6. The watcher at the window

The evening rush hour was hitting full swing on Farringdon Road. The air was saturated with exhaust fumes and full of the roar of rush-hour traffic. A steady stream of office workers was passing up and down the hill and beneath them, out of sight, a tube train shuddered.

A girl struggled to keep up with the general pace on the pavements, more carried down the hill in the general flow of footsteps than actually choosing her direction. Dressed in a purple and black striped sweater, black beret, grey pleated skirt and doc martens, and carrying what looked like a clarinet case, she didn't look much like an office worker. Her eyes flitted over the passers-by overtaking her on both sides, assessing whether she had time to jump out of the stream and seek shelter in a doorway or under a shop front.

Suddenly she stopped and turned back on herself. A balding man in a white short-sleeved shirt nearly bumped into her.

'Watch where you're going,' he grumbled indistinctly in her direction. 'Sorry,' she replied sheepishly, trying to adjust her beret, which had been knocked aslant.

He gawked at her for a few moments.

'This isn't Shibuya, you know,' he remarked.

'She-wotter? the girl replied, genuinely nonplussed.

'It's in Tokyo. It's the… never mind.' The man tutted and went on his way.

After a second attempt at repositioning her beret, she took it off altogether and slid it into the clarinet case. She peered through the crowd of pedestrians coming towards her, now assessing how best to reinsert herself into it. Suddenly her eyes widened and she launched herself into the crowd, overtaking pedestrians as she tried to catch up with a trim, bearded man walking swiftly up ahead. He had long dark hair and thick-rimmed glasses, and was wearing a black t-shirt.

The man turned right onto Clerkenwell Road, his pace quickening with fewer pedestrians in his way. The girl increased her speed.

'Harry! Harry!' she called out. He kept walking. She paused, reaching down again to open her case. The next moment a miniature explosion went off just behind the man's head. He turned around abruptly and stared at the girl suddenly standing in front of him.

'Did you see what just happened?' he asked in an understandably agitated tone. Definitely his voice, she thought.

'I heard something go bang,' said the girl, 'but I didn't see anything, or see anyone throw anything.'

'Very strange,' he said.

He's about the right age too. He was what… three years ahead of me at Hogwarts?

'You don't seem to be hurt though,' she added. 'So all's well that ends well.'

He frowned quizzically at her.

'Yeah, probably.'

'Nice disguise, by the way,' said the girl, her eyes wide with curiosity.

'Excuse me?'

'The beard and the long hair.'

The frown turned to a scowl.

'Who says it's a disguise? Does this look like a fake beard to you?'

To make his point he tugged on the whiskers growing from his chin.

The girl smiled a rather confused smile.

'Well, you would hardly need to wear a fake beard admittedly. You could conjure one in five seconds.'

'Conjure one?'

The look on his face grew ever more perplexed. He glanced around the street, as if he was looking for a hidden camera, or the co-conspirators in a scam.

'You seem to think you know me,' he said, at the same time rummaging through his pockets to check he hadn't already been pick-pocketed.

'I do know you, Harry,' she replied.

'Harry?'

She looked even more curiously at him.

'Harry Potter.'

He paused, seemingly examining the name.

'Do you often go wandering about this close to the Ministry?' the girl added. 'I'm surprised no one's spotted you sooner. Beard or no beard.'

As she waited for a response she slipped the case onto her shoulder and folded her arms.

He seemed unimpressed.

'Seriously, what are you talking about? What ministry? And my name's not… what did you say it was? Harry Porter?'

She started to play with the strap of her case then stopped.

'Potter, she replied firmly. 'Look, I can understand that maybe you don't want to be recognised after what happened, but...'

'Look, seriously, you've got me confused with someone else,' he interrupted, now more irritably. 'My name's Jim Black, as if it's any of your business!'

She looked at him up and down, now beginning to doubt herself. Then she looked into his eyes. That's the right shade of green. When she spoke again, she spoke in a lower, more secretive tone.

'Has someone cursed you?'

