've no choice in the matter, is that it?"

"Of course you have a choice. This isn't a command directive. You're free to refuse with no consequences. A person has to want to do this work in order to succeed. It's difficult, it's trying, and it's dangerous. I don't want you if you haven't the inclination. I do know you have the talent. Do you have any idea why the deck may have selected you?"

"Well, yes! I defeated Voldemort last year!"

Pfaffenroth nodded. "Oh, that was you, was it? I'm terrible with names. I'm sure I heard yours at some point or another. Well, that's it, then."

He looked up at her. "What's the catch?"

"No catch. If you're interested, come to this address tomorrow morning," she said, handing him a card. "You'll be instated immediately and your training will begin. You may keep your occupation a secret but it's not a requirement. Many of our operatives choose to do so in order to avoid endangering their family and friends." She offered him a small, wan smile. "I'll hope to see you tomorrow." And she was gone, Apparated away in the blink of an eye.

**********

"So you took the job just because Pfaffenroth hadn't heard of you?"

"Not entirely. I admit it was refreshing to be chosen because I was suited for the job and not because my name is Harry Potter. And I found the possibility intriguing. I did well at Hogwarts, but I always felt as though my only real skills were Quidditch and fighting evil. If I could make a living at one of them I was glad for the chance."

"I can't believe she didn't know who you were. A *spy* not knowing who defeated Voldemort?"

"I found out later that Argo is really just an administrator. She hasn't done any field duty in years and years. When I told the guys down in Strategy that she hadn't known, they just about busted a gut laughing. They'd been tracking me for ages. They had a million questions about Voldemort."

"Lupin called you 'Chief'...are you the boss?"

"I'm not *the* boss, but I am *a* boss. Turns out Argo was right, I'm quite good at this work, good enough that three years ago I was made Chief Wizard of Counterintelligence and Covert Operations. There are six departments, each with their own chief wizard, but since my department is the largest and most active, I get to use the title 'Chief' by default. And if something happens to Argo, I take over command of the ID. As for Lupin, well...the Deck didn't choose him, I did. A few years ago I was in Romania and I ran into him working as a vampire hunter. He wasn't getting many jobs, no one would hire him. He was just about starving. I couldn't help but remember how good he was as a DODA professor and how much he knew about the dark forces, so I offered him a job in my department. Argo wasn't thrilled, but she cheered up after he saved the lives of two other wizards on his very first assignment. He's damned good. I'm amazed the Deck never picked him on its own."

Hermione smiled. "I'm glad you did that. I always worried so for him...it's not his fault he's a werewolf."

"It's one of the things I'm most proud of."

She looked down at her hands. They'd reached the hardest question of all. "Harry...why didn't you ever tell me?"

He sighed. "I don't know if I can put it into words."

"Try."

He nodded, looking more tired than ever. "All right." He sat up straighter and took both of her hands in his. "The work I do isn't what you're probably imagining, all chases and glamorous locations and glorious victories over evil. I have to get down and wade in amongst the evil and those who serve it. It's disheartening and there are times when I don't feel like myself anymore...times when I don't even feel *human* anymore. But when I come home, I remember who I am and what I'm fighting to protect, and I feel human again. I couldn't tell you, because if you knew about my work then that darkness I have to look at every day would touch you, too. You'd be tainted by everything I come home to forget about. I had to be able to have you and all the others look at me with no idea the kind of people I have to be around day in and day out to do my job." He paused and dropped his eyes to the sheet. "The man who did most of my training is a very great and powerful wizard. His name is Eleutherios Mamakos, but we all just call him Lefty. He taught me a lot of things, but the most important thing he taught me was that everyone who does what I do needs a sacred space, untouched by the dark forces." He looked up into her eyes. "You were *my* sacred space, Hermione."

She blinked back tears, unable to speak, and held his gaze for a few seconds...just long enough for it to become uncomfortable. They both looked away. "Harry...I don't know what to say..." He was silent, staring down at their clasped hands. "And now that I know, it's ruined!"

That got a reaction. His head jerked up, eyes blazing. "No! Don't ever think that! I'm *glad* you know the truth, glad! As much as I needed to keep my home life separate from my work, it was positively horrible having to lie all the time, and not being able to share anything I was doing. As nice it was to come home to an innocent atmosphere, it will be even *better* to be able to come home and tell you where I've been and what I've been doing!" Hermione smiled. "If you want the truth, somewhere in the back of my mind I've been half-wishing for you to find out somehow, even if I couldn't bring myself to tell you."

"What about the others?"

"Cho already knows, right?"

"Well...Justin sort of knows too."

"Okay, that's four out of six. I might as well tell George and Laura too. It doesn't make sense to keep only them in the dark."

"And perhaps..." She trailed off, uncertain. Harry peered at her questioningly.

"Perhaps what?"

"Perhaps we can help you," she finished, unable to meet his eyes. Harry smiled.

"What you mean is, perhaps *you* can help me."

"That's not what I said."

"No, but that's what you meant."

"Don't tell me what I do and do not mean, Harry!"

He continued, unfazed. "I might have expected this."

"Why?"

"Because! You hate your job, you're disillusioned in your studies, and you feel like you're wasting away in a dusty old office surrounded by dusty old books and even dustier people."

Hermione stared at him, her mouth hanging open. "How...how do you know that? No one knows that!" she croaked. It was *her* deepest secret, one she'd hardly been able to admit to herself, let alone anyone else.

"Give me a little credit, secrets are my business. You may be able to fool the others but not me, Hermione. Never me."

