Winona jolted awake with a loud gasp. Her eyes stung and her lungs ached and her whole body felt sluggish. Not understanding where she was or what was happening, she shakily pushed herself until she was sitting upright.
"Easy there, Miss Andrews," Pomfrey's familiar voice was saying in her ear as she desperately sucked in air like she'd just been held underwater for a month. "Deep breaths, you're all right," the nurse was saying soothingly.
"What the bloody hell happened?" Winona finally managed to croak, her dry throat burning like fire.
"You were petrified, dear," Pomfrey told her patiently.
"Right," she nodded, suddenly remembering glancing into that small mirror and seeing those big, haunting yellow eyes, then recalling a darkness that never seemed to end. "How long have I been…out?" she asked hoarsely, lifting a hand up to brush her limp hair out of her face, blinking her eyes in an effort to lessen their stinging.
"A little less than a month," the nurse told her, handing her a small vial of something blue. "Drop this into your eyes," she instructed her, and Winona was quick to do as she was told. The burning in her eyeballs disappeared and she sighed with relief. "How are you feeling?"
"Fine," Winona croaked. "Tired and sore, but otherwise fine."
"Well, they're having a feast downstairs, in celebration, so you're free to go join them-"
"In celebration of what?" Winona asked, not understanding.
"The monster of Slytherin is dead," Pomfrey told her matter-of-factly. "The chamber has been shut, and Miss Weasley is safe."
Winona didn't know what Ginny had to do with anything, but she sagged with palpable relief anyway.
"Take things slow," the nurse warned as she climbed, slightly unsteady, to her feet. "Drink lots of water."
"Thank you!" she said sincerely, but she was more focused on finding her friends. The walk down to the Great Hall was lovely – the beast was gone; even if Madam Pomfrey hadn't told her, she thought that she would have been able to tell. She could feel it in the walls, the castle lighter than it had been before, and she felt a sense of healing floating in the air like a scent.
The Great Hall was abuzz with activity and chatter, and almost everybody was wearing their pyjamas, which made her smile and think about how she wished every dinner at school could be this casual. It seemed much more her speed.
"Winona!" it was Ron who spotted her first, standing to his feet to grin at her across the Gryffindor table.
"Hey-" Winona could barely get the word out before something large, firm and warm slammed into her side, squeezing her so tightly that her breath left her in a huff.
"Oh, thank Merlin," Fred was breathing into her hair, holding her close.
"Hey Freddie," she said, the words muffled with her face pressed into his old Puddlemere United sweatshirt, the skin beneath radiating warmth.
"You are never allowed to do anything like that, ever again," he told her sternly, pulling back so he could peer down at her closely, but even through the severity of it his eyes glittered with relief. "You hear me, Win?" he asked. He needed to hear her say it.
"Okay, next time there's a Basilisk on the loose, I'll be sure to tell it that you said as much," she laughed, punching his shoulder affectionately.
A hand grasped her arm, pulling her away from Fred and into another tall, warm body. George swept her up in a hug, pulling back much quicker than his brother had to shoot her his most stern, exasperated look. "You just had to go be a hero, didn't you?"
"It's a problem," she joked. George was stepped out of the way to reveal Hermione, the younger witch staring up at her with tears in her caramel eyes. "Hey," Winona greeted her cheerfully, and Hermione's lower lip trembled.
"If you hadn't been there..." Hermione began to say, overcome by emotion. She sniffled quietly. "It might have been me," she murmured, her voice catching. "I don't know how to thank you."
Winona smiled and simply took a seat on the empty space of bench. "Pass me the carrots, would you?" she asked her casually. Although Hermione's eyes were still wet, she smiled as she took a seat beside her, handing over the bowl of carrots as the twins happily took seats on her other side.
She greeted Angelina, Katie and Alicia, all of whom went a bit misty-eyed at the sight of her, but she politely pretended not to notice, hugging them each in turn and then bumping fists with Lee, who told her blithely that she made a handsome statue. Alicia slapped him round the head, but Winona only laughed.
