The silence that followed Harry’s verbal dismantling of Professor McGonagall was thick enough to choke on.
Padma’s fingers closed around Hermione’s arm like a vice.
“You knew?”
Hermione could only nod.
Her eyes never left Harry.
He had already turned his attention back to the Headmaster, and she wasn’t about to miss a single word.
“I thank you for providing me with this choice, Headmaster,” Harry said, his voice carrying clearly through the stunned hall.
“It is rather an easy one to make.
I was very happy at my goblin school and never wanted to attend Hogwarts in the first place.
It was my father who urged me to come here.
I shall now be able to return home and tell him I tried my best… but was neither welcome nor wanted.”
The old Hermione Granger—the one who had left Crawley that morning—would have ranked being expelled from school only slightly below being murdered on her personal list of catastrophes.
This new Hermione had crossed into an entirely different world.
She had a best friend now.
And she was not about to lose him.
Ignoring every one of Harry’s previous claims that he could handle himself, she shot to her feet and ran to his side.
“Harry?”
He turned, surprised.
“Hermione?”
“If you’re leaving,” she said, loud enough for half the hall to hear, “then I’m going too.”
Draco Malfoy was vibrating with humiliated rage.
He had spent the evening establishing himself as the dominant first-year, only to watch Harry Potter stand silent while he dug himself deeper and deeper.
Now the boy he had been ordered to befriend and eventually recruit had publicly destroyed him.
His father’s instructions were in ashes.
The rage boiled over.
“Goblins and another Mudblood?” Malfoy spat, voice carrying across the hall.
“Just when we thought the once-proud Potter name couldn’t sink any lower!”
Harry left Hermione standing beside a still-shocked McGonagall and walked straight toward the Slytherin table.
Malfoy rose to meet him, supremely confident.
His godfather sat at the staff table.
He was surrounded by his own house.
Whatever pathetic retort Potter came up with, Draco was certain he could twist it back against him.
He never saw the backhand coming.
Harry’s hand moved in a blur.
The crack of flesh on flesh echoed off the enchanted ceiling.
Malfoy flew backward onto the Slytherin table in a clatter of plates and goblets, blood already streaming from his split lip.
“You,” Harry said, voice cold and precise, “are a disgusting example of what inbreeding can produce.
I challenge you to an honour duel.”
Albus Dumbledore had been reeling from the boy’s refusal to attend and his attack on Minerva.
Now he saw an opportunity and seized it.
“Just how do you intend to fight a duel, Harry, when you consider yourself a goblin and Mr.
Malfoy is clearly a wizard?
You are aware the law prohibits goblins from using wands?”
Harry didn’t even blink.
“Had I been allowed to attend Hogwarts, you would have discovered I am well versed in both wizard and goblin law.
Perhaps if you had studied our laws more carefully, you would not have been barred from doing business with Gringotts for the last decade.
Then again, you don’t appear to pay too much attention to wizarding law either.
They simply allow you to get away with it.”
The hall, already stunned, somehow found room for fresh gasps.
Being barred from Gringotts was no small matter.
The older students and staff understood exactly what that meant.
“I am quite prepared to duel Mr.
Malfoy while he uses his wand,” Harry continued.
“I have my own weapon.”
He reached into his sleeve and drew a blade.
It was beautiful and terrifying.
The handle was carved from a Hungarian Horntail fang, polished to a dark gleam.
From it extended a razor-sharp, goblin-forged stiletto blade, six inches of deadly metal that seemed to drink the candlelight and throw it back sharper.
The overall shape deliberately echoed a wand—elegant, deadly, and unmistakably not wizard-made.
Dumbledore’s voice was tight.
“I’m afraid I can’t let you do that, Harry—”
“You left me no other option,” Harry cut across him.
“The entire school faculty sat there and allowed this moron to publicly insult me and my family.”
Severus Snape moved before anyone else could speak.
“Mr.
Malfoy,” he said, voice like oiled silk, “ten points from Slytherin.”
Draco, silk handkerchief pressed to his bleeding mouth, made a muffled sound of outrage.
Harry gave Snape a slight, mocking bow.
“My honour is satisfied.
Though my curiosity is not.
Was the deduction for the slight against my birth parents, my goblin father, or Miss Granger’s circumstances of birth?”
Snape did not answer.
“As I suspected,” Harry said.
“A combined total for all three.” He turned back to Hermione and offered his arm.
“Come on.
Time to get out of here.
That piece of filth publicly calls you the foulest name imaginable and only loses three points—after I threaten to cut him to pieces.”
Hermione took his arm without hesitation.
Together they turned toward the doors.
Filius Flitwick’s voice rang out, clear and respectful.
“Harry Crow, Son of Barchoke—may I enquire how you intend to travel home?”
Harry stopped.
He turned and offered the Charms professor a much deeper bow, one filled with genuine respect.
“Well met, Master Flitwick.
Our Director actually named me Old Crow, though you weren’t to know.
My father calls me Harry Crow so I never forget my other roots.
He is a wise goblin who also provided me with a portkey.
I will activate it as soon as we clear the Hogwarts wards.
I promise on my honour to see Miss Granger safely home.”
Flitwick’s reply was solemn.
“Well met, Old Crow, Child of James and Lily, Son of Barchoke… Prophesied One.”
Hermione felt Harry stiffen beneath her hand.
He gave no other outward sign.
They had taken only two more steps when another voice spoke.
It was the Sorting Hat.
“Your father is indeed a wise goblin, Harry Crow.
He knows you must come to Hogwarts to fulfil your destiny.
Hogwarts is prepared to welcome you… and grant all that welcome entails.”
The hall held its collective breath.
Hermione’s fingers tightened on Harry’s arm.
She could feel the tension thrumming through him like a drawn bowstring.
The blade was still in his other hand, gleaming under the floating candles.
Everything—Dumbledore’s manipulations, Malfoy’s slur, the threat of expulsion, even the portkey waiting beyond the wards—hung in the balance of whatever Harry chose to do next.
And for the first time since she had met him on the train, Hermione had absolutely no idea what her best friend was going to say.