Chapter 17: The Bargain
The damp of the dungeon seemed to have seeped into Harry’s bones. For three days, he moved through the castle like a ghost, the memory of Ginny’s furious eyes and his own degradation a shroud around him. He avoided the Common Room, meals, any place she might be. The shame was a physical taste, metallic and constant.
It was in the girls’ bathroom on the third floor, of all places, that he was cornered. He’d been hiding in a stall, just for the silence, when the door creaked open and familiar, determined footsteps echoed on the wet tile.
“I know you’re in here, Harry.” Hermione’s voice was calm, cleanly cutting through the drip of a leaky faucet. “Ron told me you’ve been skulking around. Ginny won’t speak to anyone. What did you do?”
He pushed the stall door open. The sight of her—brown hair a bit frizzy from the humid air, arms crossed over her chest, those intelligent eyes narrowed—should have been a comfort. It felt like an inquisition.
“Nothing,” he muttered, leaning against the cracked porcelain sink. The enchanted one gurgled peacefully a few basins down.
“Don’t ‘nothing’ me. She’s devastated. And you look like you’ve seen a Dementor. It’s about what you said about me, isn’t it? And her.” Hermione’s gaze was unwavering. “The things you’ve been saying. About… bodies. It’s got to stop.”
A familiar, defiant heat stirred in his gut, cutting through the numbness. “Why? It’s just truth. It’s just… things I see.”
“It’s reducing people to parts!” Her voice rose, bouncing off the tiles. “It’s crude and it’s hurtful. Ginny and Dean are over because of your big mouth. Do you understand that? You’re wrecking things.”
“I know what I did!” he snapped, pushing off the sink. The memory of Ginny’s hand, her bared skin in the torchlight, flashed before him. His pulse jumped. “I got my punishment, alright? We’re even.”
Hermione studied him, her anger cooling into something more analytical, more dangerous. “What does that mean?”
“It doesn’t matter.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Just drop it.”
“I won’t.” She took a step closer. The bathroom was empty, their privacy absolute. The only sound was water and their breathing. “This… fixation. It’s all you talk about anymore. It’s boobs this, tits that. Like a broken record. It’s beneath you.”
“Maybe it’s all that’s left that’s simple,” he said, the words coming out raw. “Maybe after everything else, it’s the only thing that feels real. Something to want. Something… good to look at.”
He knew he was making it worse. But the pressure in his chest demanded release. His eyes, against his will, dropped to the front of her robes. They were, as always, buttoned high. Conservative. She always hid herself. The mystery of it was its own torture.
Hermione went very still. She didn’t flush. She didn’t look away. Her voice dropped to a whisper, clinical and quiet. “Is that it? You just… can’t stop thinking about it?”
He laughed, a short, ugly sound. “About yours? Specifically? Constantly. Since fourth year. The Yule Ball. That periwinkle dress. You have no idea.”
He saw her breath catch. A slight intake. But her composure didn’t break. It solidified, like ice over a turbulent pond. She was working a problem out.
“You’re obsessed,” she stated.
“Yeah.”
“It’s causing damage.”
“I know.”
She was silent for a long moment, her mind almost visibly turning over scenarios, outcomes, solutions. When she spoke again, it was with the precise tone she used to explain a complex bit of arithmancy.
“Then we treat it like an obsession. A compulsion. You need to break the cycle of reinforcement.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means your vulgar talk gets a reaction. It makes the thought more powerful. It gives it life. You need to deprive it of that.” Her eyes locked onto his. They were fierce, but not with anger now. With a terrifying, logical resolve. “I’ll make you a bargain, Harry.”
He said nothing. His mouth was dry.
“You will go one week. Seven full days. Without making a single comment, of any kind, to anyone, about… that subject. No jokes. No observations. Nothing crude. You will be a gentleman.”
“Or what?”
“Or nothing. If you fail, nothing happens. But if you succeed…” She took a deep, steadying breath. Her own cheeks were finally tinged with pink, the only sign this cost her something. “If you succeed, next Sunday night, you will meet me here. And I will show them to you. Properly. No anger. No fighting. You can look. That will be your reward.”
The world narrowed to the dripping faucet, the faint floral smell of cheap soap, and the staggering implication of her words. His whole body tensed.
“You’re lying.”
“I am not.”
“You’d never.”
“To cure you of this… this sickness?” Her voice wavered for the first time, betraying a tremor of fear, or maybe excitement, so deep even she didn’t recognize it. “To stop you from hurting more people? To get you to act right? Yes. I would. One clear, clinical look. To get it out of your system. Then it’s over. You stop this… this relentless, horrible talk. Forever.”
The offer hung in the damp air, absurd and electrifying. A week of silence for a moment of truth. It was the most insane, the most Hermoine-like proposition he could imagine. A behavioral modification experiment with the highest possible stakes.
His mind was already there. Imagining it. Not in a dungeon torchlight, not in fury, but here, in this quiet, echoing room. Her, unhurried. Clinical. Letting him look. Letting him see what she always kept hidden. The periwinkle blue promise made real.
A dull, heavy throb began in his groin. The shame from the dungeon was still there, but it was being smothered by a rising, all-consuming need.
“Just a look,” he breathed, testing the words.
“Just a look,” she confirmed, her arms tightening over her chest, a self-conscious gesture she immediately forced herself to stop. “Do we have a deal?”
He thought of Ron, of Lavender, of Ginny’s hollow eyes. He thought of the war outside, the nightmares within. He thought of simple, beautiful, impossible things to want.
“Yeah,” he said, his voice rough. “We have a deal.”
“Starting now,” she said, turning to leave. She paused at the door. “And Harry? I’ll know if you cheat. I always know.”
Then she was gone, leaving him alone with the sound of water and the phantom shape of a promise. The silence in the bathroom was no longer empty. It was thick, charged, a ticking clock counting down the seconds.
Seven days.
He already knew the images that would haunt him every moment until then wouldn’t be of Ginny, or of any past vision. They would be of Hermione, her clever hands, her serious face, and the devastating, hypothetical curve of what she kept so carefully, so conservatively, tucked away.
The first hour of his silence had begun. It was the loudest hour of his life.