What Is a Friend

"Thank you for your help, Grandma."

Damon followed Augusta out of Dumbledore's office and thanked the elderly woman again.

"Don't thank me. I should be thanking you. From now on, take Neville along when you play. Can you do that, child?"

"I will."

"Good. If you ever need any help, have Neville write to me, or go to The Leaky Cauldron in Diagon Alley and ask for Tom, the owner.

"Though the Longbottom family has declined as one of the Sacred Twenty-Eight, we have not lost the honor and strength of pure-bloods."

"Thank you for your promise. I'll remember it. Are you going to see Neville with me?"

Damon did not care about the old woman's so-called pure-bloods and half-bloods. He merely saw her as a somewhat stern old lady.

"I'm going straight back. Tell him for me that he handled this very well. I'm proud of him."

With that, the iron-willed old woman left without the slightest pause, as though she had just heard about this from a professor she knew well and immediately set off for Hogwarts.

"Then I should get back to class too."

Damon left in high spirits. Whether he got detention or not made little difference to him; at most, he would lose some of the fun of trading barbs with Snape.

He was not naive enough to think Snape would give him extra lessons during detention. With that old bat's temperament, he would probably make Damon deal with a huge pile of disgusting potion ingredients while sneering at him nonstop.

And behind Damon, separated by only a door.

Dumbledore finally stood quietly behind that door, watching Damon's retreating back with complete focus, his expression suggesting he was considering something of utmost importance.

He had roughly grasped the boy's character. Given time, Damon would surely become a powerful aid to Harry in his fight against Voldemort. But Dumbledore still needed to observe him further—see how he would choose when faced with danger.

Dumbledore had seen quite a few people who possessed tremendous courage in ordinary times, only to kneel before Voldemort when faced with death, revealing their ugliest sides.

Would Damon be that sort of person?

The next day, the matter of "The Duelling Prince's Lightning Strike on Malfoy" began to ferment, and the situation changed slightly.

More and more students cut down on sleeping in and arrived at the Great Hall early for breakfast—they were afraid their laziness would make them miss another spectacle.

But the little lions' enthusiasm faded, and they began to come to their senses—they started grieving over their House Cup points.

Yes, what Damon had done was undeniably cool, but the loss of one hundred and fifty points had also left them utterly humiliated. Gryffindor had fallen from first to fourth in the House Cup at a single stroke, and whenever they passed the scoreboard on the first floor, they felt hollow inside.

Some discordant voices began circulating within the smaller groups.

The way they looked at Damon was no longer always filled with respect. It gradually became more complicated, and a strange atmosphere spread among the first-years.

Harry and the others clearly sensed this change and secretly worried for Damon, but Damon remained the same as ever. Other than at breakfast, they never saw him, and once the weekend came, he vanished completely, not even showing up for breakfast.

"I really don't understand. Do you seriously not care at all?"

Hermione finally could not hold it in any longer and questioned Damon amid the furtive glances around them.

"Care about what?"

For once, he was not reading the newspaper. A magical notebook and quill floated beside him, and whenever inspiration struck, he used the quill to jot it down. He was trying out a theory he had previously seen in Transfiguration Today. Recently, he had found a few clues and a rough outline. Perhaps tomorrow, perhaps next month, he would make a breakthrough.

He only lacked a flash of inspiration.

"Care about what? Every Gryffindor student is talking about the House Cup points we lost, and you ask me what I mean? Do you even know that we're at the bottom now?

"Damon—don't you have—even the slightest sense of collective honor?"

"What, Hermione? Do you think what I did before was wrong?"

"Of course you were right—it's just, couldn't we have done it another way? You could even have challenged Malfoy to a midnight duel. Why did you have to do that in public?"

Hermione felt as though she had gone mad.

She had never imagined that the words "midnight duel" would come out of her own mouth.

At that moment, Ron and Harry both stared at her with wide eyes, as though they were meeting her for the first time.

What drove Hermione even crazier was that even after all that, Damon still looked utterly unconcerned as he said flatly:

"Because that was what I wanted to do at the time. I thought it was better that way. That's all."

He finished the last mouthful of noodle soup, stood, and said to Hermione:

"Don't worry. I'll earn back those one hundred and fifty points before the end of term. Gryffindor will still take first place in the House Cup."

"But—how?"

"You don't need to worry about that."

"Why shouldn't I worry? Tell me, I can help—"

"Oh, and if you still haven't found any information about Nicolas Flamel, you might want to look at Dumbledore's Chocolate Frog card."

Damon left immediately after saying that. As for the House Cup, once his paper was published, he would naturally win those points back.

Damon moved so decisively that before Hermione could finish the latter half of her sentence, he was already far away, leaving her alone to stew in anger.

"That wasn't what I meant at all! Why would he say that?"

Ron and Harry watched Damon's carefree departing figure. They wanted to laugh but did not dare. They exchanged a glance, and each saw the admiration in the other's eyes.

As for Hermione?

Damon's actions had plainly told everyone that he did not care about other people's opinions. Hermione had obviously taken the wrong position by questioning him now—Harry and Ron had never thought Damon was wrong.

Beating Malfoy in public, making him lose all face and ensuring he could never swagger around again, was far more important than House Cup points. Hermione seemed unable to understand that.

"Take it easy, Hermione. At least we've found a clue about Nicolas Flamel, right?"

Rather than attacking Hermione over her stance, Ron comforted her gently.

Hermione glanced at him in surprise, then became dejected again.

"I feel like Damon is getting farther and farther away from us. Aren't we friends?

"Shouldn't friends help each other?

"If he only steps in to solve our problems while we can't help him at all, does that still count as friendship?

"I've never seen friends who don't speak more than ten sentences to each other in a month."

"Oh—don't take it too seriously. Really, it depends on how you define friendship."

Ron comforted Hermione, thinking that she had not been like this when she used to devote herself entirely to the library. But he did not voice that thought.

As he spoke, he secretly winked at Harry.

Harry immediately understood and followed up, "Yeah, Damon told me that there are many kinds of friends—" Seeing Hermione turn her gaze on him, Harry suddenly began to stammer. He had thought it made perfect sense at the time, but he had forgotten some of the details.

"An-anyway, why don't we hurry up and see what's on the Chocolate Frog card?"