HARRY:

"...what if... she knows something... about me?" Lucy finished.

Her eyes met mine, terrified beyond belief.

"She doesn't," I said quickly with a shake of my head. "I don't think so, anyway. That night of the first detention, she didn't say anything about what happened over summer, and she only looked in your dad's file."

"I don't know anything about the specifics of what's in there," she replied, her voice small and strained. Something dark flickered across her face. Hurt, fear, anger, all in rapid succession.

"Still, it shouldn't have anything about you in there, since—"

"Since he wasn't alive long enough to think twice about where I was or what might have been happening to me, I know," she finished bitterly, "but sometimes Ministry files have more information than they really should, and if a Ministry official deemed my part of the story to be relevant to his, or if Umbridge didn't tell the whole truth and looked at my file too..."

"What's going on?" Hermione interrupted, her voice even more anxious now. "What's this about Umbridge and Ministry files? Do we think she knows Lucy's a—"

"She might." Lucy closed her eyes and sagged against the wall, pressing a hand over her eyes. She inhaled through her nose, then exhaled through her mouth. She lowered her hand and glanced over my shoulder, and I followed her gaze.

Hagrid was looking rather stricken, his mouth hanging slightly open, as if he had suddenly understood something. "Lucy, what happened to you?" he asked. "Yeh've been quieter than usual, but I didn' think— I thought you were jus' tired or somethin'—"

Lucy glanced at me for a long moment, an unspoken question in her eyes.

"It's up to you," I said quietly.

She nodded. "It's a bit of a long story, but... something happened over summer." Then, she drew her wand and muttered silencing charm after silencing charm, the magic pulsing through the room with each incantation.

Hermione's mouth formed an O shape, and Ron's too.

Lucy had decided to tell the story again. The third time, I believed. Once to Professor Lupin and Mr. Weasley and Mad-Eye. Once to me.

And now to Ron, Hermione, and Hagrid. And Tuck and Fang, of course.

Once she was satisfied with the silencing charms, Lucy landed in one of the chairs at the table and drew another shaky breath. I pulled a chair around so I could sit next to her. The other three people in the room sank down into chairs as well. She drew a third shaky breath, then, staring at the table, Lucy began to talk.

"This can't leave these walls," she said, her voice small but firm. "Malfoy knowing is dangerous enough—"

Hermione's hand flew over her mouth. "Malfoy knows?"

"His dad was one of the Death Eaters who kidnapped me, so yeah, he knows."

"Kidnapped?" Hagrid repeated, absolutely horrified.

Lucy nodded, meeting his eyes briefly before looking back down at the patterns she was tracing on the table. Her hand was shaking, and for a moment I panicked, but then I remembered the full moon was only a couple nights away. She always shook before the full moon.

"The details are complicated," she continued after a moment, "but basically, the Daily Prophet covered up what happened to Cedric."

Hagrid's jaw dropped. "They didn'!"

"They did. Not a single mention of it anywhere for an entire month. There... there are still people who don't know, because the only person who said anything about it was my mum. She wrote something about it and pulled strings at the Ministry to get it put in the paper. It wasn't on the front page, by any means, but it apparently got Voldemort's attention regardless. A couple days after the article, someone lured me out of the house while a number of Death Eaters went in and killed my parents. I... I saw the Dark Mark from where I was in the woods." Lucy rolled up her sleeve just enough to reveal the bracelet and started fiddling with one of the charms. The bear charm, I realized. "I had a bad feeling about it all, even before the Dark Mark, so I dropped this just in case. I was glad I had done that when I realized I had been surrounded. I didn't even have time to reach for my wand before they knocked me out."

Lucy hadn't looked up from the bracelet, so she didn't see the looks on everyone's faces. Hermione's hand was still pressed to her mouth in horror, and her hand was shaking. Ron was pale and looked like it was taking him no small amount of restraint not to jump up and hug her. Hagrid had removed the steak from his face and was staring at her with a couple of tears in his eyes. As for myself, well... I'd heard the story before. I'd revisited the event multiple times in nightmares, or at least my imagination's best imitation of it. The shock of it had worn off for me. But hearing the way she was telling the story, her voice so quiet, the way she was barely holding back her emotions... I doubted that would ever get easier.

If anything, it was harder the second time. I knew that I was the one who had done this to her, I had set us all on this path the night I convinced Sirius and Professor Lupin to not kill Peter Pettigrew.

I pushed my own emotions away and forced myself to be present, in case Lucy needed me. Or wanted me. Whichever happened first.

"They wanted to try to recruit me." She pulled her sleeves over her hands and clenched her fists. "They stole my wand and broke it, they told me they killed my parents."

"Why did they think that would make you want to join them?" Ron asked, confusion and anger written all over his face.

