And And And / first year

Ron is bleeding the next room over, but she's not thinking about it because Harry, best friend Harry, Harry the friend she has, is about to go off and die. She believes in him, but she believes in that—that maybe today and certainly eventually Harry is going to be asked to die, in one way or another, and he's not even going to think about it, like he hasn't thought about what he might do beyond the door.

She could get the riddle wrong and maybe there would be problems with this world but her parents are just dentists and his uncle just sells drills and she was going to go to university, eventually. But what would she be to anybody if she couldn't get a little riddle right?

She could have forgotten about her extra herbology readings, just then, and eventually a professor would have found them; she could have kept her friends from panicking too much, and she could have panicked just enough. Panicking just enough wouldn't have been difficult.

But what would they be together, if not this? She doesn't know what they would do together if they weren't snooping, if they just wanted to talk about quidditch, if the two of them just needed someone to talk about it with.

But she knows who she is now, at least. At least here. She puzzles it out immediately—that's who she always was—and she waits a little while after, like he'll expect, and she looks at him and he doesn't seem to mind so she must not be getting weird about looking at him like she thinks. Who she is now has been given the chance to do something good instead of just right, instead of just correctly, and of course that's what they'll do together. That's what they do together.

"There are more important things—like friendship, and bravery, and" and even then she thinks about how a year ago she didn't have anyone to sit around with, to eat next to, to laugh with or think about or hug and she looks at her dead friend and she hugs him and and and she says, "Oh, Harry!"