"Normal speech"; "Thoughts"; Lingua Felinarum; {Parseltongue
By evening, Ron and the kitty couple were certain. Someone, who knew exactly what they'd had, had raided Hermione's bookbag while they were incapacitated by the stench of Lockhart's Valentine surprise. They had no idea who it was or why. They were almost all the way back to square one and to make matters worse, the cat children kept finding excuses to... nuzzle at each other.
When Harry was approached by one of the dwarves, his fur stood on end and he hissed, his tail flared up like a brush. His growling, and the similar sounds coming from the brown-haired cat-girl next to him, persuaded the dwarf that discretion was the better part of valour. "It wasn't a good song, anyway," the messenger thought. "I mean, fresh pickled toad? A blackboard? Who in their right mind would enjoy being compared to those?"
At dinner, the Gryffindors all noticed their feline friends sat pressed close, almost as if they were trying to climb into each others' laps, and most were unsure if they should do something about it. Ron and the twins ran interference as much as they could, with some help from the rest of the quidditch team. Hermione glared at dessert, as if the chocolate mousse was a personal insult.
What's wrong? Harry mewled into her hair.
I don't know if we're enough like cats to be allergic to chocolate, she replied. It's downright annoying. I'll have to ask Madam Pomfrey.
The cat-boy chuckled. I already did. Our digestive tracts are a blend of the two, so we're OK with it. So saying, he took a bowlful and passed it to his... friend? "Would a friend be pressing so close to me? Could I feel this way if that was all she was?" Harry's thoughts made him pause a moment, and Hermione wasn't the only one to notice, even if she was the first. Neville and Ron sat up a little straighter, paying attention in as casual a manner as they could, and the redhead signalled the twins.
Of course, noticing anything other than each other would have been challenging for the kitty couple at this point. Hermione had briefly wondered why she was, well, trying to climb all over Harry, but being pressed against his fur felt very good to her. She was trying to focus on the mystery of the diary, but her thoughts kept drifting back to the green-eyed cat-boy.
"Hermione," Harry murmured, knowing she could hear him, indeed would have been hard pressed not to. "What's love look like?"
The catgirl turned her head to face him. "Why do you ask, Harry?"
"Because I don't know what it's like. The Dursleys never gave me affection, so I don't know what it feels like. That photo album Hagrid gave me last year shows my mum and dad and I know they were in love, and that they loved me, or I wouldn't be here. It's just, there's knowing it, and there's feeling it. I mean, if you were looking at us right now, having just walked into the Hall, would it look like we were in love?" Harry gulped, at the last bit. At least their fur prevented others from seeing their blushing. "Would you like it if we were?" he whispered.
To say Hermione was surprised didn't convey the full power of the effect Harry's words had on her. She thought hard, using the discipline gained from Snape's Occlumency lessons to drag her mind back into line when it started to wander. The answer to the first question was obvious, given the way they were behaving, and as for the second, she wouldn't be doing these things if she didn't, right? Her inner cat might pop up and meow suggestions at her, but she still made her own choices, didn't she? She felt Harry tense and realised that the delay in her answer was making him nervous.
"I should hope we look like we were in love, Harry," she whispered. "I don't understand why we're behaving like this, but Dad is always touching and brushing against Mum and vice versa, whether or not they realise what they're doing. As for whether or not I'd mind, at this point I would happily climb into your lap for more snuggling and petting. I'm about a half-inch from purring right now."
She felt the tension depart, her best friend seemingly going boneless with relief. Then he surprised everyone within earshot.
"Hermione Jean Granger, would you be my girlfriend?"
Ron held out a hand to Fred, who placed a small bag of Galleons in it.
That night, Harry's dreams were filled with black fur pressed against him, with motion and stroking and purring, with warmth and heat that surrounded him and completed him, with a yowling demanding his attention, and most of all with the scent of cinnamon and chocolate, and amber eyes that he drowned in. When the yowling rose to a shrieking of his name, he started awake. He was alone in his bed, and unsure whether to be relieved or disappointed at that. He was only twelve, he should be too young for these thoughts, shouldn't he? Rising from the bed, he padded down to the common room. If he couldn't sleep, maybe he could ask a house elf for a mug of hot chocolate.
The bushy brown head of hair he saw over the back of the couch in the common room drove all thoughts of the beverage from his mind, and his ears pricked up and forward. Hermione was crying? As he quietly moved closer he could make out what she was sobbing to herself in lingua felinum.
Why'd I dream that? Obviously, Harry hadn't been the only one to have an odd dream that night. I can't tell Harry, I don't want him to hate me, I don't know what I want or what to do...
You could just tell me, he whispered into her hair, and she sprang straight into the air, landing away from the couch, claws out and tail fluffed up, ready to fight, before she realised who it was, and what he'd said. It's not like I'd be mad at you. He flopped onto the couch next to where she'd been sitting, one arm across the back, inviting her to join him in every way short of saying it. Her scent was stronger than ever, and it took his full focus to act casually. A stray thought shocked him as she hesitated, one that felt like his world was falling apart.
