Hermione's flat was probably very nice under ordinary circumstances, Ginny thought as she stepped over a field of crystal shards that had once been a figurine of some kind. As it was, she had to blink slowly to make sure she was in fact in London, and not, through some horrible magical mishap, back at Harry's. Every available surface had been rendered unavailable by virtue of a vast, amorphous collection of objects that appeared, from where Ginny stood, to have no clear beginning or end.

"Ninety-five percent of this is Lydia's," Hermione said as she nudged a stack of blank canvases with her toe, sending them tumbling into a nearby pile of what appeared to be kites.

"Interesting juxtaposition," Ginny observed, treading gingerly to a collection of ceramic toads interspersed with gum wrappers. She tapped one of the toads on its bumpy back and it emitted a loud croak, making her jump.

"You sound just like her," Hermione sighed. "She's an artist," she added by way of explanation.

Interesting.

"Really?" Ginny was intrigued. Hermione living with an artist. It seemed wonders would never cease. She looked more carefully at the sea of clutter. The walls were covered with paintings, many of them vibrantly-colored blobs that Ginny couldn't make heads or tails of. In between the paintings were scraps cut out of magazines, tattered photographs, bits of bright fabric. And, inexplicably, the taxidermied head of a wild boar. "That's a nice boar," she remarked. Hermione sighed again.

"I hate that bloody pig," she said, giving it an evil look. "You could torch that, I'd be positively overjoyed."

Ginny kept looking. She'd never been in an artist's house before, though she supposed she wasn't in one now, she was in Hermione's house, which had clearly been under sustained attack for quite a long time.

Hermione with an artist. A girl artist, even. Ginny didn't quite know what to think. Old Hermione had never had any appreciable interest in art; the closest Ginny had ever heard her come to voicing an opinion about a painting was when she had told one of the Hogwarts portraits to sod off after getting fresh with her. New Hermione was different, apparently.

"What kind of artist is she?" Ginny asked as she tripped over a block of wet clay. Bits of brownish sludge clung to the sole of her shoe and she looked around helplessly before wiping it on a paint-smeared towel.

"Any kind, I suppose. She paints, mostly."

"Did she paint all of those?" Ginny pointed at the wall. Hermione nodded. "They're . . . nice."

"I don't know what they're supposed to be. Months of pretending they're brilliant when I don't have a bloody clue what they're even of." Hermione shoved a stack of magazines off the sofa and sat down. "I can't believe I let it get this far."

"You should see Harry's flat," Ginny said. "It's like George's shop exploded into Flourish and Blotts."

"Yeah?" The idea seemed to cheer Hermione a bit. Ginny patted her on the shoulder.

"Yeah. I don't know how I let mine get so out of control either. But today I realized it was just enough."

"Just today?" Hermione said, a vague look of panic on her face.

"Actually . . . erm . . . actually, no. I'd been sort of planning it for . . . months?"

Hermione looked relieved. "Oh, good. I mean, not good, but you know. Good."

"Good," Ginny agreed. The silence came back, settling comfortably on the sea of junk. "So, is she coming back to get her stuff?"

"I don't see how," Hermione said. "She hasn't got a car or any money or a place to stay."

"Send her to Harry," Ginny suggested. Hermione rolled her eyes. Old Hermione. "What are you going to do with it?"

"To be honest, I was thinking about throwing everything in the street. But that wouldn't be very mature."

"Maturity is for grownups," Ginny said. Immediately after she realized that maybe Hermione was a grownup now, New Hermione was, at least. This realization made her feel very young, suddenly, and aimless. She distracted herself by squinting at some of the pictures on the wall, inventing things for them to be. The more she squinted, though, the clearer the pictures became, and they were all shifting and fluttering into candy-colored portraits of girls, their mouths and limpid eyes and legs and—

Stop it!

Hermione shifted nervously on the sofa. "Well," she said, "I suppose you'll sleep in here, if you don't mind a couch."

"Oh no, not at all! I'm just completely grateful that you're letting me stay with you!"

"Of course I'd let you stay!" Hermione said with a vehemence that caught Ginny off-guard. "I've missed you, Ginny."

Ginny gulped and quickly tried to cover it with a cough, which sounded even more artificial, so she leapt up and crossed to one of the paintings. Scarlet and a pale, nacreous purple that made her vaguely uneasy. She shifted her eyes to the painting next to it, which appeared to be a large, toothy flower, the paint thick on the canvas. She eyed it nervously and without knowing what she was doing exactly she reached out a tentative finger to touch the ridges of acrylic. She was a millimeter away when she noticed a small moving photograph half-hidden under a decorative plate depicting the Tower of London. A page from a newspaper—no, it was glossy, from a magazine. She inched the plate over and her mouth dropped open when she saw herself waving wildly, shouting excitedly, surrounded by the first string of the Holyhead Harpies. It was a page from Quidditch Quarterly's annual Women's Quidditch issue. She lifted the page, trying to look as though she were still examining the carnivorous posy, and what she immediately recognized as a ticket stub fell to the ground. The red and black Harpies logo flashed brightly from the floor.

