This has been sitting in my drafts for way too long, as I've thought for a long time about adding more from perspectives of other people in Harry's and Ginny's lives, but I haven't been able to make the words come yet. If you'd like to see that let me know, and if I never find those words then at least these exist out in the world. Read and review xx

I've always enjoyed the quiet solitude that comes in the early hours of the morning. In this castle that's teeming with magic and filled to the brim with teenagers, I've found that the only times I find true quiet are the ones before the sun climbs in the sky and everyone else rolls out of bed. I often find myself as one of the first people to get to the Great Hall for breakfast, and it's then that I get to watch as the light grows in the enchanted ceiling and that I have the opportunity to read my favorite book, write a letter home, or simply be alone with my thoughts before the chaos of the day ahead. Of course, I'm never well and truly alone, as there's always a handful of other students that seem to have the same idea as me—Natalie McDonald from Gryffindor was always the first in the room, and a second year Slytherin named Anthony James consistently strolls in within 30 seconds of when I sit down at my table. I almost always shared our table with Terry Boot in these early hours, but it seems to be an unspoken rule that though Terry and I aren't strangers, this time is me time for those of us that choose to be awake this early. When the rest of the student body joins us after an hour or so, Terry and I often end up in the same knot of friends talking and comparing homework, but before that we give each other some space to greet the day.

This morning was no different. It's a Tuesday in late May, about a month before the end of term. Everyone in my year has been studying all year for our OWLs, but the collective stress levels have started to climb through the roof over the last couple of weeks. It's made me appreciate my alone time even more—it's the only time of day that I give myself to not even think about schoolwork. This morning I chose my favorite trashy muggle adventure novel, poured myself a strong cup of coffee (the half-dozen of us that make these early mornings routine are probably the only 6 people in the country who prefer coffee to tea), and tucked into some toast. I only glanced up for a moment when Harry Potter walked through the doors.

Ever since I made a habit of being an early-bird in my first year, Harry Potter has been doing the same. He has his mornings where he elects for a lie-in—we all do—but often our little group of early risers included none other than the boy-who-lived. The shock and awe of that name had worn off for me quickly, though, as I observed him from my table as a first year. It wasn't a legend that sat so quietly at the Gryffindor table every morning; it wasn't a fairytale that took his tea with two sugars and tended to spill scrambled eggs on the table as he scooped them onto his plate. It was a scrawny second-year boy with impossible hair and crooked glasses that got up at the crack of dawn for an hour of peace just like the rest of us. Over the years, he'd grown from that scrawny second year into the much taller, slightly less scrawny sixth year that walked into the Great Hall this morning, with his slightly eerie natural grace that he'd always had but that he didn't seem to realize he had (and that abandoned him when it came to scrambled eggs). My eyes found my book again after glancing up as they caught movement, and it was several minutes before they wandered again. I idly studied the mop of black hair at the next table; he seemed to be in one of his melancholy moods, as he had been for most of this year.

I've always prided myself on being very perceptive; I could get a feel for most people in the school by their body language, and despite having never said more than five passing words to him, Harry was an open book. Over the years, I had noticed that his moods tended to come and go in much longer phases than I had noticed in anyone else. When Sirius Black infiltrated the castle for the first time in my second year, a subtle hum of stress seemed to run through him for months, seemingly unconsciously, even in his quiet morning moments. When he and Ron had their falling out during at the beginning of the Triwizard Tournament, he wore a permanent frown and any contact with his best friend, however brief, made anger roll off of him in waves—until it didn't and he and Ron were inseparable again and one of his rare good moods settled in. And then the third task happened, and a bone-deep sadness followed him through the very last early morning of that year, when he sat at the Gryffindor table staring at nothing, with terrible purple bags under his eyes. I had been one of the few that believed him in the year that followed—nobody could fake the torment that he didn't seem to have the energy to try to hide that early in the morning, and I suspected that he was coming down so early more due to a lack of sleep than anything else. That sadness had eased but had never really left him, flaring again at the end of my fourth year with his rumored ministry heist and continuing through most of this year. Of course, he had his moments—he laughed at Seamus's jokes, rolled his eyes and smiled at Ron and Hermione's bickering (everyone in the school could tell that they had the hots for each other, so I can only imagine that being that close to them was infuriating, if not endearing), and I had never seen anyone look so free on a broom. But he could never fully shake the fact that he always just seemed a little down, and I had come to anticipate his quiet sadness.

