Hermione made her way to the Gryffindor tower, fairly sure she’d find her original there and that things would go well. She still didn’t know how she’d deal with Ginny Weasley: how to explain that she’d jumped at the chance to leave off being Harry Potter forever, even destroying the only ways back to being Harry, without thinking of Ginny at all? Maybe Ron would be able to help her deal with his sister...
The Fat Lady asked Hermione for the password to the tower, and the one from her Hermione memories wasn’t the current one but the one before it — so her Hermione memories were slightly out of date. She gave the current password from her extra Harry memories, and the Fat Lady let her in, saying, “I was certain you were already upstairs!” Hermione just shrugged, resisting the temptation to say, “Yes, I am upstairs!”
Nobody was in the Common Room, and Hermione went on to her room, where of course she, or rather the original Hermione, already was. Hermione seemed barely disconcerted by the appearance of her duplicate, and said, “I don’t think you’re using Polyjuice Potion — unless you’re really good at acting, because you’ve got my body language. Who are you and why and how are you such a good copy of me?”
“Who do you know who envies you your brains and your talents and doesn’t like being himself though he’s always put up a good front?” asked the former Harry in flawless Hermione tones.
Hermione looked incredulous, then after a few moments of thought said, “Harry?”
Her duplicate nodded, and said, “Never again. Sorry I didn’t ask your permission to be you, but I saw my chance and took it.”
“How?” asked Hermione.
“Verto tergum,” said the other.
Hermione remembered at once. “There really is a collection of skinsuits here at Hogwarts? I thought that was probably just a story, or at best something long gone!” Her duplicate explained, and the the original Hermione said, “So what did you do with the Harry Potter skinsuit, twin sister?”
“There was also a Harry suit in the collection,” she said, and repeated the phrase she’d used to destroy them. “Both of them.”
“But why?” asked Hermione.
“Nobody is going to turn me into Harry Potter ever again,” new-Hermione said firmly. “If you insist on my not being you, I’ll be someone else, but I won’t be Harry!”
The original Hermione is
Fri Jul 31 15:07:34 2020