Chapter 30

Too Few Answers

"I'm waiting." Her hands were on her hips, elbows pointing outward. Every line of her body screamed. She was angry. Harry had never seen her like that before. He swallowed hard again and tried to think of something calming he could say to her.

"Cassie . . . ."

"Don't you dare even think about lying to me, Harry Evans."

"I'm not going to. I can tell you honestly that there is nobody else in that room." He expected her to be mollified, to get one of her looks on her face, and then to hug him. That's what he expected, what he hoped. That's not what happened.

"I'm leaving now, Harry." Her voice was cold, empty, and Harry truly did not think he had ever heard anything so terrible in his life. And he knew terrible.

"Don't go . . . I . . . .I'm being honest with you." He tried one of his smiles - the ones that she seemed to like best. It didn't help.

"No. I am leaving. I'm tired of it. No, I'm sick of it! I can't believe what an idiot I've been!" Harry's eyes widened slightly. He had never heard her talk like this, ever.

"You haven't been an idiot, you've been . . . ."

"No, I think idiot pretty well covers it, Harry! I can't believe I've put up with it all this time!"

"Put up with what?" Harry was trying to figure out exactly what she was upset about but she wasn't going to be dissuaded.

Her hands started gesturing around the living room, the house, rather frantically, her voice high now and agitated. "What are you talking about? This!! This . . . . well, everything! It's too much, Harry. It's just too much!"

"Look, I can show you my bedroom . . . ." Harry hoped to get back to the main issue of who he was talking to, not wanting to let things spread to just his general strangeness, but she had made up her mind.

"No. You don't need to. I know exactly what I would see if you opened that door right now, Harry. Exactly. There is no one else in there. I am positive of that."

"Then . . . ." He was genuinely unsure of what the problem was. He had a feeling that things were way out of his control now and he couldn't get them back.

Her voice was cold again, the calm she had lost a little earlier returning. "There are many ways to lie, Harry. Many, many ways. Do you know that some people can lie to you without saying a word? You've perfected that method. Other people can lie by only telling you partial truths. That's one you've gotten down to a science as well. And do you know that some people can lie by looking you in the face, telling you the honest truth, and not telling you anything at all!? And that, Harry Evans, is the one that you are truly a master of!!" Her breath caught, and Harry thought that she was close to tears. But she pushed them back. "You. Have. Been. Lying. To. Me. Since. I. Met. You." Her words were calm and measured, each one almost a curse. He put up his hand but it could not stop the torrent of words that she was unleashing. "You - Oh, there have been a few moments, a few unguarded moments, when . . . . I almost . . .when I almost saw you, Harry. Almost. But you know what? Your shield would come up again, and then . . . .I was out, pushed away again."

"How can you say that? It's not true, Cassie. I've tried to . . . . We've been close. I've been closer to you than anyone." Harry could feel anger rising up in him. She didn't understand what sort of risks he had taken for her, what sort of chances he had taken.

"I know. And you know what? That makes it worse! Because . . . ." Again the little hitch in her voice. "Because maybe, maybe there would have been something really . . . . special, if you could have . . . If I had . . . Oh, never mind. It's obvious that you just can't, really can't, be honest with me." She turned away from him then, the anger gone from her suddenly, drained out of her like a plug had been removed, and she was defeated, utterly and completely defeated.

"You know what, Cassie? You're right. You are so completely right." Harry's anger left him as suddenly as hers. Now, he just felt empty inside, too. "And you know what the worst thing about it is, Cassie, that absolute worst?" She shook her head slowly. "The worst thing is that even if I were to sit down and tell you everything I could, it wouldn't help. It wouldn't help at all." He walked over to the door, picked up his wand through sheer habit along with the scrap of parchment, and started opening the locks, turning them one by one, mechanically. He felt her come up behind him, and as the last one slid open, he grabbed her elbow and steered her rather quickly down the steps. She pulled her arm away at the bottom of the stairs and moved away from him. Harry had heard the stupid doorbell start ranting again, but she had not even looked in that direction, and he supposed that she was past caring about strange voices being where they shouldn't be.

Finally, she spoke again, calmly. "Please don't walk me home, Harry. I'll be fine. You just go back into the house and . . . ." She moved to turn then, to indicate his steps, ones that Harry knew were no longer visible. He grabbed her arm again and pulled her down the street, wanting to distract her, wondering if it was worth the effort.

"I am walking you home, Cassie."

"No." She stopped and refused to take another step next to him. "I know exactly how this will go. You'll have all the walk home to think of some story that you can tell me, something to make things better. You'll tell me. I'll give in. This whole stupid cycle will start all over again, and once again, I'll be an idiot. I don't want you to come home with me. I really don't."