The air filled with the twins' woeful, overdramatic cries about how much they missed her, and with pink cheeks Winona dug into her food, quite literally not having eaten in a whole month. Soon enough McGonagall was announcing that exams had been cancelled, much to everyone's – except Hermione's – elation.
"You'll have to tell me everything, you realise," Winona told Harry just as the remains of dinner disappeared, replaced by an array of colourful, delicious desserts that everybody immediately leapt for. He smiled at her from where he sat opposite her and beside Ron, his best friend stuffing jelly and ice cream into his mouth at an incredible pace. "I'll want the whole story."
"Well, after we found you-" Harry began to explain.
"It can wait," she interrupted him gently, casting a soft smile across the table. "For tonight, let's just enjoy the feast."
Harry grinned back and Winona relaxed, listening happily as Fred made an off-colour but hilarious joke about Lockhart, allowing herself to laugh loudly, the feeling of lingering evil now gone from her mind, replaced by a homely warmth that came from spending time with her friends – the only real family she'd ever known.
The next day she sat down with the Golden Trio to hear about the entire adventure at length. As they told her about Ginny, Winona felt her insides turn cold. The thought of Voldemort possessing the youngest Weasley, making her do all those terrible things – it just about made Winona sick.
Harry explained what had happened down in the chamber, cheeks turning pink as the twins cheered loudly when he described killing the Basilisk with the sword of Gryffindor.
"Wait," said Winona, digging into her ever-present bag and fishing out her sketchbook. Cracking it open to the right page, she showed the sketch to Harry, eyebrows raised. "Is that the sword?" she wondered.
Harry looked surprised – which she thought was funny, considering everything. "Yeah, that's what it looks like."
"You knew the sword would come to Harry when he needed it?" Ron asked, brow furrowed like he was angry at her for not mentioning it sooner.
"I didn't know," she reminded him. "How was I meant to figure that out from this one drawing alone?"
The tips of Ron's ears went pink and he fell quiet, leaving Harry to finish up the last of his story. He's just gotten to the end, right up to the day she'd woken up, when a seventh year appeared by their side.
"Headmaster wants to see you in his office, Andrews," the older girl said, a curiosity in her dark eyes, like she couldn't fathom why Dumbledore would want to speak with her.
"Thanks," Winona replied, and with a nod she wandered away. "I'd better go see him – I'm sure he'll want the full debrief," she told the others.
"What is the debrief, anyway?" Hermione asked, quizzical and expectant. "How did you know to come find me at that exact moment?"
Winona glanced at the clock, but decided Dumbledore could wait the extra time it would take to explain. "I drew a picture of you with the mirror you were holding ages ago," she confessed. "I didn't know exactly what it meant, but sometimes I get feelings along with the visions, and I knew the picture didn't mean anything good. It was all rather instinctual, really."
"So you just, knew?" Hermione asked, skeptical.
"50% of all my premonitions are just gut feelings," she told her honestly. "I knew you were going to be in danger, and I knew I had the power to stop it."
"Did you know you'd get petrified?" Harry wondered.
"No, that was just an unfortunate side effect of saving Hermione."
Hermione winced, and Winona knew guilt when she saw it.
"Really, Hermione," she insisted. "I'm fine. It was rather like napping for a month. It wasn't the end of the world."
Hermione didn't look convinced, but Winona knew she probably wasn't going to convince the guilt away and gave up trying.
"I'd better get to Dumbledore before he sends someone else after me." She stood to her feet, casting them a smile. "See you later."
She was almost at the portrait hole when the familiar forms of Fred and George appeared in her path. "Where d'you think you're going?" George asked her in the tone of a suspicious parent catching their kid trying to sneak out in the middle of the night.
"I've been summoned," she told him, eyebrows arched.
