+Mens mea cupit cantare formas versas in nova corpora.+
(Ovid )
CHAPTER TWO
When he woke for the second time, it was to the chattering of his alarm clock, which was reeling off his itinerary for the day. "Don't forget to hand those quizzes back to the Hufflepuffs this morning," the clock instructed as Harry pushed his covers off, half fell out of bed, and stumbled blindly for the shower. "And the Ravenclaw test!" the clock shouted after him. "Don't forget that!"
Although he had managed to get back to sleep and avoid more dreams, Harry found that he couldn't shake off the memory of staring at his own face in that hall of mirrors, *talking* to himself as if he were so many different people. It haunted him through his ritual preparations for the day: shower, shave, dress, frantically compose a single essay question for the fifth-year Ravenclaws (and hope it would take them an hour and a half to answer it.) The interference of the dream kept distracting him from that last, though, and it was a welcome relief when Ron appeared at his door to collect him for breakfast.
"You look a bit peaked," was Ron's helpful observation, made the second Harry opened the door.
"*Thank* you." Harry scrubbed a hand through his hair, immediately destroying two minutes' worth of hard labor with a comb and brush. Ron was looking at him with an expression halfway between curiosity and concern, his face shadowed in the half-light that permeated the castle halls at such an early hour. When Ron's look began to shade toward a mixture of concern and impatience, Harry sighed and said, "Just a weird dream last night. Don't get your panties in a twist."
Ron's gaze sharpened and the hazel eyes flickered reflexively to the scar on Harry's forehead. Harry squirmed under the pressing weight of Ron's scrutiny; it was moments like this that he was reminded forcibly of his friend's chosen occupation. He wondered a bit irrationally if Ron hadn't exchanged one of his eyes for a magic one, as Alastor Moody had done; the intensity in those hazel depths made Harry feel as if Ron were peering directly into his skull. After a few moments of standing stock-still in the hallway, staring at each other, Harry realized Ron wasn't going to let up until he said something to ease his friend's anxiety.
"It wasn't *that* kind of dream," he said at last, a bit irritably. He felt bad for snapping at Ron - for a moment, anyway. /I *deserve* to be irritable. I'm damn well entitled to it./ Ron, though, didn't look chastened, or repentant at the thought of once again using Harry as a Voldemort weather vane, although he did mutter something that sounded like an apology. "It was just another weird dream that *everyone's allowed to have*," Harry added for good measure, glaring at Ron, who shrugged.
"Did it involve sex?"
"No, Ron."
"Damn."
* * *
By the time he got to class, the fifth-year Ravenclaws were staring at him expectantly, quills at the ready and notes and textbooks already tucked neatly underneath their desks. While Harry usually appreciated such promptness (as he rarely got it from the rest of his students, even the Gryffindors), it was a bit disturbing to actually have students *anticipating* a test. Each one of the Ravenclaws was practically quivering with excitement.
/Just like Hermione,/ he thought with a fond, private smile, thinking of his longtime friend and the bizarre energy that overtook her whenever the rest of the class would be slogging through a multiple-choice test in Potions. She'd be bent over her desk, quill flying over her parchment, not even bothering to push out the thick mop of brown hair that inevitably fell in her face.
The memory was so strong that Harry was briefly taken aback. For a moment, he wasn't in his Transfigurations classroom, but in Snape's dungeon-slash-lecture hall, sitting for their sixth-year final exam, and he was glowering at Draco Malfoy across the room and trying to resist the temptation to throw a spitball at him, or something equally disgusting. In his memory, Malfoy turned his head slightly, looking up from his paper enough to catch Harry's eye. They traded furious glares, Malfoy mouthed something nasty enough to get points taken off if Snape had ever heard it (or if Draco were anyone else but a Slytherin), Harry replied in kind, and then they turned back to their respective tests.
"Harry?" A gentle voice sounded out of nowhere, and Harry jumped, wondering which student of his would be so familiar as to address him by his first name. He blinked, staggered a bit when he saw that it was Hermione who'd called him, materializing as if summoned by the memory he'd just played over so clearly a minute ago. Her face, oddly and perpetually young despite the years and all their trials, was concerned. /Ron probably told her about my 'weird dream',/ he thought. He had Ron had ended up discussing it over breakfast.
