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Hermoine Granger was lovely, arrestingly and spectacularly lovely. Her dark hair was swept back from a perfect oval-shaped face; her eyes were unexpectedly and vividly brown beneath eyebrows delicately winged like the drawings on an old Chinese etching; her mouth was curved and full.

There was something so utterly feminine about it and the lissome grace of her figure that no man could look at Hermoine Granger and forget for one moment that she was an utterly desirable woman. Yet, to Harry, standing there grim and stern, she was evil and bad and he hated her.

She moved across the room towards him holdinfg out her hand with a friendly gesture which he ignored.

"You are Harry Potter, the Commander of Dumbledore's Army?"

"Yes!"

There was just a flicker of surprise in her eyes at the tone of his voice and her hand dropped to her side. Then with a gesture she indicated chairs on either side of the high ornate mantelpiece.

"Won't you sit down?"

She sat herself in a high-backed, tapestry-covered chair, but Harry remained standing. There was a moment's pause and she looked up at him half wonderingly, half questioningly, as though his silence was as unexpected as his attitude.

He was certainly extremely good-looking, she noticed. His features were clear-cut and there was something noble in the breadth of his brow, something strong and determined in the sharp line of his jaw. She guessed that the lines which ran from his nose to his firm lips had been etched by experience rather than age, and she liked the level directness of his eyes even while the steely expression with which they regarded her was puzzling.

"You asked to see me?" she prompted.

"I wrote to you."

"Yes, I know. You were a friend of Ron?"

"Yes, a great friend of Ron."

"I was sorry to hear of his death."

"Were you?"

The question came like the report of a gun. Hermoine started, and her long fingers were linked together. "I had known Ron for many years," she said.

"And he had loved you ever since I can remember."

Now she was still and Harry saw that she drew a very deep breath. There was a long silence, a silence in which even the ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece was hardly audible.

"Is that what you have come here to tell me?" Hermoine asked at last.

"No," he answered, "I have come because Ron asked me; because he had talked of you so often and always he had made me promise that if anything happened to him I would come and see you and that I would tell you he had loved you always... up to the very last moment of his life."

Hermoine's hands fluttered, and her head was turned away from Harry towards the window.

"Thank you for telling me," she said at length, but her voice was not gentle as it should have been. Instead there was another note – a note almost of fear.

"Would you like to hear how he died?"

There was no mistaking now the antagonism in Harry's voice.

"There was quite a long account of it in the paper," Hermoine replied. "Was it incorrect?"

"It did not mention the one thing that was really important," Harry said.

"No?"

"You know what that was."

"Do I?"

She was fencing with him, but they both knew that the advantage was with him. He was striking at her, well aware that she had no defense.

"Yes, you do know; but perhaps you would like me to put it into words. Ron died the day he received your letter."

"Oh!"

The exclamation came from her almost like a deep cry.

"Yes, the day he received the letter in which you told him to had no further use for him."

"That is not true!"

Hermoine jumped to her feet. Now she was no longer afraid, no longer acquiescent. There was a fire in her eyes and steel in her voice which matched Harry's.

"You did not write a letter saying that?"

"I wrote a letter telling Ron that I did not love him. He had known it before. I had told him that often, but he would not listen. He wrote me wild letters from Hogsmeade, letters which presumed many things; and I thought it both unwise and unfair to let him go on living in a fool's paradise of his own making. I told him the truth – that I did not love him, but that I was always anxious to be... his friend."

"Charming and conventional," Harry remarked sarcastically.

"What else could I say?" Hermoine demanded angrily.

"I have no idea, Miss Granger. I only know that after Ron received your letter he went out on a particularly difficult mission from which he did not return. I have the feeling that he was glad to go and that he knew he would not come back."

Hermoine opened her lips as if she would answer him, and then she turned away suddenly and walked towards the window. She stood there with her back to him, silhouetted against the sun outside. She looked very slim, almost fragile, and yet Harry was conscious of a strength and resilience in her.

He had half expected tears, half expected her to crumple up at his accusations and put forward some pitiable defense that she could not help her own attraction. Instead, when at last she turned to face him, he saw that she was still angry.

"This is my answer to you, Mr. Potter. I resent both the accusations you have made and your coming here at all. I do not believe for one moment that my letter to Ron sent him to his death. You believe it did, but the doubtless you were prejudiced by Ron himself, who was always prone to exaggeration.

"Having known him for so long, I claim to have known him better than you, even though you lived and fought beside him through the way. Ron loved me, it is true; but in a jealous, selfish way which was not really worthy of the name of love..."

"Stop!" Harry stepped forward and put his hand peremptorily on her arm. "I won't have you say such things. Ron was my friend. He was as fine and as honourable a man as ever I have been fortunate enough to know. Who are you, living here in softness and security, to know what a man can suffer when he is far away? In Hogsmeade Ron was magnificent, splendid. If it weren't for your letter he would still be doing the same."

"If you believe that," Hermoine said clearly, "you are more of a fool than you look."

For a moment Harry gasped. Then the impulse rose within him to take her fiercly by both shoulders and shake her. There was something in the beauty of her face as she looked up at him defiantly which made him see red.

He stood very still and his eyes narrowed a little. He stared down at Hermoine, striving to master her by sheer will-power, striving also to keep control of himself. There was a vibrating tension between them so strong, so magnetic that it was as if the air around them was charged with electricity.

Harry was conscious that his breath was coming quickly, that all his hatred and resentment of this woman, fed by the years which he had passed abroad since Ron's death, had come to a culminating point at this moment. There was a fury within him so fierce and primitive that only conventionality kept it from breaking forth untrammelled... unrestrained...

He looked into her eyes; they were deep wells of darkness; he knew that she, too, was breathing quickly. However, she was not afraid of him. His own anger was so devouring, so consuming, that he was surprised that she was not scorched and singed by it; but... no... she was not afraid. She faced him defiantly even while her breasts moved beneath the thin silk of her dress.

"I could kill her," he thought, and felt some part of him ready to do so, ready to translate the poison of his thoughts and deeds.