The pair exchanged a glance, communicating without words. "We'll come with you," said Fred decisively. Winona kind of wanted to argue, but one look into their eyes told her it was pointless, so with a sigh she nodded her head and gestured for them to lead the way out the portrait hole.
"Is this how it's going to be, now?" she wondered as they set off in the direction of Dumbledore's office. "A protection detail glued to me wherever I go?"
"Well, if you stopped getting yourself petrified by Basilisks, maybe we'd cut you some slack," said George primly, and although amusement danced in his eyes, she knew he was mostly serious.
"It was one time," she said, exasperated. "Will I ever live it down?"
Neither of the twins answered her, and Winona realised suddenly that maybe she'd been too cavalier about the whole thing. She tried to put herself in their shoes for a moment. How would she be holding up if one or both of them had been, essentially, nothing but a human statue for the last month and a bit? The twins were good at putting on a front, and she realised they were doing it right now, in front of her.
"I'm sorry," she told them as they walked the halls of the school, padding slowly in the direction of Dumbledore's office. "I know if it'd been one of you two instead of me, I'd have been a wreck."
The twins exchanged a glance over the top of her head, any and all levity sucked from the air. This was one of their more serious moments, and she felt sombre with the weight of it.
"Seeing you there, on that hospital bed…" Fred trailed off, sticking his hands firmly into his pockets and looking away.
"Fred tried to petition Dumbledore to keep you somewhere other than the hospital wing," said George. Winona looked up in surprise, glancing first at George, then back over at Fred.
"You did?"
The tips of Fred's ears had turned red. "Well, I know how much you hate hospitals – I thought, even though you weren't conscious, in some way you might feel better somewhere else," he muttered, eyes narrowed in a glare at his self-satisfied twin. "Whatever," he said dismissively. "It isn't a big deal."
Winona disagreed. It was a very big deal to her, but they weren't typically what she would call 'sappy' people. He'd only be embarrassed if she thanked him, or tried to tell him that was incredibly sweet of him. So instead she wound her arm through his, holding onto him as they walked, saying thank you without words.
It was a Saturday and the sun was shining down on all of Hogwarts, so most students were out enjoying the weather and lack of exams. The three friends passed a group of Slytherins on the way up the main staircase, and when they jeered rudely the twins merely shot them a rude hand gesture before continuing on their way.
The door to Dumbledore's office stood unassuming, and Winona was surprised to realised that it felt like a month since she'd been there last, even though to her conscious memory it'd barely been a full three days.
"Think you can make it up the staircase without getting petrified by a Basilisk?" Fred asked as she unwound her arm from his, turning to look at the pair of them in fond amusement.
"Somehow I think I'll manage," she said lightly. "And don't you two dare wait out here for me to come back down," she added, pointing a stern finger at them in warning. "I can walk back to the common room on my own, thank you."
George held up his hands in surrender while Fred just rolled his eyes. With a final grateful grin, Winona left them, saying the password to Dumbledore's stone gargoyle and hopping onto the moving stares beyond.
Dumbledore was standing by Fawkes when she entered his office, the phoenix quietly nibbling at some birdseed. Dumbledore turned to look at her, and if he was annoyed that she'd taken so long to meet him, he didn't let it show.
"Miss Andrews," he greeted her pleasantly, sweeping an arm towards her usual chair. "Tea?"
"Please," she said, and he flicked his wand, the tea beginning to magically make itself.
"I trust you're feeling better?" he asked, taking a seat in his large, magnificent chair.
"Much," she agreed. He gave a ghost of a smile and said nothing more, waiting until their teacups had floated over to each of them, the scene utterly tranquil. Winona took a healthy sip of her tea, which was, as always, made to perfection. She got the feeling Dumbledore was waiting for her to begin, so she set her teacup on the saucer with a clink and thought about what to say.