"Could I borrow you for a minute?" Hermione asked after watching him stew in silence. "I mean, as soon as you're done doing... whatever it is you're doing." There was obviously no tactful way to say that what Harry was doing was staring into space, having his students stare at him.
"Uhhh, yes. Yes, of course. Right away. Hang on a second, Herm - I mean, Dr. Granger." He shook himself out of memory and turned his attention to his students. "I thought I'd shake things up and change our usual multiple-choice and short answer test format." The class buzzed excitedly at that. "You'll have the following hour and... uh, twenty minutes to write on the following: Explain fully each step involved in the transfiguring of humans into animals, including the steps required to become an Animagi, and discuss the ethics involved in such processes, as outlined in Proteus Ovidian's 'Ethics of Metamorphosis.' Finally, construct an argument either for or against human-to-animal transfiguration as a method of espionage as it applies to the Ministry's decision in Black vs. the Wizarding World, 1996."
/*That* should keep them busy,/ he thought smugly. The smugness faded as each of the students exchanged wide grins and bent to their papers, quills moving over them like things possessed. /Wit and learning?/ he thought, remembering his school days of slacking off with a shudder. /That's one thing... this is just unnatural./ He saw that Hermione, former Head Girl and possessor of the highest grade-point average in Hogwarts history, looked a little bit unnerved herself.
"I'll be back in a moment," he told the class, acutely aware that his words were falling on deaf ears. He strode past Hermione and out the door, shutting it behind them as soon as she passed through. The hallway stretched on, long and echoing, and he lowered his voice. "What is it?" he asked. "If it's about that stupid dream, don't bother - I'll skin Ron myself when I see him."
"What dream?" Hermione asked impatiently. "No, Ron asked me to come and tell you something - he couldn't come himself. Ministry business and all that." Her voice was low too, though, and the unnerved expression Harry had perceived earlier was now distinctly strained. "He told me what he's trying to do for you and... and Draco," she said, in a voice that failed to tell Harry whether or not Hermione approved of her husband's actions. "And he also told me that the Ministry was starting to get suspicious - he's got some meeting or other with Fudge right now."
/Oh, God./ Harry prayed his best friend wasn't going to get fired by Fudge - or worse, knowing the paranoiac mind of the Minister of Magic. Thoughts of Azkaban loomed in Harry's mind and he swallowed the sudden rush of fear. But there was fear, too - guilty fear, and Harry tried to banish it - that this meant his chance to talk with Draco again, or ever again for that matter, had vanished. /It can't stop here,/ he thought desperately, thinking of his promise to send Draco an owl. When he'd said that, it had seemed like a little, routine thing, and he hadn't truly been aware of the ramifications of his actions, or any possible impediment to carrying them out. Now he thought of Draco in his exile, alone and slowly crumbling under the weight of it, and saw his offhand offer of correspondence take on a heavier weight than it had before.
"Ron told me to tell you he got an owl arranged to send to Draco," Hermione said quietly, her voice little more than warm breath against Harry's robes. "It's a routine owl that gets sent out there - asking him if he needs anything that the house-elves can't pick up. He has to send it at two today; usually it's the Department of Magical Law higher-ups that see to it, but Ron managed to convince them to let him send it, because he had Auror-related material to send as well and there was no sense in sending two - well, you understand."
/Thank you, Ron./
Aloud, Harry said: "Thanks, Hermione. Could you tell Ron that too?"
Hermione nodded and turned to go. She paused in mid-turn and swung back to face Harry, her face still pale and set. "Ron told me why he's doing this for you," she said in that soft voice Harry remembered from so long ago, the voice that hadn't changed over the years - still comforting despite the determination it could carry. "I can't say that I agree totally, but I haven't seen Malf- Draco since the war, so I only have my old memories of him." Memories of him calling her Mudblood, hearing about how he had rejoiced when she'd been Petrified second year - and there were many more, but even just one would suffice to make every ounce of her hate justified ten times over. "If you're sure... I mean, that is, if you think you can be happy with him, or if there's still things you need to work out, I'll help you any way I can."