You haven't … changed your mind, have you? He meowed, then spoke again.
"You don't regret letting me be your boyfriend, do you?" He switched back to English for the last question, although he whispered it, as lingua felinarum just didn't have the words for regret (cats regret nothing, as McGonagall had said) and the closest it got to boyfriend was mate, which carried a far more... significant commitment. Although, truth to tell, after that dream he'd had perhaps it was the right word... Harry shook his head, flapping his ears until that thought left his mind. Hermione jumped to a different, but probably still accurate, conclusion: that Harry was shaking to rid himself of the idea of her rejection.
"No, Harry!" she hissed at him. "I won't regret it. Never. It's just, should I be feeling like this? I mean, I just had a dream, and it made me... feel really good, and I thought it felt too good, you know?" She had relaxed from her wary stance, and curled up next to him, pressing her nose into the fur on his neck. "We're only kids," she whispered. "I don't want to have to... grow up like that yet. I want to go slow, but the cat inside me is pushing for everything right now."
Harry fought with his own feline instincts, which were screaming at him to claim her, to take her, to make her his in the most primal fashion. "So we... go slow. We... don't rush. If I have to fight a raging wildcat every day just to be close to you, I will. Even if the wildcat in question is me."
Tearing themselves away from each other had very nearly been painful. They were struggling against their instincts all the way, and had no idea how they'd have gotten through the next few days without the help of their friends. Ron distracted them by getting them to focus on the riddle of, well, Riddle. This by the simple expedient of dragging them down to the trophy case and pointing out the Award for Special Services to the school with the name Tom Marvolo Riddle on it. As the two cat children were desperate for anything to distract themselves from each other, they were caught up in the mystery willingly. Hermione and Neville went to the library to look through the records to see why the trophy had been awarded, she to do the requisite research, and he to keep people back from her while she did. The new Hermione was currently a little touchy...
Ron caught Harry up in a game of Wizard's Chess in the Great Hall. The game was going in Ron's favour, despite spotting Harry his queen and both knights. "I wish I could explain it, Harry. It's like I just see every move that comes from what I'm about to do, and then every move from that, all the way to endgame. It's what I'm good at, but I can't see what help it's going to be in the future."
Harry grunted, batting one of Ron's rooks back and forth between his hands. It was one of only three pieces he'd managed to take from Ron. He reached out to lay down his king. "Can't concentrate on this, sorry Ron. It's not the game, or the company, it's just..."
Ron grinned at his furry friend. "Just that I'm not your 'Her-my-honey', I know. Neville says you've been talking in your sleep. Most of it's in that linguini-vellum or whatever, but that phrase came through loud and clear." Ron shook his head. "I don't understand it, but it's like you're both older than me now."
Neville and Hemione entered the Hall and crossed to where Harry and Ron sat. Before anything else, the catgirl climbed onto her boyfriend's lap, wrapping her arms around his neck and hugging him close. A hug he was quick to return. After a few moments of nuzzling and purring, she pulled back and took a seat beside him. "I'm sorry, Harry," she said softly. "We found the information. According to the records, Tom Marvolo Riddle received his award for catching the culprit the last time the chamber was opened, fifty years ago." She took a deep breath. "The person he caught was Hagrid, Harry."
Harry slumped in place for a moment. Suddenly he straightened. "Hang on," he said. "Isn't it odd that the last time Riddle was at school, the Chamber was opened, and now that his diary's here, it opens again? If it was Hagrid," he raised a hand, forestalling Hermione's protests, "then he's had fifty years where he could have reopened it, and you know how he is about creatures, he knows enough that he could teach about it, but he'd have been giving whatever it was a silly name and letting slip he had it in hundreds of little ways."
Hermione hugged him hard. "Thanks, Harry," she whispered, purring in relief. "I was sure something was wrong but I couldn't see what."
Ron was deep in thought, not beyond noticing the kitty couple, but becoming used to it. Hermione was good at research and Harry could spot little flaws like no one else. The redhead scrawled Riddle's full name on apiece of parchment. "Do you think he knew V-voldemort?" he asked, idly crossing out the letters for that name, and glancing at what was left. M-A-L-O-R-I-D. "Oh, bugger," he muttered. Neville was close enough to hear him, and the other two could have heard him from a great deal further away than they were.
Rearranging the letters in Riddle's name, Ron turned to his friends. "Riddle doesn't just know him," he said his face turning white, "he is him."
There on the parchment was written Tom Marvolo Riddle, each letter with a line scratched through it. Beneath it Ron has written the phrase he'd spotted. I am Lord Voldemort.
Amber eyes locked with emerald as Harry muttered. "I hate being right."