She didn't want to go on about the Basilisk, or how it had been in the castle, undetected by the so-called 'greatest wizard alive' for so long. Dumbledore wouldn't give her any straight answers, anyway. Instead she settled for talking about something else, something that he probably hadn't expected her to ask.
"Professor, is it possible that my visions aren't…set in stone?" she asked quietly.
She could tell the Headmaster was intrigued, if only by the spark ignited in his twinkling blue eyes. "Please elaborate," he said, and she looked down into her lap as she attempted to put words to her messy jumble of thoughts.
"I had a vision that Hermione was going to be attacked by the Basilisk," she revealed carefully, tracing her fingertip along the rim of her teacup. "So I went to find her, attempting to stop it, and…it worked," she said with a blink. "It got me instead."
She didn't look up to gauge Dumbledore's reaction, but kept her eyes on her tea, listening carefully as she waited for the Headmaster to respond.
"True Seers are incredibly rare, Miss Andrews," he began mildly. "I don't believe you understand just how rare. I would say we'd be lucky to see but one every other generation."
She looked up, curiosity in her eyes, tracing her fingers on the ceramic rim of the teacup.
"Because of this, little is known about the way their unique brand of magic works," he explained patiently. "But, I would think it is entirely plausible that the glimpses into the future you are given are but possibilities, the likelihood of which are based on the decisions of those involved."
Winona wasn't totally sure she was following, and her face must have given that away.
Dumbledore gave somewhat of a penitent smile. "I suppose it comes down to your belief system," he explained gently. "Why do you think you get these visions, Winona?"
Thrown by the question, Winona was quiet for a beat. "I don't know," she murmured, averting her eyes again as she thought. She'd never really considered that maybe there was a reason she was given this prior knowledge, that there was a reason she saw things before they happened, even if they didn't fully make sense at the time.
Now that she considered it, she supposed there was really only one answer that made any sense.
"I suppose I get them so I can prepare myself, and everyone else, for what's to come," she said, thoughtful.
"And then, maybe even change what's to come?" the Headmaster suggested quietly. She could feel the heavy weight of those endless eyes focused on her, but refused to look up. "So perhaps your original question has merit," he continued on evenly, in a conversational voice. "Perhaps your visions aren't, as you say, set in stone."
This, more so then anything they'd ever discussed before, made her realise the true burden of her gift. If she was destined to know the future, perhaps she was also destined to change it. And what a weight that should prove to become…
The rest of the term passed quickly, being that there were only a matter of days remaining, and before Winona knew it, it was the night before they were to catch the Hogwarts Express back to Kings Cross.
She desperately wanted to sketch – just knowing she'd gone nearly a month without sketching anything made her desperately want to catch up, even if she hadn't actually been aware of time passing. Instead, she knew it was important to spend the time with her friends, and so Fred and George snuck her out of the common room and down to the kitchens one last time for the school year.
"You think next year will be quieter?" Winona asked as she licked the ice cream from her spoon.
"Nah," Fred and George replied, and she laughed without inhibition.
Ginny found her later that night, looking a mighty lot happier than she had throughout the rest of the year, but still wearing a slight frown. "All right, Ginger?" Winona asked, looking away from where Angelina was telling the others about her summer plans.
"Can we talk?" Ginny asked. Winona was quick to nod her head, standing to her feet to leave the larger group and leading Ginny over to an unoccupied chair in the corner.
"How are you?" she asked her gently, and the redhead gave a small smile.
"I'm alright," she spoke quietly. "I'm coping," she said with a wisdom well above her mere age of eleven. "I was wondering if I could write to you over the summer?" she asked suddenly, a determined look on her pretty face. Winona didn't say anything for a moment, and Ginny rushed to elaborate. "It's just, I found that writing my thoughts down really helped me this year…even if the whole time I was getting possessed by You-Know-Who…"
"You can write to me any time, Ginny," Winona assured her softly. "You don't have to ask. I'd love to hear from you."
Ginny smiled, relieved.
