A/N: Harry Potter not mine. In case you haven't noticed, I'm too poor/talentless/American to be J. K. Rowling. I'm not making any money from this, and the only benefits I gain are my own amusement (and hopefully yours), stretching my literary legs, and something to keep me awake. So it's pointless to sue, unless you're the sort of person who likes to eat the souls of puppies. Orphaned puppies. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. In spite of that, you villain, I'll warn you: this has some very vague allusions to later books that don't quite qualify as spoilers.

Uncanny

She had an uncanny knack, that girl did, for speaking the truth very, very plainly. It flowed from her lips in the most awkward of moments, the way small talk spilled forth from others as they blushed and stammered and fidgeted their entire bodies, wishing they could be anywhere else. Yet she did not blush, did not stammer, did not fidget. And it was doubtful that she had that inherent human urge to crawl under a rock and wait to be forgotten by the world.

No, she was a strange one. 'Loony,' they called her. Her pale eyes, staring at things no one else seemed to see, a smile crossing her lips at whatever great truth, which no one else would believe, that happened to occupy her mind at that moment. Dirigible plums to open her mind, her wand behind her ear, like an antenna on a muggle television set, catching little snippets of the universe, which she completed in her mind. Because, in spite of her apparently lacking ties to reality, she was really very bright. A true Ravenclaw, all curiosity and philosophy and contemplation.

She offered a strange, strange comfort. She knew much about the things people were not adept at handling, which was part of why her moments of astute observations were so discomfiting. Death. The dead were never really gone. She did not mean that in the sense of people living on in the hearts and minds of the living. While he believed that, at least in a vague sense, Harry had heard it too many times for it to offer him any real comfort. No, the dead were behind the veil, whispering, so very close.

He did not like to admit that she understood him in a way that no one else, not Ron, Hermione, or even Ginny did. She accepted it when he wanted to be alone. She did not press him for information regarding his well-being. She merely said a few words of the truth, or created a distraction, and let him escape to be on his own.

She was so far from being like other people, and yet she seemed to understand them better than they understood themselves.

Remembering the painting on her ceiling, he was quite glad to be in it.