Harry decided that the time for polite platitudes was past. "I will walk you home, Cassie. There are things out here that could hurt you, badly, and I will not have you hurt on my account. Let's go. I won't be thinking up any more lies to tell you. I won't say a word the whole way, if you like." They set off down the familiar street, somehow distant and alien now, and Harry was surprised when he had to squint at the reflection of the sun on glass. Its brightness seemed out of place in the cold gray of the afternoon.

Neither of them said a word for almost 25 minutes. They did not touch. His mood alternated between anger and hurt. He knew that she would have no way of knowing what he had risked for her. But still, . . . Well, still. They had walked in silence before, of course, but usually they were holding hands and usually Harry found the quiet peaceful and calming, a way of being together when words were not enough. Today, the quiet was as flat as glass and he feared that if he tried to speak it would shatter and cut him. He was not sure he would ever heal from a wound that deep. He wasn't sure he would want to. As they got to her house, she sobbed and without saying anything else, she ran the last few feet to her front steps and then she was up them and then she was gone. And Harry felt like crying himself, out there on her front porch, all the grief and pain and loneliness he felt welling into his throat.

But, years of training in hiding his pain asserted themselves, and he turned from her house resolutely, knowing that he had a destiny he had to face in the next few days and it didn't change reality - his reality. Something she would never understand. He wished he was as lucky.

The walk to his house was plenty long for him to get really mad. Did she think that he liked living like this, not being able to tell her anything about himself? Did she think that he loved having a constant knot at the bottom of his stomach from the fear that he would say something wrong? He would love to be able to talk to her about everything in his life but that just wasn't possible. And if she wasn't satisfied with it than she had only herself to blame. After all, she had said, come right out and said, that she didn't mind if he didn't tell her things - that he could keep his secrets. Apparently she had been lying then, or something. It wasn't really fair for her to change the rules in the middle of things, was it?

By the time, he had gotten home, he had worked himself up into a righteous fit of anger. As he stomped up the steps he practically screamed the password at the doorbell which, perhaps sensing that it might be smashed if it dared to comment, just opened the door and let Harry inside. Harry slammed the door with more force than usual and that was really saying something. With every one of the six locks that he slammed home, he let a good curse word or two out and by the time his house was safely invisible again, he also felt a lot better. Sometimes, he thought, as he leaned back against the door in exhaustion, it was good to live alone. There was no one to glare at him for the colorful language he had just let loose.

He slammed his wand onto the hall table with more force than necessary and it was a testament to the magical properties of the house that the table just didn't collapse completely. He stalked into the living room, throwing himself onto the couch. He sat there for about 15 minutes feeling very angry and letting all the frustration roil around in his brain. It felt good to be so mad at her. Then his stomach growled and all the other feelings his anger had pushed to the side were suddenly screaming for his attention.

Harry could not have possibly identified each one of these feelings, even if he had been able to sort them all out into individual emotions. It was all just a big jumble which made his temples pound and his stomach feel queasy. He could, however, recognize a few familiar faces amidst that mass of confusion. There was sadness, frustration, uncertainty. Then there was one that Harry was all too familiar with - one he tried to shove back again into oblivion. He didn't really want to reacquaint himself with it now. Loneliness.

He pushed himself off the couch and stalked into the kitchen, hoping that anger would reassert itself and let those other little feelings get pushed to the back of his mind again. It didn't. They stayed. Harry ate dinner mechanically, not really tasting any of the food and finally throwing away half of the soup he had heated. He tried to distract himself by watching television. It was only at that point that he realized Cassie had forgotten her video. In her rush to leave his house and him, she had left it in the VCR. Great. He took it out, shoved it into the cardboard sleeve and carried it into the hall where he put it down by his other things. He would have to return it to her; obviously she was the one who had a thing for dragons.

He had a horrible thought about 8 o'clock and went tearing into his bedroom to flip the painting of Sir Lionel around. He shook the frame briskly and called loudly to the old knight who was once again sleeping soundly on his little stool "Sir Lionel, Sir Lionel!"

"What? What? My goodness. We spoke just a few minutes ago, didn't we?"

"Well, yes. (Harry had noticed that the old man seemed to have only a vague concept of time passing.) But I was wondering . . . .I was . . . I mean, what did you tell Dumbledore about, uh, me?"

"I told him the truth, Harry, of course."

Harry's stomach sank to his feet. He might as well start packing. "Oh."

"I told him you were well and happy and that you weren't going to listen to any rumors. Was there something else I was supposed to tell him? I didn't think you had specified any message."

He must have forgotten all about the "girl" rattling the doorknob and Harry certainly was not going to remind him about the disaster of the afternoon. He just thanked the painting once again for his good work and left the bedroom, this time leaving it facing away from the wall, feeling like that was the least he could do for the old knight.