"Do you want to know a secret?" she asked the younger girl, who looked curious at the change of topic. She nodded nonetheless and Winona fished out her sketchbook, looking over her shoulder to make sure none of the other Weasleys were snooping, then flipping it open to the most recently used page.
The Weasley family stood, all nine of them, dressed in foreign robes, grinning at what was obviously a camera. In clear view behind them stood the Great Pyramids, and Ginny peered down at it excitedly.
"I drew it last night," she confessed quietly. "Haven't told the twins. I thought I'd let them be surprised."
"When will this happen?" Ginny asked eagerly.
"Sometime over the summer," Winona replied with a grin. "Don't tell anyone," she added, pressing a finger to her lips. Ginny agreed, eyes alight with excitement at both what the future held, and the fact that Winona had entrusted her, and only her, with this knowledge.
The train ride back to Kings Cross was long, and Fred, George, Ginny, Harry, Hermione, Ron and Winona all shared a compartment. They passed the time by eating sweets that Harry kindly bought from the trolley and playing rounds of Exploding Snap.
Hermione sat by the window, head in a book though she was clearly listening, tutting with exasperation every time the twins made an off-colour joke. Winona spent some of it sketching, making a caricature of all of them together, then duplicating it and passing the rough but amusing sketch around for everyone to keep.
She noticed Harry gently tuck his away like it was more than a thoughtless scribble for some laughs, but then again, she knew what kind of environment he was going back into, and figured he could use something to cheer him up when things got too much to bear. She understood what that was like, better than anyone else could have.
The girls noticed how close they were to the station, and Hermione picked up the stack of books she was using, standing to put them back in her bag, only it was too high for her to reach. Winona took them, but paused herself when she realised that she couldn't quite reach it either.
Fred sniggered at the pair of them but took the books nonetheless, reaching up with his freakishly long arms to put them away.
"Ginny — what did you see Percy doing, that he didn't want you to tell anyone?" Harry spoke up as the train began to slow.
"Oh, that," said Ginny, giggling. "Well — Percy's got a girlfriend."
Fred dropped the stack of books on George's head, and Hermione tutted before bending down to pick them up and dust them off. The others turned to stare at her in amazement.
"What?" Fred asked, bewildered.
"It's that Ravenclaw prefect, Penelope Clearwater," his sister continued. "That's who he was writing to all last summer. He's been meeting her all over the school in secret. I walked in on them kissing in an empty classroom one day. He was so upset when she was — you know — attacked," there was a brief pause where nobody quite knew what to say, then she said anxiously, "you won't tease him, will you?"
"Wouldn't dream of it," said Fred, too innocent to be believable.
"Definitely not," agreed George, sniggering.
"Come on, you imps," Winona laughed, giving George a shove towards the door. They cackled to each other as they moved out onto the platform. "I'll say goodbye now," she said to the trio of second years. "Have a nice summer, and write to me if you need anything at all," she added firmly, the trio nodding obediently.
"You'll owl if you have any more visions, right?" Harry asked in a low tone.
She grinned, nodding her head. "Promise," she told him as she held a sombre hand over her heart.
Harry and Ron smiled, and she held up her hand for a fist-bump each, which they reluctantly gave her, before Hermione drew her into another hug as the boys turned to collect their luggage.
"I really can't thank you enough-" the brightest witch of her age was saying gratefully, but Winona merely squeezed her back before pulling away and winking.
"I'll see you later," she told her, and Hermione smiled again before she turned to leave the compartment.
"Winnie, wait!" Harry said, and she paused, turning to look at him expectantly. He held out a small slip of ripped parchment, and when she looked down she saw it was a hastily scrawled phone number. "You know how to use a phone, right?" he asked hesitantly. She laughed, which was answer enough. "Just…it'd be nice to talk to someone other than my Aunt and Uncle over the summer, for once," he told her.