"I went to your matches," Hermione said behind her. Ginny whirled around, surprised. Hermione with an artist, and going to Quidditch matches? None of it made sense, but so far it was very interesting nonsense.

"You did?" Ginny couldn't think of anything but the completely obvious to say. Was this New Hermione or Old Hermione? She couldn't ask, of course, she suspected announcing you'd set your worldly possessions on fire a few hours earlier was enough near-lunacy for one day. But it made her feel very strange, knowing Hermione had seen her play, and not just at Hogwarts when everybody went or faced the wrath of helping Filch clean the trophies. Ginny had figured nearly every boy she'd ever known had gone to at least one of her matches if only to brag that he'd snogged the Chaser, but she'd never suspected Hermione, of all people. But here was the ticket, and to the championship match between the Harpies and the Greenwich Gorgons, no less, where even Ginny had to admit she'd played brilliantly and it would seem that Quidditch Quarterly had agreed with her.

"Yes," Hermione said, her voice nearly shy. "Almost all of them."

"And did you take--" Ginny stopped. She suspected it would be wrong to invoke the girl's name. She suspected correctly, as Hermione flushed red again and shook her head.

"She thinks organized sports are a tool of oppressive patriarchal mores."

Ginny choked. "She thinks what? Hermione--"

"I know. I know. She's a cliché."

Living with a girl artist, going to sports, and spouting feminist rhetoric. New Hermione was very strange indeed.

But pretty. Very pretty, and if I'd known she was at that game I would've—

Ginny stopped herself. Besides, if she'd known Hermione was at that game she had a funny feeling she wouldn't have played very well. Or was it because her brain had suddenly become fixated on the idea of Hermione's red lips and those long lashes that forever after would be wet with tears in her memory? Ginny decided she probably wouldn't have been at all disturbed if Hermione had been there, that only in retrospect would it have made her wobbly on her broom, but certainly if the match was tomorrow, which it wasn't, so there was no sense in trying to figure out which came first, the chicken or the egg, and in this case it was definitely the chicken. Or was it the egg? Or was it that oddly lush picture that squinting turned into a rounded cheek? In any case, Ginny's mind gnawed on the scraps of information she had gathered. But for what purpose? She had to stop thinking about even thinking about Hermione that way. Not that there was anything she could do about it now, the idea was there.

"Look at this place," Hermione's voice cut into Ginny's mental seminar. "I mean, honestly."

"I hate to sound like a nag, but . . ."

"Why didn't I clean it up?"

Ginny shrugged. "Yeah."

"I tried, for a while," Hermione said, kicking at an empty plastic cup rimmed with green paint. "But I've been so incredibly busy with the book--"

"The book?" A book?

"Oh, yes, I'm sorry, I forget that we haven't seen each other in months."

Ginny had forgotten it too. Would have forgotten it, since she had become wrapped in the familiar immediacy of Hermione's presence without realizing it, and she would've forgotten it completely if it weren't for girl artists and Quidditch tournaments and a book.

"Are you writing a book?"

"Sort of," Hermione nodded. "I'm editing one."

"How To Pass All Your Exams?" Ginny grinned. Hermione smiled too, briefly.

"No, nothing like that at all, actually. It's an anthology, work by Muggleborn witches and wizards about what it's like growing up with magic in secret."

"Huh," Ginny said. "I'd like to read it."

"So would I," Hermione replied rather ruefully. "But it's nearly impossible to track most of these writers down. I mean, most of them live in relative secrecy."

Ginny was confused. She couldn't imagine living in relative secrecy, especially not as far as magic was concerned. How could you pretend not to breathe? Even if you did breathe what she imagined most Muggles imagined was sparkly dust. She pondered the question, and was about to ask about it when she realized something.

"Hermione, did Lydia know you're a witch?"

Hermione was silent. Ginny's jaw dropped again.

"Hermione!" She mentally socked herself in the arm. If Hermione had lied about who she was that was none of Ginny's business. Of course, part of her insisted that it was her business, despite all this New Hermione nonsensical nonsense she was still Hermione, was still her best friend from years at bloody magic school, and she was a witch, and probably the most talented witch Ginny had ever known personally.