This morning, as people began to trickle in, the Great Hall gradually began to fill with noise and the quiet morning gave way to sleepy greetings and conversations about the day ahead. I looked up as my best friend Ben walked in, followed closely by Hermione Granger—I was still surprised that she wasn't one of the few of us that got here before anyone else, as I would have thought she'd fit the bill perfectly, but she always rolled in with the morning rush—and I watched absentmindedly as she made her way over to Harry as Ben walked over to me. We started to talk about our Charms homework with Terry, who had done the assignment last year and had some tips for us. Ron joined his friends a few minutes later, looking, like always, as if he had literally rolled out of bed. As usual, Harry greeted both of them warmly enough, engaging them in routine conversation, but his mood did not lift, and he kept his eyes largely on his plate. Then Ginny Weasley walked in.

This is where I started actually paying attention. I had not seen either of them in the same room since the now infamous Gryffindor common room incident almost a week ago, and I was interested to see how they would interact. I hoped for their sakes that it went better than his relationship with Cho did, 'cause we all knew how that ended—though no matter how close I am to Cho, after hearing her explanation of what happened I honestly (and secretly, of course) didn't blame him for that. Cho clearly had some issues she needed to work on, and anyone with eyes not clouded by fascination with Harry could see that Hermione was not any sort of romantic interest for him.

Harry clearly hadn't seen Ginny come in, because he still hadn't looked up from his plate as she walked towards the Golden Trio. Her sitting with them wasn't unusual, as she had started to sit with her brother and his friends more often this year; however, what was unusual was that when she sat in the seat next to Harry, she kissed his cheek and as he looked up, startled, a slow, soft, enormous grin spread across his face. All of the sudden, a fraction of the weight that had seemed to drag behind him lifted.

Then their interactions were just like any other day. Ginny joked with her brother, reaching over to flatten out his bed head, and then seemed to ask Harry something about the homework she pulled out of her bag. Though he kept a small smile on his face, they seemed to talk and go about their mornings like they always had. There was none of the slightly awkward tension that I had noticed in most new couples; I guessed Ginny didn't add a new dynamic to their group because she had already been in it, to some degree, for years.

The group continued to banter for a few moments. Then, Ginny made a passing comment and Harry snorted into his tea and started to laugh.

I don't mean the way someone would laugh at their best friend spilling their pumpkin juice or the way Harry laughed at Seamus's terrible knock-knock jokes—this was pure, unadulterated joy, the kind of laugh that brings tears to your eyes, that you feel deep and strong and makes the whole world seem a little bit brighter for a few minutes. Ginny was grinning and gesturing wildly as I heard the words Fred and George float over to me, and I had no trouble imagining what kind of story she was telling. Ron was laughing just as hard as Harry and nodding along wildly with Ginny's story, seemingly to assure Harry that this was indeed a true story about their brothers, and even Hermione started to giggle. I vaguely heard something about a garden gnome, and though I didn't quite understand what that meant, Harry clearly did, and he laughed even harder, doubling over and clutching his hands to his stomach in a deep belly laugh.

I was floored. In the five years since I started sharing my mornings with him, becoming accustomed to his unassuming presence, this was a display that I had never seen from him. A quick glance at Terry next to me told me that he, too, had noticed—I hadn't really spoken to Harry and doubted that he even knew my name, but Terry knew him fairly well, had had several classes with him and had learned from him in the DA last year, and he was just as bewildered as I was. As I looked around, it seemed as if others had started to notice as well: some others from the DA were looking over with quirked eyebrows, and even famously stern Professor McGonagall was trying in vain to control the twitching corners of her mouth. Ginny's story progressed into an even wilder tale about a ghoul and a Cleansweep (I didn't even want to know what that was about), and Ron and Hermione, though they were also still laughing, had a very slight look of amazement as they watched their best friend.

As I continued to watch them for a few more minutes, feeling inexplicably like I wanted to laugh along with him (even though I had no idea what the story was about and couldn't even really hear it), I wondered to myself just why we were all so blown away by something as simple as Harry laughing. Slowly, I started to put the pieces together. It wasn't something that I had been able to notice before—if someone had asked me to point out something about Harry that made him seem so heavy, I don't think I would have been able to pinpoint that I hadn't really, truly heard him laugh. But now that I was seeing it, it was hard to believe that I hadn't noticed it before. It made him into a whole other person; suddenly, he wasn't the sad, brooding "chosen one" that always seemed older than his years—he was a 16-year-old boy that didn't have anything more to worry about than potions class or his next quidditch practice. And it was infectious—everyone that had noticed his unrestrained laughter had broad grins creeping onto their faces. Something about seeing him so happy made me happy, and I was starting to realize why… it filled me with an odd sort of hope— this past year had seemed like the beginning of the magical world's slow descent into darkness, but if this boy that had the weight of the world on his shoulders, that had already lost so much, found something that brought him pure, uninhibited joy in something as simple as a silly story about a ghoul, then there was still something worth fighting for. As I had once heard Dumbledore say, "happiness can be found in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light".

And suddenly, thanks to Ginny Weasley, the future looked a little bit brighter than it did yesterday.