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"Arcturus," Hermione greets coldly, the first time she sees Harry him again after everything has happened. She stands on the doorstep of a house that after years and years she's finally been allowed to visit in muggle shorts and a thrifted t-shirt, and feels more angry than out of place.
Harry Arcturus makes an aborted, awkward movement—like he wants to reach out for her—before tucking his hands back into the pockets of his robes.
"You don't have to call me that, really, it's—"
"Your name isn't Harry." Her words land like slimey icewater, killing any lingering atmosphere of friendliness completely and abruptly.
Arcturus winces, shrinking in on himself. "It's Archie. I go by Archie."
"Archie, then."
He fidgets, taking a step back from the doorway and making space for her to enter. "Can I get you anything? Tea? Food?"
As she steps inside, Hermione lets the door fall shut behind her with a heavy thud. "No thank you."
The refusal lands them another moment of cement-heavy awkwardness.
Hermione takes it as an opportunity to examine him, not flinching when he starts to self-consciously rub at the line of his jaw. It's one of the features that looks least like the Harry she knows, sharp and angular and robbed of all the delicacy that had defined his face before.
His eyes are grey. Somehow, that bothers her less than everything else. She thinks they'd make her more uncomfortable if they were brown or hazel, or some other dark color, but the color-leached quartz could pass for dull green in the dark. It's everything else around his eyes that's wrong: the lids, which seem a little more hooded; and the different way they sit in their sockets; a heavier, more masculine brow ridge casting them into deeper shadow. He's taller, too. Only by a few inches, but it feels like more. Hermione had never felt like Harry loomed over her. Arcturus does.
She thinks she can see hints of the boy she knows—in the worried crease of his forehead and the apprehensive twist to his lips. In the way his attention is focused entirely on her, something so transparently vulnerable in the openness of his expression—but there's still a disconnect between this new face and the boy she knows. She looks at him, and she doesn't see Harry underneath. She just sees the stranger.
(Maybe, it's because he is a stranger)
Arcturus shuffles a little where he stands. "We should… find somewhere to sit down…"
"Who are you?"
His jaw drops at the non-sequitur response. "'Mione, what—?"
She recoils at the nickname—it somehow feels reprehensibly presumptuous for him to be using it, for all that it's been his for years.
"I can put some of my own conclusions together," she stays, struggling to keep her voice steady, all cool and accusatory. "But not enough to figure out what exactly was going through your head the entire time you were playing me for a fool, So I'm here to ask you again, Arcturus Black: Who are you?"
He steps in closer to her, voice tight and rushed and desperate to be listened to. "Hermione, I promise you our friendship was real. I never lied to you any more than I had too."
"Any more than you had to," Hermione sniffs, raising her chin. "Because you couldn't trust the stupid little muggleborn girl with a secret like this, could you?"
For a moment, Arcturus looks too stunned to respond, eyes wide and distressed before then something stormy flares behind them and his mouth pulls into a stubborn frown. Taking hold of her shoulders, he stares intently into her eyes, as if he can pour the whole of himself into their locked gazes.
"You know I would never think that of you."
He sounds so innocent and naive saying it, as if it's a given, and a part of Hermione wants to punch him in the face.
Of course he thinks that.
Of course he thinks it would be that easy.
Tell me, she wants to say. Just how much did you question your pedestal before running off to America where you could pretend to be one of us without the consequences?
How much of it had he questioned when he went home, again and again, to a life where he had easy access to every single thing the rest of them had been denied; respect and recognition and choices.
Hermione wants to believe him. She wants to believe he could grow up the way he did and still sit down on a plane with a Muggleborn girl and believe, all the way down to his core, that she was an equal. It's Harry.
She wants to believe him, but it sounds like a fairytale.
Arcturus's shoulders slump "…’Mione?"
She closes her eyes, holding back a shudder as she breathes in. "I know Harry would never."
"It's me, 'Mione," he says, and his voice sounds like it's on the verge of breaking. "I’m right here."
She feels his fingers press harder into her shoulders, can tell he wants to touch her more, pull her into a real hug, but she shakes her head, pulling away to wrap her arms tight around her own body. Heat prickles at the back of her eyes, and she turns away to hide her face, just in case the tears start falling.
"Is that it then?" Arcturus says in a raw whisper, obviously struggling to get the words out. "Is this what you came for?"
"No." She shakes her head again, wanting to say more, but the words to say what she wants aren't there. She feels certain she could've articulated what she wanted, before she knocked on his door, but now…
All she's sure of is that this wasn't it. This confrontation. This anger.
The only problem is, she's no longer certain there's no room in her for anything else.
"Tell me what I can do," he says, voice tinged with desperation. "Tell me what I can do to fix this."
She'd wanted his explanations. She'd wanted him to tell her something that would fix this, give her her best friend back and make it all okay. She'd come ready to forgive him.
She's no longer sure there's any explanation he could give her that would make her feel safe being friends with him again. That would make her stop being angry.
"I used to think you were the best thing that ever happened to me, you know," she says. She still doesn't look at Archie, vision glazed as she stares down the hallway.
"I’d never met anyone who understood me so well. Both outcasts from Britain’s unjust system. Both healing prodigies who would have to fight our way towards careers and recognition. But you never were either of those things, were you? For you it’s just–-just some costume you put on, and then at the end of the year when you’re done playing, you go home. To your ancient family house and your pureblood robes and your illustrious father who literally bankrolls the most prestigious hospital in the country.
"It’s clear to me you care, Archie—Arcturus—whatever your name is—but it’s a lot harder to tell whether any of the rest of it matters to you at all."
He has the nerve to sound offended. "Of course it does!"
"You let your cousin homeschool herself without a wand!"
The words explode out of her, staining the air with the scent of something rotten, a stink that lingers even as her voice quiets. "I don’t know how to justify that for you. I want you to be the boy I know more than anything, but the more I look—the more I just… can’t see it."
Arcturus's face, when she dares to look at him again, is leached of color.
"So that’s it?" she says. "You aren’t even going to try to defend yourself?"
The plastic smile he gives her is blank and artificially cheerful, but Hermione can see past it. Right down into the depths of his eyes, where something dark dances, hollow and bitterly amused. "What is there to say? You know what I did. The whole world knows."