Hermione's head was in her hands again, and Ginny detected the faint heaving of her shoulders. Great, you've made her cry. This is probably the hardest day of her entire life and here you are, mucking it all up. I wish her day had been as easy as mine, because mine's been just fantastic, dropped a load of deadweight, found my best friend, drank Muggle beer.

"I'm sorry, Hermione. It's just kind of surprising."

"It's surprising to me too, now. I mean, not now, it's been surprising me for a while. I tried to change who I was, you know, because once I left Hogwarts, after everything happened, it all seemed like . . . too much. I mean, I never pretended with Ron, except maybe about how he made me feel, but that was more of a mercy thing, understand. And then when he was away so much, I had so much time to think about everything, and I just . . . I just couldn't, Ginny, I just couldn't."

"So how did you . . . how have you been living? I'm sorry, I just don't understand."

"Well you wouldn't, would you. You've always had magic. You grew up with it. I grew up with parents who were dentists."

She had a point. Ginny couldn't conceive of a world without charms to do the dishes, without books that read themselves to you, without broomsticks—especially without broomsticks. She tried to see through Hermione's eyes, which damn it were getting all liquid and pretty again—

Stop it!

--and she couldn't for the life of her imagine it. She was acutely aware of a knot forming in her belly, the same kind of thing almost as when Fred—but she couldn't think about Fred. It was confusion and sadness and helplessness, and suddenly her fantastic day began slipping decidedly downward.

"So the book," she said with forced brightness. "That's some connection."

"Yes," Hermione sniffled. "I was contacted by someone who read what I'd been writing in the Weekly Review—that's a Muggle paper—and they recognized my name and sent me an owl, and oh Ginny, when I saw that owl sitting on my windowsill it was so . . . it was so . . ." She began to cry in earnest. "I hadn't seen an owl except in a zoo for almost two years. And I saw it, and that's when I knew everything I'd decided up to that point was so totally wrong."

Ginny wasn't sure what she was supposed to do. She should comfort Hermione, her friend, but would Hermione know about the sneaky thoughts she'd so recently started having? Would there be something transmitted to her if Ginny were to take Hermione in her arms—

Give her a hug, you stupid git, it's called giving a hug.

"Well, I'm glad they sent it to you," Ginny said feebly. "And I'm glad you decided to take the job. How long ago was it?"

"About three months," she sniffled, louder. "And that's when I got so busy, and then Lydia lost her job, something about serving coffee to businessmen offended her, I guess, so she just hung about here all day making everything a terrible mess."

Ginny nodded. "Harry left Auror training to spend more time with me. And he didn't bother to get a proper job either. I was in training for the Harpies a lot of the time, in the country, and when I did come home I was so bloody exhausted that the thought of picking up one more of his bloody socks made me want to scream."

"Yeah," Hermione said. "Exactly."

"So," Ginny ventured after another of those long silences, really, she was going to have to investigate how it happened that some silences yelled in your face and some of them just sat very quietly and read a book, "how are you feeling about it now?"

"Magic?"

"Yes. I mean, are you considering getting your wand out and . . . you know . . ." Ginny did her best swish-and-flick in the air, accidentally sending a tower of batik cushions sailing across the room. Hermione laughed.

"Honestly Ginny, sometimes your Charms talent is more of a liability than an asset."

Ginny was quite prepared to send anything sailing across the room with her patented wandless swish-and-flick technique if it meant Hermione would laugh again. She grinned and glanced at the ceramic toads, which began croaking the Hogwarts theme in five-part harmony. The bubblegum wrappers folded themselves into tiny wax-paper dancers and began waltzing along. Hermione was doubled over with laughter, and Ginny couldn't decide if she liked it better when the tears were happy or sad. She ought to like it better when they were happy, since Hermione being happy in the Old Hermione way was always in every possibility a better thing than sad Hermione, even sad New Hermione with her book deals and How's Ron? but something about sad Hermione evoked such a feeling in her, like she wanted to take her in her arms and sod giving a hug wanted to take Hermione in her arms and stroke her hair and stare at her trembling lip and—

Shouldn't think this, shouldn't. She's Hermione, for Merlin's sake. Even if she's not shagging my brother, I still ought to think about other things, like—

But Ginny couldn't think of anything else. The seedling of an idea had taken hold in her brain like it always did, and just like setting her old life on fire—which is what she had done, she realized, along with that letter from the Harpies, which could probably fit in quite nicely with whatever new life she was about to fashion, she'd have to write to the manager and say someone else had done it—it was too late to take it back.

"Come on, then," she said with an air of determination. "Let's cheat." She slung her bag up on the table, crushing several small, dusty pastilles into fine white powder. She fished her wand out from the side pocket and began to march around the room. "What first?"