There was a banging on the window and Winona looked to see the twins waving at her impatiently. "Thanks Harry," she told him. "I'll give you a call," she promised, before shooting the trio a final grin and leaving the compartment, heading out onto the bustling platform.
"Oh, Winona, dear," Mrs Weasley was the first to find her, pulling her into a warm hug. "I heard what happened, I'm sorry I haven't seen you sooner," she began, but Winona only shook her head with a smile. "How are you feeling?"
"Completely fine, Mrs Weasley," she swore, and the plump woman gave a motherly smile before her attention was dragged away by Percy and Ron, who were just arriving with their things in tow.
"You'll come visit, right?" Fred was suddenly at her side, speaking loudly so he could be heard over the loud buzzing of the crowd on the platform.
" 'Course," she replied, pushing herself up onto her toes to drag her best mate into a hug. She held on tightly, subtly inhaling his familiar scent of gunpowder and fresh soil before pulling back and doing the same to George. "Write me?"
"Every other hour, on the dot," George said with another snicker. Winona punched him before spinning around to glance at the time.
"Gotta go," she told them, glancing up at the clock on the far wall. "Be bad, cause trouble!" she yelled over the noise, and she saw them give final, large beams before she stepped through the barrier into the Muggle world.
Her foster parents were just as awful as always, but she was so used to it that it didn't matter. She had her art to keep her company, and her letters to and from her friends.
It was two weeks into the Summer, however, that she snuck down to steal the phone from its place in the kitchen, dialling in Harry's number and listening to it ring.
"Hello?" a grumpy voice answered, sounding like the last thing its owner wanted to be doing was talking on the phone.
"Hi, my name's Winona. I'm looking for Harry?" she said carefully.
"You're not from that bloody school, I hope?" the disembodied voice thundered, the sound riddled with disdain. "I won't have people of your sort calling this house."
"I understand," she replied, eyes narrowed into slits he couldn't see. "I suppose I'll just have to apparate to your house instead," she bluffed, and the grumpy voice fell silent. "Oh, that's right, you're a Muggle," she said with just as much disdain as him. "It means I'll spontaneously appear in your house. But I do get the coordinates wrong sometimes. I could end up in your lounge, your kitchen, or even your bathroom-"
"Boy!" shouted the voice.
There was a series of angry muttering and careful threats on the other end until finally Harry's voice appeared. "Hello?" he asked hopefully.
"Hey, Boy-Wonder," she greeted him, her smile much more natural.
"Winnie – hi," he replied, bright and happy. "How are you?"
"I'm okay," she told him, unthinkingly rolling her shoulder, where a large bruise sat, covered by her Weasley jumper. "You?"
"Ugh," he simply made a sound of intense disgust and she had to laugh, understanding more than he knew.
"Your uncle sounds like a real top-notch bloke," she said sarcastically, and he gave a grumble of vague agreement on the other end. "Say, you feeling up for an adventure?"
"Honestly, I've had enough adventure for one lifetime," he replied mildly, and it made her grin. "But what were you suggesting?"
"You're in Little Whinging, right?" she asked instead.
"Yeah?"
"I'm only a few suburbs away," she confessed with a smile. "What do you say? Feel like getting away from the Muggles and going to get some ice cream with me?"
"You have no idea how great that sounds," he gushed, the words heavy with relief.
Winona laughed. "It's still early – I can catch the train and be at yours in about a half hour? What's your address?"
Harry relayed it to her and she scribbled it down on her hand before letting him know she'd be there soon and hanging up.
Her foster parents were upstairs, getting ready for work. She crept back up to her room and took a lightning shower before changing into paint-stained jeans and a teeshirt, then grabbing her wallet and quietly leaving the house. They might ask where she went if they ever noticed she'd left, but that wasn't very likely.