"They were spouting rubbish about werewolves, too." Lucy's voice was little more than a whisper.

I stiffened. She hadn't mentioned that in September. She had gotten too overwhelmed to mention that.

But she hadn't mentioned the Everlins yet to this group. I wasn't sure if she would.

Hearing this story will never get easier.

"What kind of rubbish?" Hermione's voice was steel.

"Just asking if I really thought the wizarding world cared about me, trying to convince me the world would somehow be better with Voldemort in charge," Lucy mumbled after a moment. "Comparing me to Cedric, too." She looked up at Ron for a moment before sighing shakily and looking back down at the table. "Obviously, I refused to join their side over and over and over again. Every time I did..." She turned slightly and looked at me, gnawing on her lip. Passing the baton.

"They were thick enough to think if their words weren't enough to convince her," I said, every syllable dripping with venom, "the Cruciatus Curse would do the trick. Which is ridiculous, obviously, but that's... that's what happened."

"I got out, though," Lucy said in a stronger voice, picking up the story before anyone could dwell too long on that part. "My guard fell asleep so I stole his wand. Joke spells did the trick to get me out of the cave, then once I got out, I realized I was in the Ottery St. Catchpole woods." She looked at Ron. "You know that cave with the boulder that hangs precariously over the mouth of it?"

Despite how pale his face still was, Ron cracked a grin. "That boulder isn't there anymore, is it?"

Lucy laughed, a stark contrast to the mood in the hut. "No. The Reductor Curse finished it off."

"That would do the trick," Hermione said with a watery laugh, Lucy having broken the tension rather effectively. She launched herself forward at Lucy, wrapping her arms around her neck. "Oh, Lucy."

"S'okay, Mione. It's over now."

"Is it?" Ron studied Lucy with a critical eye, then looked knowingly at me. "You were shaking for at least a month, and you still don't like loud noises or sudden movement."

"Yeah, well, have I ever?" Her tone was light, but I knew there was truth to what Ron was saying. Lucy was trying to put up a brave front, but it was just a front. Well, not all of it, she was brave, clearly, but... there was a difference between bravery and acceptance. And some things weren't meant to be accepted. Like murder and kidnapping and torture and... Umbridge.

As soon as I had the thought, I glanced at Hagrid, whose expression was completely unreadable as he stared at Lucy. I opened my mouth to warn him not to say anything about Cedric around Umbridge — or anything favorable about me, for that matter — but he spoke first.

"I can't believe it," he said, still shocked. Ron and Hermione had at least known something had happened, something bad, but Hagrid had been blindsided by it all. Lucy had been quiet that night, yes, but she was certainly the quietest and most reserved of the "quintessential quirky quartet." Her being quiet wasn't necessarily something new. Neither was tragedy, really — her life had been marked by it from a young age, in hindsight. I wasn't sure if Hagrid knew about the complicated nature of her family, but I knew he must have known about her being a werewolf. I got the feeling that Hagrid and Lucy shared an understanding the rest of us in the room would never have. "Is that why Tuck's here?"

Lucy nodded. "Professor Dumbledore didn't think you'd mind and thought Fang might need a friend. I've been coming down and feeding them every morning, except for the morning after the full moon, then Harry does it. I can keep Tuck in my dormitory if you don't want him here—"

"Tuck can stay!" Hagrid said excitedly. "I've been sayin' fer years Fang needs a friend! I just, er," he added in a sad voice, "wish it didn' have ter happen like this."

"It's alright, really," Lucy insisted. "I'm fine. This was over summer. Your summer looks like it was far worse."

"Yeah, Hagrid, what attacked you?" I asked, sensing that Lucy was eager to shift the attention away from herself.

It was only partially successful.

Hagrid rose to his feet. "Listen, it's been a long day an' it's late. Look, don' you go worryin' abou' me, I promise yeh I'll rest up, an' I've got really good stuff planned fer yer lessons now that I'm back. Now you lot had better get back up to the castle, an' don' forget ter wipe yer footprints out behind yeh!"

And with that, we found ourselves under the cloak and back outside in the snow.

"I'll lead the way if you do the Obliteration Charm behind us as we go, Hermione," Lucy whispered.

We shuffled so Lucy was in the front and Hermione was in the back as we returned to the castle. The heat radiating off of Lucy kept us all warm under the cloak, which would have been nice if not for the reason why. When we got back to the common room, the second I pulled the cloak off, Ron wrapped his arms around Lucy and pulled her in tight. She seemed surprised initially, but she relaxed a bit and hugged back after a moment.

"Whatever they said about Cedric, about you, it's not true," he said, holding tight to her.

