“I feel positively wonderful”, Hermione beamed at Lyra. “It was easier than the first one, and I really wish your mom’s recommended midwife was there to help us the first time”.

“The first time, our relationship was still… less than clear”, Lyra smiled back.

“You mean, they weren’t clear about the mudblood and their blood traitor daughter?”, she shook with suppressed laughter, and her newborn son stirred on her nipple. “Ow”.

“I think a milder version of that, but yes”, Lyra confirmed. “They were done with Voldemort for years at that point, but the blood purity thing was still an issue, and we were still under the old policy at that point”.

“I must admit that I never expected your parents to treat me with anything more than polite tolerance”, Hermione sighed. “This is such a nice change”.

“They saw that the two of us are like sisters, so they more-less adopted you”, Lyra smiled. “I think they realised that Harry and I are formulating a new future for the magical community, and they decided to trust us and follow our lead, because the old ways led them to the slippery edge of utter ruin. So, when we redefined the concept of pureblood to include you, they accepted it. If I see you as my sister, they see you as their daughter”.

“It feels wonderful”, Hermione closed her eyes and smiled wider. “I never felt so pampered in my life”.

“And we gave birth within a day from each other, which made both of us really vulnerable”, Lyra gently adjusted her newborn daughter’s position from the breast to her shoulder so that she could barf. “I didn’t expect both of us to be unable to take care of things at the same time”.

“I can’t believe we completely recovered within two days from childbirth. That treatment must have been really expensive”, Hermione mused. “No tearing, no belly, no stretch marks, as if we never gave birth”.

“Seven hundred galleons for the two of us. We got a discount since we were giving birth so close together”, Lyra whispered and laughed quietly, so as not to stir the baby.

“Merlin’s beard!”, Hermione’s eyes were wide. “I have to pay you back”.

“You are never paying anything back”, Lyra was adamant. “We don’t just live together. We’re family. Everything I have is yours. Hermione, when I was in the hardest, most vulnerable, desperate and hopeless situation in my life, you held my entire life and future in your hands. You were in a position where you could destroy me utterly with one word spoken to Harry, and you used this power you had over me to argue my case with him and give us your blessing. I owe you my life for that. It’s the kind of debt I could never repay, because it’s so big. Also, you forgave me for my rudeness and foolishness and chose to love me regardless. That’s another debt I can never repay. My life is yours”, she looked at her sister with complete sincerity, as Hermione’s eyes glistened with tears. “We have an almost endless fortune; not merely my dowry and Harry’s immense wealth, but also the Lestranges leaving me everything they owned in their will, and they all died in the final battle of the war. But even if we were poor and down to the last slice of bread, I would offer it to you first”.

…

“I don’t understand why we, and by that I mean the wizarding community, decided to emulate the Muggles in so many things, such as women having to emulate men in how they work; for instance, wasting the most fertile years on ‘career’ despite the fact that this could all wait just fine until our forties, or working apart from our husbands, or postponing marriage until later, and so on. None of this makes sense to me”, Lyra was exasperated. They had some peace and quiet with tea and biscuits, as the babies were sound asleep for a change, and the men were playing with James and Lily. “You’re the expert on muggles. Why did they decide to do it that way? I know we were fools to emulate them, but I can’t understand why they did it in the first place”.

Hermione smiled. “I actually looked into that, and it seems that until a few centuries ago, they lived what we would consider to be normal lives. Then they had something that’s called the industrial revolution, and it included people working boring, repetitive and often dangerous jobs away from home. That was the first part. Then happened something called the workers’ rights movement. It had multiple branches, the prominent being a philosophy called Marxism, named by its founder, Karl Marx. It postulated that every social interaction is based on exploitative economic relations, divided society into a dichotomy of the exploited and the exploitative classes, and recommended a violent revolution as a solution, where the exploited would appropriate the means of production and establish a dictatorship, and that would make everything better since it would put the exploited, and thus virtuous, class in power”.

“Did that actually happen?”, Lyra wondered. “I mean, the exploitation of the workers by the employers? And was the proposed solution actually implemented, and with what results?”