'Cursed me?' said the man apparently called Jim Black, half suppressing a laugh.

'So you really don't know how I am?'

'No, obviously.'

'You don't know my name's Demelza Robins then?'

'No,' he replied. 'I didn't even know the name Demelza existed.'

'So you don't know what quidditch is either? Or that I was on the Gryffindor quidditch team when you were captain?'

'Quidditch?' he said. His tone was derisive but there was a look of curiosity in his eyes. 'What's that?'

'Err … well it's a game... A game played by…'

'By who?

She lowered her voice even more.

'By wizards.'

He laughed.

'So you've mistaken me for a wizard, is that right? A quidditch-playing wizard at that?'

'Never mind,' she replied quickly, looking away. He reached for her gaze, an apologetic kind of smile on his lips.

'Listen …uhh … Demelza, it's been nice talking to you. Well, it's been surreal actually. But I'd better be going.'

Demelza said nothing but continued to scrutinise him with a rather hurt expression, as if she was still hoping that this would all turn out to be a joke, that he would slap her on the back and say something like Of course I'm Harry. Imagine me not knowing what quidditch is!

But the man who called himself Jim Black was already starting to walk away.

'Anyway,' he said, briefly looking back over his shoulder at her. 'I hope you find this Harry person you're looking for.'

'Thanks,' Demelza replied in as bright a tone as she could manage. 'Take care Ha… I mean err... Jim.'

'Um … bye,' he called out, already twenty paces away.

Demelza stood quite still on the pavement, watching him disappear down Clerkenwell Road.

Hermione Granger was sitting at her desk in her office at the Ministry of Magic, twirling a quill around in her hand. The report on the international trade in dragon body parts had to be on the desk of her boss, Harold Hawkwell, by 9 o'clock the following morning. The report was virtually finished of course: all she had to do was incorporate the findings she had just received from a field operative working undercover in Budapest, adjust her conclusions and give the report one final read-through. It wouldn't be a late night in the Ministry, but she didn't expect to leave before half seven.

She let go of her quill, which swooped to a hovering height of its own devising just above the surface of her desk. Then she closed the report and stood up. She needed some fresh air or daylight, both of which were hard to come by in the catacombs of the Ministry, real fresh air and real daylight, that was.

Her office had a window, but it looked out on a stylised street scene generated by a scenery charm, one of hundreds you could pick from a Ministry catalogue. There were empty beaches with little waves gently breaking on them, green hills under wispy white clouds, sheep bleating in the distance, a day of the dead celebration in a Mexican cemetery, even selected vistas of Hogwarts.

The scenery charm running in Hermione's office that month depicted an overcast London street mid-afternoon in the rain. She had picked it because it showed a street directly above where the Ministry actually lay. It was about as close to having a real window as you could get.

She looked out into the rain, a dim and slightly grey reflection of her face visible in the magically-generated glass. Her hair was tied back in a severe ponytail that was just starting to bring on a dull headache. She was wearing no make-up, and the only jewellery visible was a pair of silver earrings that came from her grandmother. Her throat was pale and unadorned; just below it she could make out the uppermost stripes on her top and the collar of her usual work blazer. Very professional-looking, Ron's mother invariably said whenever Hermione arrived at the Burrow in her work clothes, in a tone that suggested that she couldn't understand why she would want to dress like that. You can tell she's Muggle-born, she had heard someone saying once in the corridor. 'I just can't dress like a typical wizard,' she had told Ron once, in a tone that she had regretted afterwards.

The light on a wet and overcast afternoon wasn't much, but there was something comforting about the rain incessantly falling in the charm. Or usually there was. That afternoon it was just falling: falling on the imaginary umbrellas of imaginary pedestrians, their heads down as they made for somewhere inside, smearing the windows of office blocks and shop fronts, forming illusory puddles on the street, and falling bleakly on imaginary cars, vans and buses spewing odourless fumes into the air as they crawled slowly past.

Harry Potter had been missing for just under a year.

In that year no one had gone looking for him, so deeply was he in disgrace with his friends.