"Same goes for you and the ruddy Slytherins," she replied as he pulled away. "I'll start working on a silencing charm that could cover the whole Slytherin student section. Horrible, the whole lot. Except for Archie and Cam, of course."

Hermione snorted and turned to Ron and me. "You should have seen the two of them, running up and down the aisle hexing people left and right trying to shut everyone up."

"We wanted to help—" Lucy started.

"—but Ginny said it would be a suicide mission and stuck our shoes to the floor," Hermione finished with a laugh.

I reached forward and tugged on the red and gold bow still around Lucy's ponytail. "I don't know why Ginny would say that, you two would have fit right in with the Slytherins."

"Oh, shove off," Lucy retorted, swatting my hand away.

Hermione stifled a yawn. "Well, Hagrid's right, it's been a long day. See you boys in the morning."

"I'm going to stay down here for a bit, actually," Lucy said. "I'm not too tired yet."

"Lucy—"

"I just need a couple minutes." She retreated to the window seat and pulled her knees to her chest before Hermione could protest again. "I'll be up soon. I just... need to gather my thoughts a bit."

"Alright," Hermione said reluctantly, and she glanced between Ron and me.

Who's staying with her?

I settled the silent debate and crawled into the window seat across from Lucy. We were silent until both doors to the dormitories had opened and closed, meaning we were alone.

"Do you think we'll ever fully outgrow this seat?" Lucy asked, gesturing to the way we had both pulled our knees up to avoid touching each other.

"Merlin, I hope not," I replied with a grin. "Where else would we have conversations in the middle of the night about the meaning of life?"

"There are plenty of other places to sit in this room."

"But this is your favorite spot, isn't it?"

Lucy smiled a bit and nodded. "Yeah. It is."

She fell silent then, so I glanced out the window at the falling snow. My mind was still spinning from the events of the day, and I imagined she was feeling the same way. My eyelids started to grow heavy after a couple of minutes, and when I glanced over to see if Lucy was getting sleepy, too, I was startled to see tears in her eyes.

"Hey, hey," I said softly, "what is it?"

She glanced at me just as a tear slipped free. "Sorry, I-I just— I just have more on my mind than usual tonight."

"It's okay. Merlin, Lucy, it's okay. It's been a long day for all of us."

"Yeah... it has been." Another tear slipped free, which she swiped away quickly. "I'm just going to write a letter to Cedric and go to bed."

I nodded. "Sounds like a good idea."

We pried ourselves out of the window seat, and I tugged on her bow again. "You think you could get me one of those for the next match, since I'll be in the stands with you."

"Sure thing," Lucy said with a small, amused grin. "I could paint your face like Ginny's."

"You painted her face? With all of those stars?"

She nodded. "Dean taught me the charm. He was painting while you were at practice a couple of nights ago and overheard Ginny ask me if I could paint her face for the match. I deferred to him, since he's infinitely better than I am, but he offered to teach me the charm so I could do it myself." Lucy rubbed the back of her neck. "I could do it on parchment just fine, but I couldn't do it on Ginny's face this morning. Finally I managed, but... it took longer than it should have."

"But you got it," I said.

"I did." She bit her lip, and she glanced away.

"Ron's right, you know."

Lucy's eyes met mine again. "What do you mean?"

"Whatever they said about you, it's not true."

"They said I'm helpless without my wand. Little did they know I'm helpless even with my wand a lot of the time—"

"You're never helpless, Lucy, are you kidding—"

"They talked about Cedric, too," she said over me. "They said he wasn't worth more than my mum's one article that she only got published through blackmail, and that I was worth even less than that—"

"You both deserve more than that, really you do, to me if no one else—"

"They called me a Mudblood, Harry."

I froze.

Lucy shook her head and took advantage of my shock to ramble a bit. "I know I shouldn't let what they said bother me, but they were right. Even if they were wrong about some of what they said, they were right about what they said about me, who I am." She sighed. "Sometimes I feel like I should leave Dumbledore's Army to you, because I doubt anyone there would want me teaching them if they knew. You're the only one there who knows the whole truth, and if anyone else were to find out—"

"If anyone else were to find out," I interrupted, finally recovering my wits, "they would just have to deal with it, because I'm not doing this without you."

"Why not? You're perfectly capable."

"Yeah, and so are you, which is why we make such a great team. I'm not doing this without you, Lucy, so whatever's going on in here..." I reached forward — slowly, remembering her startled reaction a couple weeks ago when my hand accidentally flew too close to her face — and tapped her temple with two fingers. "Try to shut it up, alright? Listen to me instead. D'you remember what I told you that night we practiced in the Room of Requirement?"

"The monster is only a part of me, not what defines me?"

"I would never say monster, but... yes, essentially, I do believe that was my point. Keep working on that, okay?"