There was nothing, really, Harry could say to that. /If you're allowed to be generous, then I am, too - I'm doing this because you deserve to try to find your happiness, for once./ Ron's words from last night. He thought back over the years, wondering how it was that his friends had changed so much, and yet changed so little. /There's a saying for that,/ he told himself. "Thanks, Hermione," he whispered, taking one of her hands in both of his. "If you could, tell Ron for me... tell him not to get himself fired."
"You know Ron," Hermione sighed, her lips twitching up in a smile. "I think he's decided on it already."
There was a slight gleam in her brown eyes at that, and Harry remembered that Ron had mentioned starting a family. The thought of Ron with kids was vaguely disturbing, but not as disturbing as it had been when they'd used to discuss it in school. "Kids? I want kids like I want a hole in the head," Ron had said scornfully. It was an opinion Harry had shared without reservation. Now, though... the thought of settling down with someone (Draco) was deeply appealing.
"What will he do?" Harry asked. He glanced at his watch, wondering if the Ravenclaws had finished the test yet or not. Eight minutes... they'd be mostly done, except for the really ambitious ones, or Peter Borges, who had a memory like an encyclopedia and could quote pages - and page numbers - from memory. "I don't really know what the career options are for ex-Aurors. Well, there's always the Defense Against Dark Arts class, but I'd always thought Ron would put his own eyes out before teaching."
"I told him he should write a book." An honest smile brightened Hermione's face. "Really, the memoirs of one of the world's youngest recipients of the Order of Merlin, a tactical wizard (pardon the pun)... It would be a bestseller. He could even put in stuff about killing werewolves and ridding villages of vampires."
"And put his hair in curlers, too, and buy lilac robes."
"And quote chapter and verse from his book on a regular basis."
"You do know that if Ron ever suspected we were entertaining notions of him ending up like Gilderoy Lockhart he would hex us both into the next dimension," Harry said through his laughter.
"No, he would hex *you*," Hermione corrected, grinning now. "I'm his wife - he wouldn't *dare* hex me. And anyway, he's gotten a bit slow in his old age - I'd have him in a Full-Body Bind before he could even blink."
"What's this?" Ron's voice boomed down the hallway like thunder, startling Harry and Hermione both. "'Full-Body Bind? That sounds sort of kinky, 'Mione - I don't think Harry wants to hear about stuff like that." Soundlessly, Ron swept up to stand behind Hermione, who twisted around to glare at him. He fairly towered above his petite wife, lanky where she was softly rounded, bright and flashing where she was subdued. His long arms wrapped effortlessly around her shoulders in a gesture that made Harry's heart twinge a bit with sadness and not a bit of jealousy.
/But even if you did have someone to do that to,/ a little voice said from the back of Harry's head, somewhere near the base of his skull, /would you have the guts to do it? Here you are, twenty-seven and never been kissed. Never even held *hands* with a real, honest-to-God boyfriend./ The voice paused. /That you're gay is bad enough, but to not even have a *relationship*... that's just pathetic./
Harry blocked the voice out as best he could. It had started up around sixth year, when he'd finally realized he could never, ever in a million years like Ginny the way she wanted him to (and she had probably been better off with Colin Creevey, anyway, before she... no, he wasn't going there...), and it had never shut up. Even after Ron had assured him that it made no difference to him - "I'm not your dick's best friend, I'm *yours*," had been his precise words - the voice never really went away. It had gotten louder as the years passed, and now two years into peacetime when people had finally begun to pair off and settle down, it had reached fever pitch.
"I was just telling Harry," Hermione was saying now, "about your plan - you know, the owl. Is that still a go?" Her voice sharpened with worry. "What did Fudge say?"
"The usual," Ron said dismissively, rocking back and forth a bit so that Hermione swayed with him. "He gave me the usual lecture on my vows as an Auror - I told him I wasn't married to the Ministry because I already have a wife and bigamy is illegal, but he didn't seem to get it - and said I should shape up before I came under review for suspicious activities." He paused. "I really wanted to tell him off, but I told him I'd do my best. It was just typical Fudge ranting, 'Mione. Don't worry about it."
"I *do* worry," Hermione grunted. "I'm your wife. It's my *right* to worry."
