Her hair was never quite right, but that was how he liked it, the way tendrils tended to work their way out of her messy braid and down the nape of her neck, inching past her collar and brushing against a necklace made of what he suspected to be petrified bowtruckles, but he didn't ask. She stood opposite him, an ancient, battered book open in her hands.
"Did you know that the Crumple-Horned Snorkack originated in Cleveland, Ohio?" she asked him, sounding as dreamy and far off as she always did. "It was discovered by a Midwestern wizard in the late 1800s, a man named Phineas Hodges who hardly even believed in his own powers."
"There is no incontrovertible proof of the existence of the Crumple-Horned Snorkack," he said.
"We could go find one," she suggested. "Can your family afford an American expedition?"
He laughed. "Probably. The residuals from Fantastic Beasts still haven't dried up."
"That must be nice." Her voice sounded far away, but he knew not to be offended; it was as though she spoke from the inside of a bubble all her own, and that was just her way. She still looked you in the eye, and that was what really mattered.
"It doesn't matter much to me," he said, shrugging. "I don't really ever think about money. I'm happy enough with my one-bedroom flat and a job at a library, as you know."
She nodded. "So am I, with mine. And with George."
"George?"
"My boyfriend," she said, and he felt his heart crackle and his mood shift and his smile disappear.
"I didn't know you had a boyfriend."
"Only for a few weeks now. I'm not in love with him, though. I think we'll break up in a month or two."
"Then why are you dating him?" he asked, confused by the very notion of staying with a person when you knew it wouldn't last.
"Sex, I suppose, and companionship. He's good for that. You'd like him, I think. He's jealous of you."
"He is?" The crackle repaired itself, and the smile fought its way back onto his face.
"He thinks I prefer you to him, which is sensible, since I do."
"You do?"
"Of course. You're smarter and better-looking and you don't roll your eyes when I talk about the Crumple-Horned Snorkack. I know it's not real. It's a test."
"Did I pass, then?" he asked.
She smiled and nodded and looked at her book again. "It says here that they're a sign of love."
"Fitting," he said.
"And that, when killed, dismembered, and melted down, they work as a powerful aphrodisiac."
"What?"
"It doesn't really say that. I just liked the sound of it." She smiled again, a strange little smile that would only look good on her face, and he wondered if she knew that he was in love with her and had been since the day she'd first walked into the library that belonged to James, his uncle.
"Would you like to break up with your boyfriend and have dinner with me tonight?" he asked without meaning to. It was a thought he'd normally internalize, but she was just so different, the only truly unique person he'd ever met, and he suspected her response would be similarly unique, unlike anything he'd hear from any other girl with a boyfriend.
"I think that would be lovely," she said. "If we go into Hogsmeade, we can go to Hogwarts and I'll show you the thestrals. You've seen someone die, right?"
"How'd you know that?"
She shrugged. "I can tell."
"I've never seen a thestral."
"Then I'll show you them. One was just born last week. He's beautiful."
He doubted that and didn't care.