“It happened”, Hermione nodded. “It’s a generalization, to be sure, but whenever there’s an excess of labour and lack of work, the employers dictate the price of labour, and it invariably ends up being the lowest amount of money one could survive with. The unqualified workers, for instance the peasants whose land was bought for agricultural or industrial uses, and who had to move to the cities and find a way to survive, were particularly vulnerable. This is what Marx exploited for his propaganda. However, when the market conditions change, and when there’s a shortage of qualified workers, they end up dictating the price of labour and there were times when it was extremely high, and the employers couldn’t find their way around it. It’s a complicated balance of supply and demand, and if you want to harness people’s resentment, envy and anger, you take a selective reading of the market in certain conditions and present it as a universal reality that can only be solved by violent means. And yes, that was attempted, and it made everything so much worse. It created murderous revolutions where millions died for nothing, and in the end workers ended up being as poor as before, or worse, the rich people were killed, and their place was taken by the ideologues. It’s probably the only economic philosophy that was scientifically proven to be inaccurate”, Hermione smiled.

“I must admit it makes little sense. It’s like seeking employment at Borgin&Burkes, and then complaining that they earn most of the money produced by your labour and not acknowledging the fact that they had to build the business in the first place and have all the expenses and risks”, Lyra shrugged and sipped her tea. “But I don’t see how this all relates to our situation”.

“I was coming to that”, Hermione smiled. “You see, once you start viewing society through the lens of resentment, envy, exploitation and classes, everybody wants to be the righteous victim who will blame someone else for all their problems and eschew responsibility. So, invariably, a few women came out with a theory where they replaced workers with women and business owners with men and claimed that women, too, are an exploited class in society and should emancipate themselves from their fetters”.

“Was that true? Did the muggles truly abuse their women so much that they wanted to emancipate themselves from their men?”, Lyra’s eyes went wide.

“No. In fact, the muggles at that time lived very much like our family. Those women, who called themselves feminists, were laughed at, and other women organized counter-protests against them, with much greater popularity. The entire movement would have been an obscure footnote, if not for the wealthy business owners who realised they would profit immensely if women joined the workforce and competed with men. It would give them two workers for the price of one, by obvious laws of supply and demand. Also, the state was interested because it would make female labour taxable, and increase the gross domestic product, which would give the state backing for getting more into debt. The entire thing benefitted only the actual exploiters of people, and it harmed women and families the most, but since the big money stood behind the project and created lots of false propaganda, soon everybody believed that feminism rescued women from all kinds of oppression, while in fact women were previously treated very much like you and your mother were treated by your father”, Hermione nodded.

“My father loves my mother more than his life, and they both treated me with every form of kindness imaginable”, Lyra smiled. “That is, until he brought the Dark Lord and his minions into our ancestral home and made our life a hell”, she grinned.

“Exactly”, Hermione smiled back. “Feminists purported to solve a problem that didn’t exist, implemented it against everybody’s wishes, and when they created a widespread societal disaster, they claimed that they solved all sorts of imaginary forms of female enslavement and indignity, and that those criticising them are ungrateful”.

“And I guess when wizards and witches lived in their proximity, some of that rubbed off on us”, Lyra nodded. “I am understanding it better now. The Muggles adopted a problem pretending to be a solution, and we pretended to be completely separated from them, but that was never really true, other than a few villages and estates. For instance, 10 and 14 Grimmauld Place are inhabited by muggles. However, what I don’t understand is how they managed to convince people that the lower social classes are morally pure, while the upper classes are morally corrupt. I can see no way of arguing that case, because it can be easily argued that the lower classes simply lacked the means of oppressing others, and unless they are tested by being given those means to see what they will do, there is no way of knowing how virtuous they are. Likewise, not all wealthy people exploit others, nor are they morally corrupt”, she argued.

“That’s true, and you are an excellent example of an immensely wealthy, morally superior person”, Hermione smiled, as Lyra blushed. “As far as I can tell, you never did anything other than help, teach, protect and heal others, and you have only slightly less money and power than God”.

Lyra hid her face in Hermione’s hair and growled with embarrassment.

A baby woke up and started fussing. “Thank heavens for that mercy, because you’d have me crying in seconds”, she smiled. “Let’s go see who’s hungry, lonely or needs a diaper change”.

“Thank heavens for the Evanesco spell”, Hermione took the offered hand and got up.

