I ran past him, tears springing in my eyes as I sprinted out into the corridors, off to the room of requirement. I burst through the door and slammed it shut behind me before locking it and collapsing next to that vanishing cabinet. I cried for a long long time, the days events swirling around in my mind. The same sentence seemed to linger in the air whispering to me over and over again. “Your not his type.”

“I am NOT your girlfriend Ron. You didn’t ask me and I didn’t say yes. I wouldn’t have said yes anyway, even if you had had the eloquence to ask me to go out with you before you tried to eat my face!”

Ron smirked as he stood up. The silence pounded in my eardrums and I realized my best friends were no longer cheering.

“Who said anything about me wanting you to be my girlfriend?” He whispered in my ear huskily, “I was thinking more of an easy shag.”

Ron has become an arsehole, Harry has fallen in love and me? I’ve become invisible.
We used to go on our adventures together. We’d solve them together. Fight the bad guy together.
And finally it’s dawned on me that I’m going to have to solve this puzzle on my own. Because that’s what I am now.
I’m on my own.

“Why are you telling me this?” I asked confusedly.

Malfoy looked down at his hands and took a deep breath before speaking.

“I’m telling you this because I want you out of the way. You can’t be wandering around the castle when they come. They’ll kill you on the spot. I need you to stay in your cosy little dormitory with all your friends and pretend nothing is happening. But mostly I need you to know so that if worst comes to worst, you’ll be ready.
So that you’ll have a back up plan and you’ll be able to get out.”

And that scares me. Normally I’m good at taking charge. I revel in it. But I’m not a child anymore. I have to find my way in the big bad world on my own, with no one here to help me and for the first time in my life I’m scared of having to rely on nothing but myself. I’ve always been scared of failure. But this is so much more than fear of failing school. This is fear of losing the war.
Dumbledore is gone; I always thought that with him we had a chance. But now he’s dead and we’re just what’s left over.