It was only a few stops to Harry's house, and she glanced again at the address etched onto her palm, making sure she had the right house before making her way up to the door. She lifted her hand to knock but it was pulled open before she could make contact, Harry looking breathless and excited in the doorway. Clearly he'd been watching for her, and the thought made her smile.
"Hey Boy-Wonder," she greeted him brightly.
When Harry smiled back, it was tinged with relief, like he'd been held underwater this whole time, and it was only now, seeing her, that he could breathe. It was strangely heartwarming, but probably said more about his home environment than it did about her. "Hey Winnie," he said, voice ringing with relief. "Ready to go?"
Before Winona could answer, the sound of heavy feet against the floor reached them, heading in their direction. Harry shut his eyes in defeat just as a whale of a boy appeared over his shoulder, eyes narrowed in suspicion that quickly morphed to surprise and then back to suspicion.
"Who're you?" he demanded rather rudely.
"I'm a friend of Harry's," she told him hotly, eyes just daring him to doubt it. "Who're you?" she asked, just as tart.
The boy was surprised by the way she spoke to him, and she wondered what it might be like, to have grown up being treated with so much unwavering respect that you felt you were entitled to it.
"I'm Dudley," the boy told her, blinking stupidly. "How can you be friends with him?"
Winona's eyes narrowed, and Harry recognised the look on her face as the same one the twins got just before somebody was about to rue the day they'd crossed them, and he hurried to interrupt. "We were just leaving," he said quickly, taking a step out of the house.
Before he could get very far, however, Dudley shot out an arm and gripped him by the back of his shirt.
Winona didn't hesitate. She pulled her wand from her waistband, holding it threateningly in Dudley's face. The kid's eyes went wide and watery, his pudgy cheeks drained of colour. "You, you're…" he stammered, struggling to form a sentence.
"Going to turn you into a toad if you don't let go of my friend," she finished for him. Beginning to tremble, Dudley quickly let go of his cousin's shirt. Harry shrugged as if to try to forget his touch and stepped out into the day with Winona.
Winona didn't lower her wand, challenge in her eyes. Dudley gulped. "Dad!" he shouted back into the house, shrill with panic, and Harry was quick to grip her wrist and forcibly lower her wand.
"Let's go," he said urgently just as great, thudding footsteps wracked the house, like the foreboding stomping of an approaching dinosaur.
Winona agreed, pocketing her wand and letting Harry lead the way back towards the train station. The rare sun shone down on them, and they hurried around the corner before the dinosaur could see them, laughing to themselves quietly.
"You weren't actually going to use magic outside of school, were you?" Harry asked once they'd paid for their tickets and just barely slipped through the doors of the train to London before they shut.
Winona snickered. "Nah," she said lightly. "He's not worth getting expelled over. I probably would have just punched him."
Harry laughed, taking himself by surprise. Winona reached into her ever-present bag of art supplies as they took seats near the middle of the almost-empty carriage, pulling out a pair of sugar quills.
"Do you want raspberry or orange?" she offered, holding out a red and an orange one respectively.
Harry took the orange with a grateful smile, and she grinned back easily as she reclined back in her seat, throwing her feet up on the chair beside her. Talk was easy as they made their way into London.
With the carriage mostly empty, there wasn't anybody close enough to hear them talking about spells and wands and magic. They spoke freely about Hogwarts and what they missed most when they had to come back to the Muggle world for the summer.
"I wish I could just stay at Hogwarts over the summer," said Harry at one point. "I'd rather be there alone than stuck with the Dursleys for three months of the year."
"That's a no go," Winona told him casually, gesturing with her sugar quill like punctuation to her words. "I already tried to convince Dumbledore back in first year. He won't give."
They were halfway to their stop when the tone shifted, but it wasn't unexpected. Winona knew they couldn't not bring it up. In the end it was Harry who tripped onto the subject first.
"I'm really hoping we have a better DADA teacher next term," he was saying eagerly. "Lockhart was useless; it's awful he lost his memory like that, but at least he can't come back to teach anymore."