"I'll try," she said, quietly but earnestly. "It's just hard on nights like this when all I can seem to remember is..."

"The full moon and the caves and all that?"

Lucy nodded. "And all that."

I stepped forward and pulled her into a hug, trying to ignore just how much she was burning up. "Well, in a couple of days, you'll feel better, and you can keep working on it when you're not a human furnace."

"Or a human icicle?"

"Or a human icicle," I agreed. I smiled weakly at her one last time as we started to go our separate ways. "Tell Cedric I said hello, will you?"

Lucy's voice was little more than a whisper as she smiled weakly right back at me. "Sure thing."

Ron was pulling off his Quidditch robes when I got to the dormitory. I felt myself step through a silencing charm and met his eyes.

"What's up?" I asked in a normal voice.

"Quieter," he whispered, "I don't trust my silencing charm."

"Well, I do," I replied, though I did look around to make sure no one was stirring.

Ron sniffed sarcastically. "You do?"

"Assuming you want to talk about Lucy, I'm just being careful."

"That's fair." He sighed. "So you knew all of that?"

"She didn't mention the werewolf comments the first time," I admitted in a whisper, "but she'd only mentioned that for the first time a couple minutes before I asked about what happened over summer, so either she didn't want to overwhelm me or she forgot. She was overwhelmed herself, too, so..." I fell silent as I started unbuttoning my shirt. "But yes, I knew all of that." And more. I found out about the Everlins that night as well.

I remembered that Draco Malfoy technically knew about the Everlins too, and Umbridge, so I added one more point to this all in my mind.

And she told me willingly.

"Bloody hell," he whispered.

"Bloody hell indeed."

"And Umbridge knows about this?"

"And Malfoy."

"And they're both still—"

"Still trying to make her life a living hell? Yes."

"No wonder you pounded him today."

"It was a factor, yeah."

"I have half a mind to pound him myself."

"Just be sure you don't do it in front of a couple hundred witnesses."

Ron snorted. "Sounds good."

"Lesson learned there," I said with a bitter grin.

"If nothing else, we learned a lot today," he commented as he fell backwards onto his bed. He counted off on his fingers. "One, we must protect Lucy at all costs."

I sighed and fell down on the bed next to him. "We knew that already."

"Right, of course. Allow me to rephrase. One, protecting Lucy is easier said than done but now that we know what and who we should protect her from, we have to do everything we can to make sure that doesn't happen again."

"Okay, I knew that already, but yes, that's a better way to phrase that."

"Two, something attacked Hagrid and he doesn't want even us to know what it was."

"Right. If it was Madame Maxime, I think I'll laugh."

Ron started cracking up. "Oh Merlin, imagine. That would be something, wouldn't it?"

"Absolutely. Okay, three, there's a lot of recruiting going around right now."

"Definitely. Four, the sides appear to be Voldemort versus Dumbledore."

"Versus the Ministry, somehow," I muttered. "Make it make sense."

"I'm not even going to try," he replied wisely. "Er, five, Umbridge is even worse than we ever imagined."

I groaned. "Right. Six, Malfoy should consider a career in musical theater."

At this, we both started laughing. And laughing. And laughing. It wasn't funny, nothing about any of this was funny, but after the day we'd had, we needed to laugh. There was nothing else we could do in that moment about anything at all, so we laughed. And laughed. And laughed.

Once we stopped, though, and I was back in bed, my mind slipped back to Lucy, the way it often did at night.

She hadn't gotten to laugh. She had almost certainly gone up to the dormitory, been interrogated (kindly, of course, and as gently as possible) by Hermione, then written a letter to Cedric.

I'd told Lucy to say hi to Cedric for me. But, truthfully, there was so much more I wanted to say to him, so I slipped out of bed and started digging through my trunk for a fresh piece of parchment.

A/N: Hi, everyone! Happy Wednesday! I'm so sorry for the delay between chapters. I literally pressed publish the second I finished proofreading Chapter 143 and had to hurry off to class, so I was set back a bit. ADDITIONALLY, I was set back by the fact that I WROTE THE WRONG PERSPECTIVES. Chapter 143 was SUPPOSED to be from Harry's perspective and Chapter 144 was SUPPOSED to be from Lucy's perspective, but I was exhausted and distracted when I started writing Chapter 143 and I had written almost the entire thing before I checked my notes and realized I had written seven pages of the wrong point of view. :') BUT, needless to say, I think I'm happy with how these chapters turned out, and I think it honestly worked out better this way, and I hope you all enjoyed the fruits of my mistakes! 

I hope you all have a great rest of your week! Feel free to comment or send me a message letting me know what you think (since I'm assuming if you've read 144 chapters of this story, it's in your library or reading list or bookmarks by now). Thank you so much for reading! See you Saturday!