Secret busted

Hermione looked at Harry with a determined expression and he stared back at her with an amused but haggard expression.

And they continued to stare at each other like that for a long moment before he finally sighed and asked "Weren't your parents taking you to France, Italy or wherever it was? Why aren't you with them?"

"Because if I went along with them then who would take care of you?" she asked, still feeling a little worried about his health.

He looked like he had neither eaten nor slept for a few days. His hair was messed up quite badly. His t-shirt was dirty, there were huge dark bags under his eyes and he smelled.

Well, food, health and hygiene were never his top priorities in Hogwarts either but now a days he seemed to have completely forgotten what those words even meant.

And she was not surprised by this. Not at all.

In fact, she had expected such a thing to happen but to see her friend actually get so careless without her or Penelope's constant supervision still irritated her to no end.

The reason she had expected this was because Harry became like this whenever he was working on some big project of his.

And his company, which he had simply named 'Magical Goods' was perhaps his biggest and most time consuming project till date.

Another reason was that whenever he delved too deeply in his projects, she and Penelope were always there to take him out and make sure that he was taking care of himself properly, but since the last month, both of them had been busy with their exams so he was left on his own devices which was never a very good thing in her opinion.

So as soon as her exams ended and she was back in home, she had asked her parents to allow her to spend the summer helping her friend.

The resulting argument had been the worst that she had ever had with her parents and had ended with them cancelling their ticket for the family vacation. And only she promised them that she would return home every evening before 6 pm was she even allowed to come and meet Harry.

Another thing that made her worry so much was that despite all of his genius, Harry was still very young and had never done something like running a company.

Which was why she was rather happy with his decision of making Steve the CEO and having Mia look over the other aspects of the company.

She did not know much about them but she knew that they had a lot of experience with leadership and were perfectly capable of dealing with the stress of running company while Harry was clearly struggling with all this.

Of course, she would never saw such thoughts out loud. Harry had a big ego and he would not take her saying such things to him very well. So it was better if she stayed quiet and supported him like she always did.

"I can take care of myself." He said with slight annoyance but then she gave her the 'look' for a long moment under he simply wilted and nodded his head.

He was far too prideful for his own good but even he was smart enough to know when he had too much on his plate and needed help.

She gave him a tentative smile before she pulled him out of the lab that he'd been cooped up in.

The last time she had seen him working in a lab, he had been carving some runes inside a woman's bra.

That had been an embarrassing day for the both of them and from that day onward, she had decided that she would rather not see what's he working on until he wants to show it to her himself.

"What are you working on today?" she asked after she sat him down on a comfortable chair in the lounge outside his lab.

That was something that he had done with all of his underground labs.

There would always be a lounging area outside the lab.

Till this date, she had no idea how many underground labs he had or how he built them.

Whenever she asked him about this topic, he would simply give him a creepy smile. As if he was planning to conquer the whole world by building underground labs under people's homes or something and after a while, she simply stopped asking.

"Was working on the Central Magical Tower." He said while yawning, the exhaustion catching up with him now that he was not working on his projects.

She noted down his answer with a quill on a parchment, trying to make a daily schedule for him which would help him deal with all his ongoing projects without killing himself.

"And how far had you come along in your projects?" she asked and he started answering them.

By the end of her interrogation, she already had a few schedules constructed for him in her mind. Now she only needed his input to select the schedule best suited for him but when she looked up at him, she realized that he had already fallen asleep.

She looked at him with a little annoyance before her fondness for friend won over and she decided to take him to his bed.

But just as she was about to do that, something fell from his head on top of the table. She curiously looked over at the tiara that had fallen off his head, which had clearly been invisible up until now and felt like she had seen it somewhere before.

Why would Harry wear a woman's tiara on his head. And why would he go to such lengths to hide it.

And where had she seen it before?

She whirled the thought around in her mind for a few moments as she looked at the jewelry from all angles before her eyes suddenly widened in recognition as she realized what she was holding in her hand.

The Diadem of Rowena Ravenclaw.

Author's Note:- Sorry about the short chapter.

But yeah. Hermione finally found out about the diadem.

Any guesses about how she'll respond to Harry hiding such a treasure from her ~author snickers~

Anyway, if you guys like my work, want to support me and have some change to spare, then please support me at- pat.reon.com/ankit1

Have a nice day :)