It was a strange way to look at it, but something about the grim humour of it all made Winona smirk. Harry's smile, however, dimmed. He'd surprised himself by bringing it up, the first reference either of them had made to the Chamber of Secrets incident. Maybe he'd been consciously trying to keep from talking about it. Winona was no shrink, but that couldn't be healthy.
She let the silence reign a few moments, the pair quietly sucking on their sugar quills, lost in thought. "I never thanked you," she finally said, and Harry looked up in surprise.
"Huh?"
"For saving Ginny," she elaborated. "The Weasleys…they mean a lot to me," she said, looking out at the world flying past them out the window. "It's hard to put into words, but all of them – they're important to me. Losing any one of them, it's…it's unthinkable."
Harry was quiet a moment, but when he spoke up there was an edge of impishness to his voice. "Even Percy?"
Surprised, Winona laughed. "Hmm…" she pondered it playfully, "debatable."
Harry laughed too, but the sound tapered off into nothing, the sombre atmosphere swallowing them up once again. The quiet stretched on, but Winona didn't mind. She tried to think of something to say that didn't sound intrusive.
"You can talk to me about it, if you want," she finally offered. Harry looked away from the window to meet her eyes, and she smiled softly. "You don't have to, but you don't have to avoid it, either."
Harry was frowning, the look far too old on his youthful, rounded face. "I though you might not want to, y'know, cause…" he trailed off, a lot more delicate about it than she was.
"Cause I got turned into a human statue for a month?" she said bluntly. Harry smiled wanly, like he wasn't sure it was something he should be smiling about. "I'm not traumatised or anything," she assured him with a shrug. "It was pretty much just like passing out and waking up a month later."
Harry sat up straighter. "I never thanked you either," he said. Winona's brow furrowed in confusion, and he hurried to explain. "For saving Hermione. Really," he insisted at her shrug. "Without Hermione, we wouldn't have been able to figure it out."
"Yeah, you would have," she said dismissively.
"Well, not as quickly, anyway," he said, then paused, like he wanted to say more but wasn't sure how to put it into words. "And, er, she's my friend," he added in the awkward voice of a preteen boy who wasn't quite comfortable admitting to something as complex and embarrassing as feelings, "and I'm really glad you saved her. So, thank you."
Winona smiled, charmed by his adorable sheepishness. "Enough of the thanks," she said, waving her hand as if to bat it all away. "But if you did wanna talk about it – any of it – my door is always open."
Harry scrunched up his face. "What door?" he asked, and she thought he was serious until she saw the glint of unexpected mischief in his emerald eyes, and grinned.
"Funny," she said, narrowing her eyes at him. Harry only chuckled.
That day they got ice cream, strolling through Hyde Park as they ate and talking about nothing specific. Eventually, as the day went on, Harry began to open up about the year he'd had and that fateful day down in the chamber deep within their school.
He told Winona about fighting the Basilisk, how it was bigger than any monster he'd ever seen before, how terrified he'd been. He told her about the venom and how it had felt like fire in his bloodstream. About how finding Ginny laid there, helpless and inches from death, was one of the scariest things he'd ever seen. How he'd looked into the eyes of the ghost of the man that had taken everything from him and seen only boundless hate.
Winona bought him another cone of ice cream after hearing that one, and they sat by the lake as the conversation moved to lighter topics.
And she found that it was easy, almost alarmingly so, to spend time with Harry. It wasn't like being with her other friends, all mischief and laughter and dirty jokes and gossip. It was different to that, deeper. It was like speaking to somebody without needing to think, without needing to put up defences against embarrassment or having to worry about politeness.
It was like something in Harry's soul called to her own, like whatever they were made of, theirs were the same.
And when they bought chips and ate them in a square filled by hungry, squawking pigeons, Winona realised that it was exactly like spending time with the family she'd never gotten to have. And she knew that come what may, she was on Harry's team for life.