She sighed and tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. As she raised her hand, the sleeve of her blazer slipped down a bit. She glanced from the window down at her bare wrist, just for an instant. Then with her other hand she reached out and touched the pale skin that had been exposed.

She had promised not to look for him, out of loyalty to the Weasley family. What he had done was totally wrong of course, and the only way back was for him to come back and apologise. And it better be a damn good apology, as Mrs Weasley had quite rightly said. This had seemed to be the correct approach.

She had expected everything to sort itself out in a matter of days, or weeks. He'll be back at her side soon, surely.

But once three months had passed in silence, something seemed wrong: He wouldn't hold out on his apology. He must be sorry for what he's done. And why had he just walked out into the night, leaving his wand behind? Why hasn't he tried to contact me? Harry's wand had remained in Ginny's possession since his disappearance, but where exactly Hermione didn't know. Ginny never spoke of it, and it wasn't the sort of subject you just brought up. The wand hadn't been sent to Grimmauld Place with the rest of Harry's things either, she had been there to check. She therefore felt sure that Ginny kept the wand locked away somewhere, most likely in her bedroom. She had resisted the temptation to look through Ginny's things; it just wouldn't be right, and if Ginny was keeping it there, it would surely have charms guarding it. In the end she had just come out and asked Ginny if she could borrow the wand to perform priori incantato. She had met with a flat refusal. It wouldn't change anything, Ginny had told her. He did what he did. What happened after that doesn't matter. She couldn't quite leave it at that, even though she knew it was hopeless. What if someone cursed him? Doesn't that change things? But Ginny had been adamant. No one cursed him, Hermione, I'm sure of that. After that she knew she would have to drop the subject.

Six months turned to nine, and still nothing. No one said anything, and she didn't dare to. But it gnawed at them all, at Ginny and Ron especially she was sure, just as the thought gnawed at her. Is he still alive?

A memory kept returning to her, creeping up in quiet moments: she and Harry were on the run, the last ones left after Ron had gone. It was late afternoon. Pale sunshine was fading from the sky and the air was turning colder. She was sitting in front of their tent where it lay in an area of straggly forest, looking up through a break in the canopy of bare branches, the sky beyond them turning grey already. He's been gone too long. He's only supposed to be gathering firewood. She jerked to her feet, scanning the trees that lay around the edges of the clearing for any kind of movement. Dead leaves cracked underfoot. She looked around for the direction she remembered him heading a couple of hours earlier. It was futile, hysterical even. As if I'm going to find him this way. She could see far off through the trees, but there was no sign of anything moving. Which is partly a good thing, at least no one's coming to get me. She found herself walking forward anyway under the brittle trees. They've caught him. Her heart beat frantically at the mere idea of it. Maybe he was just lost. Not a very comforting idea either. But another alternative kept presenting itself. He's gone off to finish this on his own. He'd hinted at it before. More than once he'd make some reference to how sooner or later he'd be alone. Each time she would explain that there was no way she was leaving him. Maybe he thinks this is helping me. Well, it isn't. She walked on and on, going in circles for all she knew, the explanation that he'd left, supposedly for her protection, seeming ever more convincing.

The thing was that she never got to what really happened: how eventually she returned to the tent, shaking with fear and stress, only to find him waiting for her. She had hugged him silently, making no mention of her fears. She would try to reach deeper for the elusive memory, but what came to the surface was paper-thin and monochrome, like it had barely even happened.

She stuck to her promise not to act. But she had to say something, to Ron at least. One evening in their bedroom, he sullenly conceded in a voice barely above a whisper that, yeah, Harry's disappearance was sort of strange and probably not like him. So what should we do? she had said. He shrunk down into his armchair, brooding over his reply. How do you find a wizard who abandons his wand and disappears into the Muggle world? She thought about suggesting that he ask Ginny for Harry's wand, even if the passing of time made priori incantato less likely to work, but she felt sure Ginny would refuse Ron just as she had refused her. So she dropped the subject.

She even tried sending an owl, but it brought back the letter she sent undelivered.