Harry tried to go to bed early that night, but just lay in bed staring up at the ceiling. Before he had come here, he almost never slept well. He either had horrible nightmares which caused him to wake up screaming or his scar hurt so unbearably that sleep eluded him. There were times when he would go several nights in a row without really ever sleeping deeply, and at times like that he would be forced by his friends or Dumbledore to take one of Madam Pomfrey's sleeping potions but even then he never felt rested. Since he had come here though, he had slept well almost every night. He had had a few strange dreams, but this was so normal for him, that he supposed it would have been more of a concern if he hadn't had any. It was strange, then, to lie awake hour after hour again, the whole horrible afternoon scene replaying in his brain constantly.

The next morning as he pulled his achy body out of bed and rubbed eyes that felt like they had been through a desert sandstorm. Harry's mixed-up muddle of emotions had resolved themselves to a simple feeling of depression. He missed her horribly. He had decided about 3 a.m. that maybe it was really better this way, that if they finished things now he wouldn't have to miss her so badly once Dumbledore came and got him. And it was obvious that she wasn't going to miss him. Maybe she would never even know he was gone. Harry knew, though, that it might be easier on her but nothing was going to make things simple for him.

The morning passed and Harry spent it imaging all sorts of scenarios that could occur if he were to see her again. The first one was the one that he found most amusing, and the one that he revisited several different times to see if it ever ended better. It went something like this:

"All right, Cassie. You are so dead set on my telling you the truth. Here it is. I'm a wizard. I go to a wizard school where we learn really great stuff like how to take care of Hippogriffs, how to transfigure rats into water goblets, banishing charms, and the ever popular defense against someone who is trying to cast an unforgivable curse on you. Yeah, you know that stick I carry around? It's actually a magic wand and I can do all sorts of things with it like open locked doors and turn your hair different colors. Oh, yeah. And I fly on a broom, too."

This scenario always ended in Harry's brain with Cassie calling up the police who hauled him to the local mental hospital. Another scenario that he had imagined was a lot more satisfying, if just as unrealistic. This involved Cassie throwing herself at him and begging forgiveness, insisting that she never wanted to ask him any more questions, and when he wanted to at least apologize for making her mad, kissing him senseless until he forgot about such a silly idea.

Other scenes that he thought were probably more realistic involved his trying to explain a little bit to her about why he couldn't tell her anything and having her slam the door in his face, saying that she never wanted to see him again. He didn't like that at all, but he knew that it was the one most likely to actually occur. Or maybe she wouldn't even come to the door, maybe her mother would be the one to tell him that he could never come back. Or maybe her dad would show up at the door holding a very long shotgun, explaining to Harry that his friends wouldn't be able to find enough pieces of him to bury if he ever stepped foot on their porch again. That latest thought made Harry pretty nervous. He didn't know how wizards reacted to being shot, but it didn't really matter, did it? Dead was still dead.

Harry did a lot of pacing that morning, skulking from room to room in the small house, unable to find anything to keep his mind occupied. He did write his usual brief note to Dumbledore and for a few moments even considered telling the headmaster all of his troubles. He decided against it. Why get himself in trouble now that there was probably nothing to tell. He had yet to take this letter out to the post box. He thought that maybe he would take the video back at the same time and he just was not ready to face her, not until he settled on a firm idea of what he was going to do.

If it was just a matter of his own safety at stake, Harry thought. he probably would have confessed everything a long time ago. He got nervous at the thought of Voldemort but wasn't ever really frightened for himself. Of course, things were more complicated than that. They always were, weren't they? Getting rid of Voldemort would mean more than just killing one really bad guy. It would mean saving the lives of maybe thousands of wizards and Muggles who Voldemort would then not have a chance to kill. And, of more immediate concern, Harry did not know Dumbledore's plan for this battle and if Harry compromised the secrecy that seemed so vital to its success, he might cost lives of those Dumbledore had recruited to fight. Maybe even some of his very close friends. How could he live with himself if that was what happened? Just so he could be with a girl? No, it just wasn't worth the risk.

What he did come to realize that morning was that short of confessing everything to her, Harry would do just about anything to be with her again. He was astonished at the hole left in his life now that she was gone. He wanted her back. So, gathering his wand, his letter, the videotape, and -- from somewhere in the depths of his gut -- his courage, he left the house, determined to talk to her and convince her to give their relationship another chance.

He walked quickly for the first part of the trip. But, he got more and more nervous as he approached her house, and by the time he got to her actual street, he could hardly force himself forward. What if she really never wanted anything to do with him again? The three steps that led up to her porch seemed to have multiplied to 100 and Harry could barely pull himself up them. The feeling that he should just run back to the cocoon of his invisible house and hide was overwhelming him. But, he had never been fond of cocoons. And, he had been sorted into Gryffindor. Gathering the last remains of his determination, then, he knocked on Cassie's front door.