“Masters, come quickly”, Kreacher seemed upset. “Scum, villains, servants of the Dark Lord. Mistress Cissa and Master Lucius caught them”, he croaked.

“Is everybody safe?”, Harry took charge immediately.

“Yes. The children are safe, and the Lord and Lady Malfoy are safe. Kreacher thinks villains are not safe”, he laughed viciously.

They all looked at each other and started relaxing. “I think I have an idea how this developed”, Viktor grinned.

“You go first, we’re can’t rush in this condition”, Hermione nodded. The women were eight months pregnant and were already hardly waiting to give birth and get it over with.

…

“Mommy, where are grandpa, grandma and daddy?”, Lily asked Lyra.

“They went to the Ministry to make a statement and put the bad men in prison”, she smiled at the child. “Tell me, what was it like?”

“Grandpa was reading to us, and grandma was playing with us before. Then Kreacher came and was very upset. Said two bad men are at the front door, trying to break in. Grandpa told Kreacher to watch us, and he and grandma went downstairs, there was a noise, and they came with two men. They couldn’t move, but they said nasty words I didn’t understand, and then grandpa and grandma pointed sticks at them and talked to them in Latin, but I don’t think the men liked it very much”, Lily nodded seriously.

Lyra smiled. “No, I don’t think they liked it very much, either”, she giggled.

“Did those men want to hurt us?”, James looked worried.

“I think they did, sweetheart, but grandma and grandpa are very powerful and would never allow it”, she nodded and hugged the boy. “You are both perfectly safe”.

“Mommy, grandma told me that one can have only one mommy and that my mommy is Hermione and not you”, Lily looked like she was about to cry. “Is that true?”

“It’s true in a way”, Lyra confirmed. “You see my big belly?”, she pointed, and the girl nodded.

“There’s a new baby inside. When it comes out of my body, I’m going to be its mommy. You came out of Hermione’s body that way, so she’s your mommy. However, I love your mommy very much, and she loves me very much, and we both think of both of you as our babies. We don’t make a difference”, she hugged the girl.

“Does it mean I can call still call you mommy?”, Lily smiled.

“Of course you can. I love you very much, and I wouldn’t love you any differently if it was I who gave birth to you, and not Hermione”, Lyra ruffled the girl’s hair.

“I love you too, mommy”, the girl beamed.

…

“We interrogated them properly at the office”, Viktor looked grim yet relieved. “Of course you didn’t get all of them”, he nodded to Lyra. “They were from the same group as those five, but they waited at their base, if you can call it that. They wanted revenge so they planned to kill our children”.

“They were planning this for a while. Since nobody but the residents can apparate inside, they lurked at the door and waited for all four of us to leave, and then they tried to break in through the door with spells. This alerted Kreacher, he alerted Lucius and Narcissa and that’s how their plan came to a bad ending”, Harry finished.

“Azkaban is too good for those two”, Lucius looked murderous.

“It is, but what upset me the most is that I looked at them and they were almost identical to the scum that roamed our home when the Dark Lord was there”, Narcissa frowned. “Worst of all, I looked at them and realised that they don’t all look like that by accident. The Dark Lord was producing such people because that’s what he wanted us all to be: nasty, filthy, vicious, cruel, without love, kindness or virtues. He would do superficial displays of good manners, but it was as if he never actually realised what manners are for. Manners are there to make people feel welcome, cared for, accepted and safe. With him, it was the opposite – a way to make cruelty and terror even more vicious, and people like those two used to snicker like hiyenas when her would torture and kill people. What’s worst, I could see us turning into those monsters, the way Bella turned from my kind and gentle sister into a perverted, vicious monster with dog-like devotion to the Dark Lord, and contempt, hatred and viciousness for everybody else”, she finished, as Lucius nodded. “We came frighteningly close, and it’s a fate worse than death. I think what saved us is that we had a daughter we loved, unlike the rest of them, who were childless, loveless and less than human in other ways as well”, he frowned.

“I’m sorry we couldn’t deal with it more quietly and the children saw it”, Narcissa smiled at Lyra and Hermione.

“We are grateful to the two of you for dealing with them”, Hermione bowed and smiled, and others nodded seriously.