An interdepartmental memo squeezed itself under the door of Hermione's office then glided up onto her desk before promptly unfolding itself in front of her.

Hermione, would you have a moment? Harold

Her boss was obviously back from meeting the Minister. It was the date of the monthly meeting of the inner circle of the Ministry: Knott, Penhaligon, O'Dowd, Hawkwell, Tremayne. All jockeying for position no doubt. Well, maybe not Tadgh O'Dowd. He seemed quite content in charge of the Ministry's accounts. She had worked with him on mending relations with the Gringotts goblins the year after the fall of Voldemort. Very serious, very intelligent, very correct. She rather preferred him to her own boss. Still, to give Harold Hawkwell his due, he was less arrogant than Mortimer Knott, less scheming that Luther Penhaligon and less arrogant and scheming than Myra Tremayne. Are you the next Myra Tremayne, Hermione? Someone had actually had the cheek to say that to her recently, supposedly as some sort of joke. She seriously hoped that that wasn't how her colleagues saw her. Poor Kingsley didn't really fit in with them, even if he was Minister for Magic. He was the first minister in more than fifty years to serve as Minister for Magic while keeping his old position as Head of the Auror Office. If they hadn't kept me on in the Auror Office, being Minister for Magic would be unbearable, he had said once. She had thought it a nice way of putting it. Being Minister hadn't changed him. It had worn him down a bit though.

Almost an entire year it had been. Not a word from him, just a word, to let her know that he was all right. Maybe she didn't know him so well after all. No, that isn't the reason. There's no way.

The memory of her pointless searching for him in that wood had even made its way into her dreams. She would find herself under the same desiccated forest and cold sky at dusk, only in the dream she kept on walking, out beyond the forest and onto brown heathland, and finally onto a mud-spattered lane that led down through anonymous hills. A single question kept repeating in her head: Am I looking for his grave?

She recalled with great clarity the last time she had seen him. It had been just a couple of weeks before his disappearance. Harry and Ginny had come to the Burrow for Sunday lunch. Their visits to the Burrow had been growing rarer for some time and often Ginny came alone. Harry seemed increasingly restless and distracted. This was obvious to Hermione, and it was undoubtedly clear to Ginny, who herself was more subdued, but reluctant to confide in her.

After lunch, the four of them had gone for a walk in the hills around Ottery St Catchpole. Harry seemed intent on walking faster than anyone and soon he had put a substantial distance between himself and the rest. As Hermione walked with Ginny and Ron, Ginny began to tease Ron about his fascination for a Muggle games console their father had recently brought home. Hermione lingered by their side, holding back from making any comment, even though she already loathed the sight of Ron staring into that console. After a while she also started to quicken her pace, shooting a glance back over her shoulder at Ginny, who gave her what looked like a rather dark stare. Gradually she caught up with Harry, whose head was just disappearing over the brow of a hill. She walked briskly to the top of the hill then almost ran down the other side, stumbling a little in her haste. Hearing someone bearing down on him, Harry turned around. Instinctively he reached out his hand to steady Hermione as she stumbled down the slope and caught her. He quickly let go of her and she straightened herself up. She smiled at him, and after a few moments he smiled back. They went on together into the valley below.

'I seem to see less and less of you these days,' she said after a while in a hurried voice, still a little out of breath.

He turned and offered her a rather disconsolate smile.

'I know, I'm sorry.'

'Is everything all right?'

'Everything's fine, Hermione.'

His tone of voice wasn't very convincing; deliberately, she thought.

She turned to him and looked right in his eyes.

'Really?'

A brief smile flashed across his face.

'Well, not really.'

She returned his smile but said nothing in reply.

'That's the problem actually,' he continued. 'I should be more grateful about how things are.'

She looked across at him.

'What things?'

She knew very well what things.

'Harry, you're allowed to be sad sometimes. You more than anyone.'

The path they were following descended until it was running along by the side of a small brook lined with alders. The trees threw Harry's face into shade.

'I'm not sure. Not anymore.'