"Anyway," Ron said loudly before his voice dropped back down to a discreet whisper. "It is, Harry. I need the letter a little early, though - I think one o'clock should do it. Fudge is probably going to screen mail from me at this point - owls going out to former Death Eaters are automatically redirected to the Ministry - so I'll need to do some charm work on your letter before I post it." His expression was serious, but there was a glint of the old Ron Weasley in those gold-hazel eyes that said sneaking stuff past Fudge was more fun than anything else. And if he got caught... well, so what?
"One o'clock it is," Harry agreed. He looked at his watch again and sighed. "I need to get back to class, you two. And thanks, Ron, Hermione. Thank you for everything."
"Don't mention it," they said simultaneously. They exchanged a look that Harry usually associated with sloppy married couples like Ginny and Colin, not his sensible best friends. Not really wanting to see what would happen next, he opened the door back into his classroom and ducked through, shutting it just as he thought he saw Ron lean in for a kiss. When he turned back around, some of the Ravenclaws were looking at him expectantly - most of them were, except for Peter Borges, who was still writing furiously.
"You're *done*?" Harry asked, hoping his voice didn't sound as strangled as he thought it did.
"We are, sir," Jennifer Arendt informed him. "Unless..." Fear creased her face for a moment. "Did you want us to quote precedents from the Black case or not? I wasn't clear on that."
"Yes! Precedent, by all means!" Harry said a bit wildly.
A collective gasp ran through the Ravenclaws and one - Robert Delaney, Harry thought - moaned, "I can't believe I forgot about Ministry precedent!" As one, twenty or so heads bent down to their papers and once again the quills were off, racing across parchments like lightning. Harry sighed as he limped up to his desk, figuring that would give him another ten minutes or so, maybe more if the students remembered things they had left out of their essays. Enough time, maybe, to start figuring out what he wanted to write to Draco. He picked up quill and parchment of his own, hitched himself forward in his chair, and began to think.
'Draco.' /Good start,/ he congratulated himself. He wrote that down.
'It was good talking to you again. I'm sorry about the whole Invisibility Cloak thing, but I have to say that it was all for the best. Ron is sending this by Ministry owl on Auror business' - /You're stating the obvious, Potter./ - 'so I'm sorry if this brief, and I've never been much for writing the important stuff.'
Harry paused, rolling his quill back and forth between thumb and index finger. What *did* he want to say? What was so important? He felt the heavy weight of memory pressing down on him, the difficulty of that short time spent trying to get Draco to open up, and to open himself as well. There had been so much he had never even been able to really admit to himself; telling Draco about the slow shift in his feelings had been a revelation as much for him as it had been for the other. /I never really knew how I felt about you until I saw you again,/ he thought, staring blankly at the few lines on his parchment, wondering if he should dare write that down. /I've had years and years to try to figure that out, but I couldn't manage it until yesterday./
Taking a deep breath, telling himself he could rip up the letter if it ended up being stupid, Harry wrote those very thoughts down. It was odd, looking at the words upon the page, as if they were somehow different than the thoughts behind them. But they were the same, verbatim. He sighed, dipped his quill in the ink again, and thought some more. /I've decided I need to see you again, although I don't know how that will happen. Ron says - / He paused in his own thought. Draco knew Ron was involved, but this seemed like... He didn't know how Draco would react to hearing Ron's offer of help; Harry wasn't able to fully comprehend what kind of agreement Ron and Draco had reached during Draco's brief stint at Hogwarts.
'I've decided I need to see you again, although I don't know how that will happen. Still, I know something will work out sooner or later, at least on my end. I'll let you know when something does. But for now, I just wanted to say thank you for talking to me.'
He paused, scratched out the 'to', and supplied 'with' in its place. That sounded better.
'And I hope I can see you soon.'
That would probably be the extent of it. Harry frowned at his quill, wishing he could blame it for his inability to clearly articulate his feelings. /What would I *write*, though?/ he asked himself. He couldn't write a long, sloppy love confessional - nor would he if he could - and had no desire to rehash everything that had happened between them, whether in the distant or more recent past. What else was there to say? Not much.
'Harry.'