“It was our great pleasure”, Lucius bowed back. “I’m so glad we were here, and not the two of you, who look as if you are about to give birth any moment now”, he beamed at the women.

“I fervently hope so”, Lyra sighed and smiled.

“You said not to use space magic wandlessly because it’s so easy to get yourself killed by accident. But I think there must be more. What else should be careful with?” Harry looked at Lyra.

They went out to the woods to practice while Lucius and Narcissa told children stories, and the day was particularly dreary.

“Let’s get the obvious out of the way; if you’re doing something complicated in a high-stress environment where your mind is all over the place, the probability that you’ll get something wrong and very much unwanted becomes all-but-certainty”, Lyra smiled. “So, in battle, keep it simple. Freeze, disarm, incapacitate, or kill. No complex, over the top charms. With a wand, you can be pretty sure that the spell goes the way where your wand points, and even then people sometimes have things backfire, which is what Voldemort failed to learn when attacking you multiple times. With your mind, your main enemy is mental chaos, turbulence, exhaustion, or inability to tear your mind off of something. This means you have to fight extremely calmly, and that’s not always something you can do”.

“What’s the non-obvious part?”, Viktor noticed where this was going.

“The non-obvious part concerns the nature of the spells themselves. Some spells are inherently harmful to the caster. They affect the target, but they also affect you. The unforgivable curses are an excellent example. Avada Kedavra, for instance, requires a specific destructive mindset of a cold-blooded murderer, where it hardens your heart, makes you cruel, unfeeling and horrible, more like Voldemort than a normal human person. With a wand, it’s bad enough. However, to cast it wandlessly, you need to focus that intent with your soul directly, and manipulate that kind of magic directly. It’s like being immersed in hot corrosive acid while you do it. It harms you, and horribly so. The damage you incur is a multiple of that which you would incur using a wand. I tried, and it took me a while to recover, despite the fact that I killed a mere cockroach. I felt as if my soul fractured slightly, and I only healed after feeling very painful remorse.”

“So, that’s why you paused time when I saw you fight; it gives you time to do thing peacefully and makes the situation calm. But what was that red light you applied to their hearts? I expected green, if anything”, Hermione wondered.

“My own modification of Reducto. It combines heat, lightning and fragmentation of the target. It instantly stopped their hearts and thermally destroyed the heart muscle, but as far as difficulty goes, it’s basically a cooking spell. Zero backlash. Highly blockable, though, and I wouldn’t recommend it against an active target because Protego shields against it completely”.

“Kind of hard to cast Protego when you’re frozen in time”, Harry noticed.

“True, but there are always artefacts, such as those protective hats George’s shop sells”, she warned. If someone wears that, your spell might backfire, so it’s always a good idea to wear such an artefact yourself”.

“Did you?”, Hermione asked.

“Why of course”, Lyra smiled. “That sweater of mine is more than just cozy and warm”.

“Sneaky”, Viktor nodded approvingly.

“I have two questions”, Harry scratched his neck. “First, if we don’t actually have a choice, and we have to use a curse that will harm us, what’s the point of irreversible damage we can never allow ourselves to cross? And second, if there are corrosive spells, are there spells that do the opposite? Heal the soul when used?”

“Both questions are excellent”, his wife nodded approvingly. “The point that should be avoided at all cost is actual murder, defined as killing an innocent person with malicious intent. With a wand, that will fracture your soul. Wandlessly, I’m afraid it would shatter it. There’s a big difference between that and using the same spell out of righteous anger against a horrible murderer you want to stop, but still, it’s harmful, and I recommend killing with other kinds of magic. As for the second question, the answer is yes. Exalto, my anti-Dementor spell, is one. It heals the soul by invoking the deepest, most complete fulfilment. It destroys Dementors because they are localised spiritual emptiness that is negated by such a spell. I guess it would cause incredible remorse and suffering with possibly fatal consequences in really broken humans. It creates profound spiritual ecstasy in pure souls, which you would well know”, she smiled. “The second such spell is Cordem Revelio, if used with a healing intent. It reveals your heart, but it also heals it. However, if someone like Voldemort used it, I think it would shatter his soul rather than heal it, because it would activate remorse for all his sins at once and that would not be survivable”.