She reached out and touched him gently on the arm.

'You can't expect just to get over everything. Some things we'll never get over.'

He smiled.

'We have everything we could ever wish for,' he said in a soft, singsong sort of voice. 'But it's all a bit too wholesome. It almost makes me sick. Do you know what I mean?'

'How come we get to enjoy it,' she said, looking cautiously at him, 'yet so many of our friends are dead in their graves?'

He nodded grimly.

'I'm sure they don't think the worse of you, or of any of us that survived.'

'The boy who lived,' he said bitterly. 'Lived and lived again. Always someone else to die for me.'

'Harry, you died too.'

'And was given the choice to come back. The choice, mind you! Who else gets that?'

She reached out her hand again. This time she caught hold of his arm, just below the elbow. For a few moments she held onto it.

'No one does. But when you took the curse, you didn't know you could come back. You went into it the same way as everyone else.'

His eyes flickered for a moment.

'In a way you're right.'

'So keep on mourning for them. But don't think you cheated them or something. They knew what they were doing. I almost envy them'

'Envy them? Don't say that. What would I have done without …'

'I know. I don't exactly mean that I wish I'd … But I was ready to. Just like they were.' She ran her hand through her hair and sighed deeply. 'What I mean is that I didn't get a chance to prove …'

Now he reached out and touched her.

'You proved everything. More than anyone. I had to hold you back, remember?'

She smiled at him, even though she knew that smiling wasn't quite the right thing to do in the circumstances.

'But you know that I would have, Harry, don't you?'

They heard footsteps approaching. Hermione glanced around. Ron and Ginny had nearly caught up with them.

'Yes, I know,' he said, giving her a last look before acknowledging the arrival of the others. The four of them walked along the lane together, their voices quieter until the conversation revived, but not the same one.

We never got to finish our conversation.

She walked quickly out of her office and turned right down the corridor. Harold Hawkwell's office was at the opposite end of the corridor from hers. Further down, a little knot of colleagues was half-blocking the way. She could hear their murmured voices as she approached: Julia Massey, Jocasta Plinthe, Fuchsia Drummond. A little peal of laughter rippled around the group, their heads turned towards each other conspiratorially. Fuchsia's extravagant green dress with gold stars seemed to flutter in the corridor, catching Hermione's eye as she turned away. She had been the one who had said Hermione dressed like a muggle-born.

It had been on a day much like that one, working alone in her office, when she had the idea of writing to him. She remembered how she had sat at her desk, staring at the blank piece of paper, even sliding it under Ministry work at the sound of a knock at the door. When she was alone again she neatly wrote a solitary line in the middle of the page:

'You can tell me anything'.

There was no need to sign it. She folded the piece of paper and put it in a drawer. To send it by owl was out of the question. The moment when she could deliver it herself came several days later. One afternoon she slipped out of the Ministry and disapparated to the building where Harry and Ginny lived. Having passed the front door, she looked at the row of metal letterboxes lined up on the wall in the entrance hall of the building. Leaving the note in the letterbox would be even riskier than sending it by owl. She climbed the stairs to his floor and stood chewing her lip in front of their door. There was complete silence on the landing. She glanced down for a moment at her left wrist, took out her wand, whispered Alohamora and went inside. No additional charms were protecting the flat. You didn't really need them anymore.

There was no one in the apartment. She looked around for a place to leave the note, not daring to touch anything. She swiftly decided that their bedroom would be more likely to yield a hiding place that only he would find. Scarcely breathing, she stepped into their bedroom and looked around for a corner of the room that seemed to be his. The room was neat, neater than he would ever have kept it. Off to one side of the bed was a small night table, scattered with random objects: a pile of books, a framed photograph and a disordered collection of papers. She took a page from the top of the pile: it was somewhat crumpled and not recent, and was scribbled with instructions for a spell for healing burns. She laid the page down just as it had been before and slipped the note under the first book in the pile. Once she was satisfied that no part of the note was protruding from the pile, that it was in no way visible to the casual eye, she left the scene.

