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Harry Potter walked slowly up the wide marble steps, feeling while he did so that his feet were going slower and slower as they echoed his reluctance to reach the top of the steps and touch the big, highly polished silver bell.

As he waited, Harry turned round and looked back down the quiet street where there were few passers-by, but where many important-looking official cars were parked.f

"I wish this was over," he said to himself, and then smiled, for it was unlike him to feel so apprehensive before going into action.

It was many years since he had felt that queasy, uncertain feeling in his stomach and a slight dryness about his mouth. He had faced death so often without fear and certainly without this sickening sense of apprehension, yet new he was definitely and genuinely afraid.

However, it had to be done, and as the door opened Harry squared his big shoulders and turned his thin, sunburnt face toward the butler standing there white-haired and impassive.

"I want to see Miss Hermoine Granger."

"Yes, sir. What name, please? Is Miss Granger expecting you?"

"She told me to call this afternoon – I am Harry Potter, the Commander of Dumbledore's Army."

"Very good, sir. I will see if Miss Granger is at home, will you come in?"

Harry stepped into the marble-floored hall. It was cold and rather dark and he felt himself react to the atmosphere of gloom.

"My sense of humour must have taken its day off," he thought whimsically as the butler preceded him up the broad carpet-covered stairs and opened the door leading into a long, sunlit drawing-room.

It was a beautiful room and was typical of what could be achieved by the lavish expenditure of money. The furniture, the pictures and the carpets were all show pieces, works of art which would delight the heart of any connoisseur. A painting of the Beauxbatons Academy of Magic crest graced the wall overtop a fireplace.

Harry, however, took little note of his surroundings. As the door closed behind the butler he went across the room to the window and stood looking out over the small paved garden in the rear of the house and beyond it to where the trees of Green Park were like an oasis after the dust of the London streets.

But he did not see the loveliness of the green branches, the clear blue of the sky of the languid floating of the Royal Standard above the roofs at Buckingham Palace; instead he saw the hot arid plains of India, he felt the tropical heat burning its way through the dry thirstiness of his body, and heard again, as he had heard so often before, Ron's voice saying:

"You will go and see her if anything happens to me, Harry, won't you? You will tell her that I loved her... always and unceasingly... loved her with every breath I drew... even the last of all... you promise?"

"Yes Ron, I promise. But don't talk like that, you are not going to die!"

"Who knows? Who cares out here? Neville yesterday, Dean the day before! We shall miss Neville, Harry, I wonder if anybody would miss us if..."

"Oh, shut up, Ron! We are going to come through together, you and I. There is a lot of living and a lot of loving for us to be doing before our number is up."

Harry spoke roughly because some strange uncanny sense within him had at that moment whispered surely and clearly that Ron would not come through.

Harry's presentiment had been a true one.

Ron died, as many other fine young men died before him; but... there had been something unusual about his death... something which had made Harry swear with a bitter, vehement anger drawn from the very depths of his being that the person concerned should suffer by learning the truth.

"Is that why I am here?" Harry asked himself now, "or is it because of my promise to Ron?"

He had no time to formulate the answer because the door opened and Hermoine Granger came in. She stood for a moment framed against the ivory-and-gold panels of the door; and as Harry turned and saw her he understood for the first time why Ron had talked almost incessantly of her during those hot, arid nights, why he had been unable to forget her, and why- yes, why, because of her, he had gone to his death.