“Did you survive?”, Ron looked up towards Harry as he entered the common room.

Harry looked at him in silence for a few breaths. “Ron, that was the most frightening experience I ever had, and I met Voldemort in person”, he whispered.

“Did she curse you?”, Ron rose in alarm.

“I wish”, Harry smiled, as Hermione joined them. “Being cursed, hated, beaten and bullied is something I can deal with. This was like talking to Dumbledore, only if in the end I wiped Dumbledore’s tears away and hugged him to make him calm himself. It’s nothing like I ever experienced in my life. I can’t share what we talked about, because it’s private, but man…”

“You mean, the enemy has a point?”, Hermione smiled.

“I don’t think the enemy is the right word any more. She feels like a library of books I’ve never read, with ideas I never thought of, arguments the power of which I never imagined, and all the ideas are expressed and finished by a mind I cannot hope to match. Even if she’s wrong somewhere, she’s better and smarter than me, and she’s also a better person than me. I feel completely, positively dwarfed. It’s not that she has a point. She has such a mind-bogglingly good and devastating point that I can’t even figure out how to approach arguing with it”, Harry sighed. “I think she could beat Dumbledore in an argument. I’m like nothing next to her.”

“Good”, Hermione nodded. “I’ll make you a list of books to read. This will force you to stop slacking”.

“Oh, the mail is arriving”, Ron perked up.

A package for Harry arrived. “Where did that come from?”, he wondered. “There’s a note, it says: ‘For next time; LM’. Emporio Armani? What the heck?”

Hermione giggled. “Let me see. Yeah, she got you proper clothes, and they seem to be exactly the right size. She’s good”.

“Blimey”, Ron looked miffed. “Why can’t I have a scary girlfriend who buys me clothes?”

Hermione slapped him on the head and smiled. “Step up your game, Weasley, and things might happen”.