She stood up abruptly and went to the window, her arms crossed over her chest. "It's true," she said. "I hate it. I'm bored out of my skull. And this was supposedly my dream job, that career that I always thought I wanted. A life of scholarship and research and intellectual challenges." She chuckled bitterly. "Big joke on me, isn't it? Turns out all that scholarship and all those intellectual challenges aren't that appealing unless there's some use for them." She turned and looked down at him. "You know, I always wondered why the Sorting Hat put me in Gryffindor. I fully expected to be in Ravenclaw."

"With the rest of the brainy types."

"Exactly. Well, now I know. The brainy pursuits aren't enough for me. And it's *your* fault, you git!" she said, socking him on the shoulder. "You corrupted me with all your crusades and your midnight missions and your heroics!"

"Maybe that's *why* the hat put you in Gryffindor. So you'd be corrupted."

She sighed. "Can you blame me if I find the idea of helping you appealing?"

"No, I don't blame you. I just don't think you really understand what you're proposing."

She flopped back down on the edge of the bed. "Enlighten me."

He tented his fingers under his nose and thought for a moment. "When I started my training, Lefty said to me, 'Here's the deal, Potter. Lesson number one. The first thing you've got to accept out of the gate is that you'll never be sure about anything, ever again. The intelligence world exists in a paradigm of uncertainty. It's the norm around here. Hunches, circumstantial evidence, a third-hand tipoff from a second-rate source...such as these are the facts we traffic with.'" He looked at her. "You may crave adventure, but if there's one thing central to your personality it's that you have a need to be *sure.* You have to have the right answer. That's not a bad thing, but it's something you'd never have in my business." He threw back the sheet and swung his legs out of bed, rising to fetch his clothes from a pile on a nearby bench. Hermione didn't contradict him...how could she? He was absolutely correct. "And even if that weren't the case, I'd never go along with it."

That, she could challenge. "Oh, really? And how exactly would it be your decision? How would you stop me?"

He looked at her flatly. "I could stop you."

"I believe I'm a grown woman."

"With no experience, no training, and pardon my saying this, no idea what she's talking about. I'll not put you in danger. I put myself in quite enough danger for both of us." He pulled his shirt over his head and ran a hand through his hair.

Hermione said nothing. She wasn't exactly sure how to argue this point, or even if she wanted to. She had a pretty clear notion that Harry's work was one of the thousands of things that sounded a lot more appealing than it actually was. She rose to join him on the other side of the bed. "All right, forget I brought it up. But I do think I'll start looking for a different line of work."

"That, I'm all for." He smiled at her. "I'm glad you found out," he said quietly. "I hate keeping things from you."

"I'll remember that the next time I'm wondering who ate my ice cream." They both laughed, then reached out and embraced tightly. Hermione hooked one arm through Harry's as they left the room. "Good Lord, Laura and Justin must be wondering what on earth took us so long."

"Oh, I'm sure they just thought we were shagging," he said casually. Hermione stopped short, a look of complete and utter shock on her face.

"Excuse me? Why would they *ever* think that?"

He looked at her quizzically. "Well...most people have the notion that we have sex on a semi-regular basis. Didn't you know that?"

Her jaw tightened and she put her hands on her hips in what he immediately recognized as her "indignant" pose. "I most certainly know nothing of the kind! The nerve and the presumption! Honestly, can't two people have a close, platonic relationship without people making all sorts of unwarranted insinuations? You'd think people had nothing better to do!"

"Actually, they probably don't. And you must admit it's not *that* unwarranted of an assumption. In all fairness, what would *you* think of a man and a woman who'd lived together for eight years of their adult life?"

"I certainly wouldn't go making all sorts of rude assumptions about what they did or did not do together! Everyone knows we're friends, that's all! Our cohabitation has always been financially and geographically convenient, and I'd much rather have you as a roommate than some stranger I found off the street! Not to mention the tiny fact that we've both dated a number of other people in those eight years!"

They resumed their progress down the hall to the lounge where their roommates were waiting for them. "You see, this is exactly what I was talking about. You've got to think dirty to be a spy...you wouldn't last two seconds. You always look for the most flattering explanation for everything."

She sighed and began walking again, a chagrined expression on her face. "Yes, I suppose I'm quite the freak for being so trusting."

Harry grinned and slung one arm around her shoulders, his good humor resurfacing like the sunrise. "Freak you may be, but you know I love you just the way you are."

She shot him a withering look. "Now you see, it's comments like *that* what make people think we're doing all this clandestine shagging."

"Oh, let 'em talk. Makes us more colorful, don't you think?"

"You don't need any more color, Mr. Chief Wizard Spy Bloke or whatever you're calling yourself these days."

He stopped her in the hall again. "Hermione...do you realize this is the first time we've had any good banter in months?"

She smiled. "Quite so. I hope I'm not out of practice."

"Oh no, it's like riding a broom. You never forget how."

They continued on down the hall, the verbal volleys flying like tennis balls. Hermione felt light as a feather. She'd expected to feel betrayed or out of the loop or otherwise alienated when confronted with the truth of Harry's secret life, but instead she felt liberated...as if she had *her* Harry back again. He in turn seemed more at ease than he had in a long time, but what they weren't discussing was still with them. The questions of what exactly had attacked Harry in the first place and what it meant hung over their heads like a gray stormcloud in the midst of a clear blue sky...and for herself, Hermione had already decided that if she were needed she'd dive right in and help him, no matter what he said.

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