“So, in short: destructive, torturous and murderous magic will greatly harm us, while healing magic, especially spiritually healing magic, will heal us?”, Viktor summarised.

“Exactly”, Lyra nodded. “We’re Aurors, so doing our job with healing magic isn’t really possible, at least not typically. However, stopping time, disarming, paralysing, shielding and so on are all harmless spells, and even when I used a cooking spell to boil their hearts, I used it with protective intent and, well, here’s the interesting part: target and context matter incredibly. If I used that spell against an innocent, I would probably die in spiritual agony. Using it against horrible cold blooded murderers of the innocent actually felt good. It made me feel calm, at peace with the deeper layers of the world, harmonious and whole”, she looked at him seriously.

“That’s interesting, and it confirms my own theories”, Harry mused. “When I used Crucio against the Carrows, I had absolutely no adverse effects. My intent was righteous retribution against vile, sadistic villains. But I feel I wouldn’t fare as well if I abused it against a good person”.

“You are exactly right”, his wife confirmed. “Intent matters far more than one would expect. It can never justify harm, so you can’t say you meant well but committed horrible deeds. It doesn’t work that way. But if you’re healing the world, opposing evil, protecting the good and the innocent, this intent shields you against adverse effects that would normally accompany evil means”.

“This would imply that Snape suffered no adverse effects for killing Dumbledore because they agreed it between themselves, and he only did it to protect Dumbledore from an inevitable and more torturous death?”, Hermione asked.

“Indeed. Had I done it, I think my soul would never have recovered”, Lyra shivered. “However, Snape’s motivations were all noble and kind, and he remained whole”.

“I have a serious problem with justifying evil ends with good intentions”, Viktor’s face was dark. “Grindelwald did that, and his moto was ‘for the greater good’. Historically speaking, evil means only ever lead to evil ends, and justifications of that kind serve only to make committing evil deeds easier”.

“This is true”, Lyra nodded. “However, there’s a big difference between what’s actually true and what you make yourself believe in order to rationalise evil things. The consequence you suffer from spells is alleviated only if the deep magic of the world agrees with you. What you delude yourself with is of no consequence. I can’t make that clear enough. If you can’t kill with love in your heart, don’t kill. I killed those five men because that was the necessary thing that protecting Hermione and every other innocent person that would have become their victim required. I don’t know how to explain it, but I allowed myself to be guided by the deep magic, more than I actually commanded it to do my bidding. I just followed the course demanded by the feeling of rightness, protection, care and love. That’s another reason why I wore that cozy, comfortable sweater. It makes me feel a certain way, and I follow that feeling in a fight – I remain soft, kind, soothing, comforting; even when I kill. That’s why I could transition instantly to comforting Hermione – I never actually left the state of mind where I could do that. I never had to harden my heart enough to kill. I killed because I love”, she smiled.

“I think I understand”, Viktor nodded. “You actually do what you say, rather than say things that make you feel good about what you’re doing”, he grinned.

“I understand it too”, Harry smiled. “I used the cruciatus curse to punish villains who harmed the good and the innocent. When I fought Voldemort, I actually tried to make him repent for his sins, because I saw what was to become of him, on the other side, and it was terrible. In fact, he killed himself with his own curse; I merely disarmed him”.

“I still don’t understand what’s the actual problem with space manipulation”, Hermione wondered. “I understand the moral issues with the dark curses, though”.

“Space manipulation is a problem because of the chaotic state of mind you will have unless you’re perfectly peaceful. If you’re not, and you touch space with magic, it might warp in uncontrolled ways and you might find yourself anatomically inverted, or present in multiple parts of the world at the same time. I do not wish to be more precise with that, but remember what they taught us about splicing, when they taught us apparition?”, she looked at Hermione pointedly, and the woman shivered.

“I understand now”, she gulped. “No space magic. Keep it simple. Do things out of love and protective care. Never justify evil ends with fluffy words”.

“Good girl”, Lyra hugged her. “Let’s go home, I’m cold and hungry”.

“I have my reservations regarding the historical objectivity of the ancient historicists, Lyra”, Hermione took a sip of her tea.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I don’t think they even had the concept of impartiality and differentiating between facts and opinions. Tacitus and Suetonius seem to have merely wanted to write their perspective down for posterity, so that when they outlived their enemies, they could adversely influence historical memory thereof”.

