Disclaimer: Oh, how I wish I owned them all…

"When I wanted to call you and ask you for help, I stopped myself…" –Gomenasai, TATU

I can't sit still now. I pace around the kitchen, picking up a plate that needs to be washed, then a piece of the bread Mum baked just last night. I shove both restlessly away. I can't sit still, but I can't focus on anything to keep my hands busy. I glance out the window at the dark, and my nails dig into my palms with frustration. Time seems to be slowing down, torturing me as I wonder what's happening, why my clock stopped.

Has something gone wrong?

Is he…?

Almost exactly a year after I first caught a glimpse of him, I turned a corner in my own house, and I saw them. Those green eyes, alight with that same wonder as he took in my home and all its magic. He sat at my table, and ate the same food as me, and laughed with my brothers. Somehow, in my silly little girl's head, he was a shining hero still.

At eleven, I didn't understand any of it. It was a jumble of confusion, of happiness and horror if he smiled at me, of longing for a glance and fearing his eyes all at once. I tripped over my feet, and struggled to talk, and blushed and hid my face and hated everything shabby and poor about the Weasleys.

I suffered through my first crush like everyone else does. Nothing special, really. Except to me.

Then things changed. The diary…the hours disappearing into numb darkness…the beginning of the fear…

I wanted to hide it. I didn't want him to know, to see the flaws in me. I couldn't let my hero see the imperfections of the darkness behind my eyes. To be honest, he barely saw me at all. I was just Ron's little sister.

Then I fell into that final freezing darkness, and I knew I was dead.

When I came back to life, his face was the first thing I saw.

I cried. I blubbered and apologized and confessed all at once. Harry was kind, even affectionate. He tried to make the tears stop, to make the fear and guilt stop. He held a shining sword. A phoenix answered to his call. He never looked so heroic.

And he bled.

Harry Potter was a human being. More than the Boy Who Lived, he was a boy who loved. Not me. Not then. But he loved Ron enough to risk everything for his sister. He loved Hermione enough to believe in her even when she couldn't tell him what to do. He loved Hogwarts enough to die to keep its doors open to people like him, who wondered, and searched, and, more than anything, loved magic.

And for the first time, I knew I wanted to be looked at with that wondering expression, intense and affectionate and joyful all at once. I wanted to be the magic in Harry Potter's eyes.

That's when it began.

The clock. Very softly, behind the tremulous beating of my heart, I felt it, and heard it. The soft tick tick tick of my life as it intertwined with Harry Potter's.