"Oh, please get rid of that bloody awful animal head," Hermione said, leaping up. "I don't care how, just get rid of it."

Ginny pointed her wand at it and it twitched and began to speak. "But Hermione, I love you," the pig said in a voice suspiciously like Ron's. Hermione shrieked and threw a cushion at Ginny. Ginny cackled with mirthful laughter and flicked her wand at it again. The boar's head was enveloped in a bright white flash for a split second, and was gone. "What next?"

Hermione bit her lower lip—she can do that forever, and stand there like that with her hands on her hips, and I wouldn't complain—

Stop it!

"Well, I don't think we can incinerate them, but I am sick to death of trying to figure out what those paintings are. They stare at me all the time, you know, and it's like I can hear them accusing me of not knowing the first thing about Art."

It was Ginny's turn to bite her lip. She knew exactly what the pictures were of, but there was absolutely no way she'd let Hermione in on that bit of information.

"So why don't we . . ." Ginny flicked her wand again. The pictures separated from the wall and hung in midair for a moment before stacking neatly in a column on the floor. Another flick and the rest of the detritus on the wall came floating down in a fabric-remnant and magazine-clipping blizzard. Under the raucous, eye-searing collage Hermione's walls were a soft butter yellow. Ginny vaguely remembered them from the one other time she'd been in the flat, and had completely forgotten about how well she thought the shade suited Hermione.

Ginny paused and looked at her. Hermione's eyes were shining again and in that moment Ginny knew she most definitely preferred her happy. "Do you want--" she said hesitantly, and held her wand out to Hermione, who bit her lip again—happy, oh yes, most definitely—and paused for a moment before stepping forward and grasping it. Her eyes slid closed and a radiant smile crossed her face. Ginny felt so deliriously joyful at the sight of it that for a moment she forgot to think she wasn't supposed to think what she was thinking and wanted nothing more than to fling her arms around Hermione and make a purple mark on her neck.

Hermione took a deep breath and readjusted her grip on the wand. She flicked it up and down a few times, sending faint white sparks flying. "Accio wand!" she cried.

A rumbling from what Ginny assumed was the bedroom, the sound of glass breaking, sharp knocking, and suddenly Hermione's wand streaked into the room. With a smooth movement so deft Ginny for a moment forgot that Hermione was rubbish on a broom and thought about asking her to play a pick-up Quidditch game, Hermione tossed Ginny her wand and snatched her own out of the air.

"Jeez, Hermione, where did you put it?"

Hermione looked sheepish. "I sealed it in a case and put it at the back of my closet under a pile of old trainers." Ginny shook her head and clucked in mock disapproval. "I know!" Hermione cried. "I'm sorry."

"Well go on, make yourself useful," Ginny said. Hermione took another deep breath and pointed at the stack of canvases.

"Reducto!" The canvases obliged, becoming the size of postage stamps. "Oh shit," Hermione muttered. "Where did they go?"

"Accio terrible art!" Ginny shouted. The tiny stack of paintings sped into her hand. "Right here," she said sweetly. Hermione giggled.

"At least it comes when it's called," she said.

They stalked the room, shrinking large pieces of Lydia's belongings and setting them on a tray near the door. Ginny swept the room with her wand, creating a swirling vortex of garbage, old paint cloths, and articles from magazines she hoped it was Lydia who had subscribed to.

"Vegan Art Monthly?" she cried, grabbing a paper as it fluttered past her head. "What's a vegan, and why do I have to worry about emu oil in my paint?"

"You don't want to know," Hermione said. "Suffice to say I haven't eaten cheese in half a year."

"Well I'm famished," Ginny asserted. "We should have lunch."

"Is it only lunchtime? It feels like it's been years since this morning."

Ginny knew exactly what Hermione was talking about. Had it really only been four hours since she'd left Harry festering in his own sodden little flat? She shouldn't think that way about him, she decided. He was nice enough, just not right for her. And maybe he couldn't help being a packrat, seeing as how he'd grown up with nothing; she'd been raised by a family of hoarders and look how she'd turned out. So it had only been four hours since she'd left Harry. That was it. But in those four hours—

Hermione flopped down on the newly cleared sofa and propped her feet on the bare coffee table, still clutching her wand. She closed her eyes and sighed deeply, a look of profound satisfaction on her face. "I don't ever want to move from this spot," she said as she opened her eyes and looked around her almost-empty sitting room.

"I would imagine that you don't have any food, though," Ginny pointed out. "At least not any food that I'd want to eat."

Hermione knitted her brows. "You're probably right. Where shall we have lunch?"

"I don't know, I don't live here."

Hermione smiled brilliantly and the secret thoughts poked even harder at Ginny's brain. "You do now," she whispered.