“I don’t necessarily disagree”, Lyra nodded and took another biscuit. “However, I also don’t necessarily see a problem there”.

“What do you mean?”

“You seem to think there’s such a thing as objective facts, and we should merely write those down, as divorced from opinion and interpretation as possible, in order to allow people to make up their own minds later”, Lyra postulated.

“That’s exactly what I mean”, Hermione nodded.

“Well, I’m not sure that’s either possible, useful or morally allowable”, Lyra looked her straight in the eyes. “Imagine writing history of the last three wizarding wars while trying to maintain a middle ground between Dumbledore and Grindelwald, and later between the Order of Phoenix and the Death Eaters and Voldemort, where each side should have a power of veto over any statement of fact or interpretation thereof that they might disagree with. You would get a moral abomination of a history”, she concluded.

Hermione was silent for a while as she considered it. “You do have a strong point there. I’m assuming an impartial observer that would write things as they are, but such an observer would also be in a compromised moral position if they remained impartial in a war against abject evil, so their opinion would necessarily reflect their own cowardice or moral indifference, giving us an opinion of a psychopath as historic evidence. I’m trying to understand whether having some ‘neutral’ coward’s opinion preserved as historical fact could ever be preferable to, for instance, Dumbledore’s or Harry’s, and I am at a loss”, she was lost in thought. “Were yours and Harry’s arguments at school like this?”

“Pretty much”, Lyra smiled. “With more hand-holding, though. That made it incredibly hard to try to win the argument at the expense of hurting the other person”.

Viktor descended the stairs, stumbled and hit his ankle. “Пйздец! Ёб мать свою!”

“Виктор, в доме дети”, Lyra chided him gently.

He looked at her with shock overriding the pain in his foot. “Ёбать! Ты тоже по-русски говоришь!”

“Enough so to keep you honest”, she smiled. “But how come a Bulgarian going to a German school swears in Russian?”

“I was Igor’s favourite student, remember? And Russian is similar enough to Bulgarian that I picked it up easily”, he limped.

Hermione looked at her suspiciously. “Wait a minute. How many languages do you actually speak?”

“What do you mean by ‘speak’ exactly? Enough to write essays and poetry, enough to participate in a conversation or enough to do shopping?”, Lyra whispered sheepishly.

Hermione just looked at her.

“OK, OK, I speak French, German, Russian and some Italian”, she was now honest. “Maybe some Spanish and Portuguese in a pinch if I had to order in a restaurant”.

“No Greek or Sanskrit?”, Hermione was laughing now.

“Only the basic terms, to know if someone’s messing with me”, Lyra looked embarrassed.

“Viktor, I might need one of those t-shirts you and Harry are wearing for Quidditch to mess with us”, Hermione looked at him.

“You mean, ‘team dumbass’?”, he laughed.

“Yeah, that”, Hermione looked at Lyra. “How in the name of all that is holy did you manage to be that smart?”

“I had an international Death Eater headquarters in my home, remember?”, she grinned. “You kind of want to know what they are talking about in their own language, when they don’t want anyone to know”.

“I’m still not convinced you’re a mere human”, Hermione giggled.

“Are you mad at me?” Hermione sat alone in thought and Harry was worried she was upset for learning he didn’t trust her enough to tell her things.

“What? Oh, no, I was just thinking about something related. I’m actually proud of you, and I feel very warm and cozy about it, because knowing you kept her secrets means you would keep mine as well, and that makes me feel secure. No, I was thinking about Ron. When I told you something, it remained between us. But when I would tell Ron something, it was in the public domain. He would even mock me over it in public, and that made me furious. But somehow, I always forgave him for it. During our first two years at school, I can remember a dozen things he said to me, or about me, that hurt me as much as anything Lyra ever said, and yet we locked Lyra out instantly as an enemy, and Ron was seen, I don’t know, as an insecure, well-meaning buffoon, I guess”, she seemed to be angry at herself.