'Hermione! Hermione!' A girl's voice called out to her from down a corridor that branched off to her left. Not Fuchsia, or Jocasta, or Julia. She barely had time to turn before the girl reached her, out of breath and grabbing her arm to steady herself. Hermione stepped sideways in surprise, almost stepping into a pot plant brightening up the corridor. Standing next to her was Demelza Robins, who had recently started an internship at the Ministry.

'Hermione I think I just saw Harry!' Demelza delivered the news in a loud whisper, one that was louder than she intended. Hermione turned her head for a moment: Julia, Jocasta and Fuchsia were now all looking at them with interest.

'Um … Hi Demelza, there you are … come into my office,' she said quickly, talking Demelza by the arm and guiding her back down the corridors. She could feel the girls' gaze on their backs as they went. There was no need to go and see Harold Hawkwell immediately.

Shutting the door carefully, Hermione beckoned for Demelza to take a seat, then swayed round her desk and sat down opposite her.

'You saw Harry?' she began, her eyes wide with expectation.

'Half an hour ago, on Farringdon Road.'

That close to the Ministry?

'I had just left work. I came back especially to tell you.'

Hermione tried her best to compose herself.

'Thanks so much for coming to me, Demelza. How sure are you that it was him?'

'90% sure. I mean, it was his face, his voice.'

'You spoke to him?'

'Yes. Only he said he wasn't Harry Potter and that he didn't recognise me. He had long hair, a beard, and different glasses. And he had just the right colour eyes. He really seemed not to recognise me. But I'm sure it was him.'

She tried to picture Harry with long hair and a beard but couldn't quite manage it. How could he be wandering about just above the Ministry of Magic, not far from an entrance to the Ministry they had both used countless times? How could he act like he was oblivious to the wizarding world, to all his friends, to her even?

'Maybe he's been enchanted,' she said, half thinking out loud.

'I thought that too,' replied Demelza. 'He had that kind of weird look in his eyes.'

The thought that Harry had been cursed had occurred to her before. She had wondered about the Slytherin wizards he had been seen with the night of his disappearance. They had seemed sort of all right to her, even if they were from Slytherin. But now, with what Demelza had told her, it seemed quite likely that a memory charm had been cast on him. It was impossible that he would not recognise Demelza, a fellow Gryffindor and quidditch teammate.

'You said you saw him on Farringdon Road?' she said after a short pause.

'That's right. I followed him onto Clerkenwell Road. I lost sight of him after that but I cast a tracing spell. He went as far as St. Peter's Church, then turned down Hatton Garden. He crossed over Holborn, then went down Shoe Lane and St Bride's Street. The trace lasted as far as Fleet Street.'

The streets were well known to her. She sometimes walked them during lunch breaks, mingling with the Muggles.

'That gives us something to go on. That's brilliant, Demelza!'

Demelza beamed at this praise.

'So what do we do now?'

Hermione pushed her chair back as if she was about to get up. Then she thought better of it and pulled her chair back to her desk.

'Stake out the area, see if he comes back tomorrow. You say you saw him just now, so I suppose it was just after five o'clock.'

'Yes, it was around five.'

'Well, maybe he actually works round here … of all things. Maybe he had just come out of work and was on his way home.'

Demelza nodded.

'I suppose if he has lost his memory, he must think he's a Muggle and has gone and got himself a Muggle job.'

'Exactly.'

A faint sort of scraping noise was coming from the door. Hermione looked up and saw a second memo making its way to her desk. Damn. She turned back to Demelza.

'Can you make it for say 4.45 tomorrow afternoon?'

Demelza nodded and smiled. She seemed pleased to be included.

'Where?'

'The railway bridge, on the corner of Farringdon Road and Clerkenwell Road.'

Hermione was out of her seat before the memo had even unfurled itself. The corridor was empty when she and Demelza got outside.

'See you tomorrow then,' said Demelza.

'Yeah, see you,' replied Hermione, starting down the corridor for Harold Hawkwell's office in a kind of daze.

How on earth am I going to concentrate on work now?