You can now access up to chapter 108 on p@treon: [email protected]/palevolt100
+++++++
Hermione's positive impression of Henry had very little to do with his title. It had to do with whose son he was.
In England, particularly in this era, there were essentially only two kinds of British people who disliked Princess Diana: the extreme conservatives and the extreme left. Everyone else adored her.
The four of them settled around the long table covered with its plain tablecloth. The afternoon sun came in at an angle through the high windows, and small motes of dust turned slowly in the slanted light.
Henry lifted the simple porcelain teapot and poured steaming black tea into each cup with practiced ease. The colour was a warm amber, the scent clean and inviting.
"Ceylon with a little milk. Sugar is in the centre, please help yourselves." He pushed the bowl toward the middle of the table, the gesture easy and natural, and the room felt immediately less formal for it.
Hermione thanked him, added a precise small spoonful of sugar, and wrapped both hands around her cup.
Harry followed suit without fuss. Ron took a large, confident swallow and burned his mouth immediately, too committed to the action to spit the tea out, he puffed out his cheeks and breathed through the pain, earning a sharp look from Hermione.
A short silence followed. Slytherins and Gryffindors, across a table, separated by something that had nothing to do with furniture.
Hermione was the one who broke it. She set her cup down, folded her hands neatly in her lap, and composed herself with the deliberate air of someone beginning an important task.
"Thank you again, Your Highness Henry, and Daphne as well. Genuinely. I was so caught up in my own feelings that I didn't think clearly about the danger around me."
She admitted this plainly. It took something to say it out loud.
She glanced at Harry and Ron. "Shall we use first names? I think it would be simpler."
"Of course," Henry said pleasantly.
"Yes," Harry agreed. Ron produced a sound of agreement while trying not to stare at the frosted cake with quite such obvious suspicion.
"Then, Hermione, Harry, Ron," Henry said. "It's behind us now. The important thing is that everyone is safe."
The conversation found its feet gradually, moving from thanks to the events of the previous night.
Hermione described the argument in Charms class and her retreat to the bathroom with the kind of self-awareness that made it clear she had already been over it several times in her own head.
She mentioned, with a slight grimace, that Moaning Myrtle had not been particularly sympathetic company.
Ron's ears went pink. "I didn't mean it to come out so harshly. You just always have to show how much more you know than everyone else—"
"Ron!" Hermione's colour rose sharply.
"It's true," Ron muttered, though his voice had lost most of its conviction by the end of the sentence.
Harry cleared his throat. "Anyway. It's done. Everyone's all right." He turned to Henry with the instinctive gratitude of someone moving past an awkward patch, and his face became animated as he described the rest of the night: the decision to go after Hermione, the wrong turning into the corridor, the moment the mountain troll had appeared at the end of it.
"When its club swung at us, I could feel the air move. My mind just went completely blank." Harry leaned forward, his eyes still carrying the edge of the shock. "If Headmaster Dumbledore hadn't come when he did—"
"The club just snapped," Ron said, discovering an entirely acceptable topic and committing to it fully. "Dumbledore didn't even seem to try. One moment the club was there, and then it wasn't."
"We owe a great deal to the Headmaster's timing," Hermione said, with the quiet, fervent relief of someone who had spent some hours thinking about what the alternative would have looked like.
"He always seems to appear precisely when he's needed," Henry said. His tone was straightforwardly respectful, and it drew nods from all three of them without any apparent effort.
The teapot ran dry. Henry rose without ceremony to refill it at the small side table in the corner.
Something shifted slightly with that small action. He was not waiting to be served, he was simply hosting. The gap narrowed.
When he sat back down, the conversation moved somewhere more comfortable.
They complained about History of Magic with the enthusiasm of a shared grievance. Ron declared that Professor Binns could probably put the portraits to sleep if he tried, and Hermione—visibly more relaxed now—offered a creditable impression of Professor Quirrell attempting to explain something and losing the thread of it halfway through.
Henry contributed a few precise observations about the material properties they'd covered in Potions, which Hermione received with the focused attention of someone taking mental notes and then actually took written ones.
Quidditch came up, and the room became genuinely animated.
Harry lit up entirely. "It's like the broom becomes part of you. Wherever you want to go, you've already thought it before you've moved."
Henry mentioned that his own Nimbus 2000 had arrived recently and that the adjustment from the school brooms was more demanding than he had anticipated. "The responsiveness is completely different. Too much pressure in a turn and you've already gone past where you meant to be."
"Slytherin seems strong," Harry said, in the tone of someone assessing a sporting rival rather than an enemy. "Flint has a presence. And your Beaters are formidable."
"Yes, he's a bit like a—" Ron began, and then Hermione's foot connected firmly with his under the table, and he reconsidered. "A very focused captain," he finished, without enthusiasm but without the original word either.
"Captain Flint has a significant investment in winning," Henry said, with perfect equanimity. "He sets high expectations and trains accordingly."
Ron, who had been listening to the Quidditch discussion with growing interest and weakening restraint, could not hold back entirely. "My brother Charlie captained Gryffindor, and he always said Slytherin's style of play is sometimes—" he searched for the word "—quite aggressive."
He had wanted to say dirty, but the frosted cake was still sitting there and he wasn't going to risk it.
"Different approaches to the same objective," Henry said calmly. "Slytherin tends toward strategy and efficiency, and it's true that the edges of the rules sometimes get tested. But Quidditch is fundamentally a sport that rewards intelligence and coordination, isn't it?"
Ron pressed his lips together, chose not to argue, and contented himself with muttering that Charlie had also said it was sometimes less enjoyable when the opposing team was too disciplined about everything, which was, for Ron Weasley, approximately as close to a compliment for Slytherin as Henry was likely to receive.
When the conversation drifted toward family, Hermione talked about her parents' dental practice and a summer holiday in France.
Harry offered a brief and notably sparse account of the Dursleys. Ron, finding himself in familiar territory, became considerably more expansive: Fred and George's latest experiments, Percy's remarkable capacity for self-importance, Ginny's attachment to her brothers, the general chaotic warmth of a house with too many people and never quite enough room.
"Dad put a charm on our car," Ron said, warming to the story. "Even though the Ministry technically doesn't allow it—"
He stopped. Something in his own words had caught up with him.