Hermione looks for reassurance

It took a few hours, and a good bit of crying, before Hermione was ready to talk to Harry about what had happened. Drying her eyes, she ducked out of the tent, to sit across from Harry, relieving him of the locket. The boy with the lightning scar was gloomily levitating a twig, moving it in aimless circles through the air. Hermione opened her mouth - and closed it again. Part of her wanted to just pretend none of it had happened. To press on with the mission regardless.

But Ron's words were eating her up. She needed Harry to reassure her, to just tell her she wasn't going insane.

"Harry..." she started quietly. "Do you think we might have done something to push Ron away?"

"I thought you said it was just the locket." Harry eyed the gold pendant with detestation.

"But it can only pull on existing fears," explained Hermione. "I'm worried that we've been... leaving him out, somehow. Probably without meaning to."

Harry silently wiggled his twig through the air, watching its shadow bounce along the ground.

"Either we weren't paying close enough attention to his feelings, or the locket's more powerful than we realised," Hermione reasoned, resting her head against the tent, as far from the horcrux as possible. She said the last words in a whisper, almost without meaning to. "I can't believe he actually thought we were having sex."

"For what it's worth, you did a pretty good job convincing him otherwise," Harry smiled at her. Hermione smiled back, sadly. "Imagine if he knew he was right about the whole thing."

"What?" blinked Hermione, but as her tongue formed the final 't', Harry's mouth was suddenly pushed against hers. Hermione wanted to push him away, to throw him off her, but for some reason her body wouldn't do what she told it. Instead, she kissed back, her tongue pushing into his mouth as if it had done so a thousand times, her arms pulling his body close to hers as she pushed her chest against his. It was horrific - as if being a passenger in her own body. And yet Hermione had never felt such pleasure from her own body in her life.

With a great **** of will, Hermione finally managed to wrest her body back under her own control. Slipping out of Harry's grasp, tears running down her cheeks, Hermione ran through the magically enlarged tent and into the bathroom, staring at the mirror in despair as her chest heaved.

"What's happening to me?" she whispered to her reflection, scrunching up her eyes as she tried to fit her world back into the box she understood.

"The locket."

Hermione jerked up with a start, searching for the source of the female voice - but she was alone.

"Over here, dumbass."

Hermione froze with fright. Slowly, dreading what she might see, Hermione turned to the mirror.

"Some Gryffindor you are," her reflection smirked. One hand rested on her hip, swung out sideways in an effortlessly attractive pose. Her face wasn't tear-stained and distraught, but confident and alluring. Hermione looked down at herself, and confirmed that she was indeed doing nothing like what the mirror portrayed.

"Who are you?" she asked tentatively.

"I'm you. Obviously," sniggered her reflection.

"That's... that's not possible," Hermione shook her head. "I must be having a - a hallucination, or something..."

"You're not hallucinating," sighed the reflection, obviously bored. "Look. Normally we wouldn't meet, but I think that our pretty little necklace is messing with our head."

Hermione almost laughed. "You mean... I have dissociative identity disorder? Multiple personalities?"

"You tell me." Her reflection eyed her contemptuously. "You're meant to be the clever one."

"The clever one?" repeated Hermione.

"It means you're meant to be smart," snorted the other girl. Hermione gave her a stern look. "Okay, okay, keep your knickers on. You and I are both part of Hermione Granger, different parts of her personality. You're the academic, the bookworm, the forever-platonic friend."

Hermione met her reflection's eyes, trying to match their confidence. Perhaps the other girl was telling the truth - but there were a dozen other spells that could make mirrors talk back. "So if I'm Hermione Granger, the friend, what does that make you?"