At least there was that. Harry sighed and stared critically at the short missive, hoping that maybe Draco would be able to read between the lines and see what Harry was incapable of writing, hearing what Harry could not say. /If anyone would understand, though, it'd be Draco, wouldn't it?/ Harry was briefly disheartened by the thought of two people with a world of things to say not being able to say them, and he being one of those two people in question. But that was the way of it, wasn't it? The war hadn't allowed close friendships to form, even with people he'd known since school - why bother with the effort, when one person might very well die? He had stayed close with Ron and Hermione as much as their separate duties had allowed, but those eight years had stretched them in some way, and he hadn't found anyone quite like them, hadn't cared to try.
Now, spat back out into peacetime, things felt like they were going by as if he were flying full-tilt on his Firebolt. Ron and Hermione were thinking of kids. The students he'd been teaching for the past two years had grown up, with younger students to take their places. People came and went, some of whom he thought 'Maybe... maybe there could be something there', but when the moment came, he was left floundering and absolutely clueless. He knew how to interrogate a Death Eater, but not how to talk to another human being about his day, or how to ask him out - not that he was in a position where available single men drifted through on a regular basis. No... Now he was surrounded by people he counted as friends in the strange sort of professional sense. He liked McGonagall, Flitwick, Sprout, and the rest of the professors, but in the back of his mind there was always the nagging knowledge that these people were, first and foremost, the people who had lectured him until his brains dripped out his ears and given him detentions. It was still an effort to call them by their first names and not 'Professor.'
Despite this never-ending sameness, things whirled on and still he was Famous Harry Potter - wonderful Potter with his *scar* and his *broomstick*... The only people who didn't think of him That Way were his two best friends, and they were married.
And Draco. He hoped for that very, very much. /Oh, how I hope./
Mechanically, he folded up the letter and sealed it shut with wax drippings from his candle, using his personal seal - an owl and three stars - instead of leaving a plain white blob congealing on the paper. He stared at the folded square for a moment before tucking it into the pocket of his robe and looking up to see that the Ravenclaws, once again, had finished - with the exception, of course, of Peter, who was still writing furiously in the back. After a few more minutes, he sat back with satisfied sigh and dropped his quill on his desk with an air of finality.
Harry wished he could be that confident.
* * *
By a little clever maneuvering at lunch, Harry managed to slip his letter to Ron, who made it vanish into his robes like a stage magician, complete with dramatic flourish. It attracted the attention of Minerva, who eyed Ron dubiously - she was plainly wondering why an Auror and his wife were continuing to stay on at Hogwarts after the reason for their being there had left to go back into exile. Harry was wondering that himself, and so it was with some curiosity - and reluctance - that he collared Ron on his way out of the Great Hall.
"Ron, it's not that I don't like having you around, but I would have thought you'd be back in London by now," he said in the best casual 'I'm not fishing for information' tone he could manage under the circumstances. The circumstances were the combination of the not-fooled-in-the-least expression Ron wore, and the faint tinge of sadness in his friend's eyes.
"To be honest, it's sort of like a vacation," Ron said ruefully, reaching out a hand to run long fingers down the stone wall as they walked. They skimmed delicately over a tapestry, over the frame and canvas of a painting - the corseted Victorian woman in it shrieked in indignation - danced along a doorframe. "I mean, why'd you come back when the Ministry was drooling to have you work for them?"
"I don't know," Harry mumbled. "Minerva needed someone for the Transfigurations class... and well, I guess this place was always my first home, in a way. And when the war started I always thought about how things here used to be. Even with Sirius and the Tournament and Voldemort and all... It was a place I could feel safe for a bit."
"You got it in one," Ron said. He touched Harry lightly on the shoulder, said, "I need to get going - I have to get this owl ready before Fudge has a coronary", and sped up his steps so he flowed ahead of Harry like a tall, black-draped ghost. Harry stopped outside the door to his classroom and watched Ron walk ahead of him, noticing for the first time the slight depression about his friend's shoulders that bespoke a heavy, pressing weight, and he sighed, recognizing that weight, because he carried it himself.