“I was thinking about that too. Not now, but other day. How we just assumed his heart is in the right place – he’s a Gryffindor. He’s a Weasley. They’re all good folks. But Lyra felt dangerous, focused, in enemy camp. If Ron said something hurtful, we assumed he’s insecure and trying to prop himself up. If she did it, we assumed it was a weapon intentionally aimed to hurt us. I don’t even understand how he got sorted into Gryffindor, but then again Peter Pettigrew was a Gryffindor. I just foolishly assumed then that everybody in Gryffindor has to be good, and everybody in Slytherin has to be bad. And they all kept giving us those baleful looks, unlike the Hufflepuffs who were nice to everybody, or Ravenclaws who were aloof”, he reminisced.

“Part of it was just childish competitiveness. If you sort kids in two classes, each class will start trying to prove they are better and see the other as the competition”, she noted. “Even if the classes are sorted completely at random, and they are called A and B”.

“That’s true”, Harry conceded. “However, when you add serious politics and war into the mix, it becomes really bad. I was told – by Ron, as a matter of fact – that Slytherin produces the most dark wizards of all houses, and that the Dark Lord and all his followers were from Slytherin, and their children are now going to be sorted there as well. You can imagine how I reacted to that. Also, I saw Ron in rags and looking neglected, complaining about being the youngest in his family and how everybody is appreciated more than him and whatever he does will not be seen as special, and I saw myself in that – I was also in rags, I was always told I don’t matter and I’m just a waste of space and food. When I look at it now, I see him as an inherently insecure, ungrateful kid who never really learned to appreciate anything and was just entitled, felt everything he had was nothing and wanted more because he thought he deserved it. And you don’t even know the half of the nasty things he said about you when you weren’t there, and I’m not repeating those”, he grinned.

Hermione giggled. “And then Lyra came to our compartment, looking confident and important, well dressed, dignified, and we both interpreted that as haughty, spoiled and nasty, and she made faces at Ron’s clothes and even more when I said that my parents were muggles, and made that hamster joke when I was already sensitive to having those big front teeth”.

“Nice hamster you’re having, Potter. Did you buy it in Diagon Alley, or did it follow you on its own?”, Harry reminisced. “That felt like such a nasty thing to say to someone, that I instantly sorted her in the same box as Dudley and all other nasty bullies I ever met”.

“It was nasty, and it hurt”, Hermione remembered, “But it was by no means worse than what Ron kept saying about me, if you remember”.

“I do, in fact, and I can’t understand why I didn’t react the same way to him. Probably because he looked poor and neglected, and in my mind people were either poor and neglected, or bullies”, he frowned. “Now that I think of it, he was a terrible pig who cared more about food and his personal comfort than people, and she was a wonderful person who just managed to say all the wrong things”.

“And then she got sorted into Slytherin and we took it as a confirmation that she’s an enemy, and he got sorted into Gryffindor and we took it as a confirmation that he’s a trustworthy friend”.

“Exactly”. They looked at each other in silence.

“Whenever she tried to approach me in the hallways, I would give her a nasty look, because she was the enemy, a bully and a nasty person, and never even talked to her if I could avoid it. I didn’t see her as a person – she was just something you need to fight and defeat, and the fact that she looked like a pretty girl felt like a trick of the enemy that made her worse”, Harry remembered.

“And then she had enough and saved us from our own nastiness and stupidity by ordering you to take out your wand and kill her, if she’s the enemy and vermin, and if not, to treat her with dignity”, Hermione smiled.

“I was too self-righteous to feel ashamed of anything at that time, but she really made me feel ashamed of myself”, he smiled. “She forced open the box I put her in and made me realise that she’s a girl with feelings and that I actually treated her horribly”.

“That, and how smart and dignified she was, and how articulated and sophisticated under stress. I already knew she was a top student, but class is one thing; seeing that display was quite another. I went from having classified her as a nasty cow, to wanting to be like her”, Hermione smiled. “And when you talked to her and explained how she was, I felt really miffed for missing out”.

A perfectly balanced tray levitated itself beside them.

“Snacks”, Lyra shouted from the kitchen.

“Thanks”, they shouted back. “Smoked salmon, buttered toast, Earl Gray tea”, Hermione noticed. “You’re spoiling us”, she shouted.

“Shut up and eat, you’re pregnant”, Lyra shouted back.

“I’m not missing Ron any more”, she gave Harry a conspiratory whisper as he snickered.