He opened the door on his seventh-year double class with the Hufflepuffs and Slytherins, smiling slightly at them. This was not his favorite class; even after thirteen years, tension between the two houses had risen to proportions nearly matching that Slytherin shared with Gryffindor. It had started, along with the rest of the war, with Cedric Diggory's death in Harry's fourth year and the fallout resulting from that. The Hufflepuffs nowadays harbored an animosity toward Slytherin that probably would have upset even-tempered, honest Cedric, if he had been alive to see it. Patience had all but disappeared as a byword in their House description; 'patient Hufflepuff' had almost become a contradiction in terms, at least when it came to dealing with Slytherin insults, while 'loyal' was an understatement for what had transformed into something approaching fanatical devotion for their House on the part of each Hufflepuff. When Harry had seen that he would have two Slytherin/Hufflepuff classes a week, he had gone immediately to Minerva, who had dismissed him with atypical irritation.
"They'll have to learn to get over it," she had snapped. "And you'll have to manage them, *Professor* Potter."
And he had managed, after a fashion. At least, there weren't any transfigured students or furious faces greeting him today, although Holly Ferrars and Elizabeth Sloane (Hufflepuff and Slytherin, respectively) were glaring daggers at each other. Their gazes snapped to him when he coughed a bit to announce his presence, and Holly had the grace to look abashed. /They're seventh year,/ Harry thought, cursorily inspecting the room. /They should be past this petty arguing./ They *should*, he amended, but they, unlike him, didn't have the benefit of hindsight. So much of Harry's life would have been easier if he, and a few other people, had been able to put House rivalries aside with Slytherin and get things done. As it was, though, many in that house had been alienated and refused to provide the Ministry with help in during the war, or the chaos after it.
Fudge had wanted to prosecute them alongside the out-and-out Death Eaters, and had even gone so far as to try to get an extradition order passed through the United States Congress of Supernatural Arts to get Millicent Bulstrode out of her self-imposed exile in Wyoming. She had been one of the best Charms students and an expert in Obliviation, and according to Fudge, she could have provided the Ministry with an invaluable service in the war. Spokesman Charles Stonewall had refused Fudge's request absolutely. As far as Harry knew, Millicent was still out on the range somewhere. He hoped she was happy.
"I believe you all have homework to turn in?" he asked a bit peremptorily. Usually a sharp, nearly-snarky tone worked best with this particular class, which had had six years to stew in its collective dislike, and Harry had found that keeping the students worried about *him* kept them from going at each others' throats. There was a low rumble of muttering at his words and a shuffle of briefcases and books as the students got out their scrolls and passed them forward. They must have sensed something exuding from Harry that told them not to anger their teacher - Harry wished he knew what it was they sensed, so he could exude it more often. As he shuffled scrolls around, he automatically launched into his lecture, sending the class diving for parchment and quills.
He had his lecture on Ministry laws governing Animagi virtually memorized. McGonagall had pounded it into his head when he had been learning, and he could quote it very nearly in his sleep. His mouth moved more or less independently of his mind, which circled distractedly elsewhere, ruminating over the fact that Ron would probably be charming his letter right now. /Would he read it?/ his mind wondered anxiously. Not that there were any passionate outpourings in it, but still... When would Draco get it? What if Fudge found out? What if *Fudge* read it? His stomach froze for a second before doing a hideous little somersault inside him.
For a single moment, Harry was acutely aware that he had stopped talking, but the importance of that faded as he tried to decide whether or not to run in search of Ron and tell him not to send that letter after all. /No,/ he told himself sternly. The students were staring at him worriedly, mouths slightly agape. /No... nothing gets done if you're too afraid to do it./ That thought helped a little. /And Fudge finds out... well, I'll deal with it. I've dealt with everything. Fudge won't be that much different./
"I'm sorry," he said to the students, smiling slightly, "I seem to have drifted off. Where was I?"
"The first Registration Code for Animagi," Holly Ferrars volunteered, a split second before Elizabeth Sloane could present that same information. The two girls glared mortal death at each other.
"Ah, yes. Thank you. Now, the first Registration Codes specified only that an individual who had become an Animagus be reported, but subsequent codes were modified to include prospective trainees and also to require more specific information as to identification..." Harry fell into the lecture again, so fully that he didn't think of the letter until the end of class - and by then it was after two o' clock, and if Ron was running on time, the owl would be on its way to the Ministry even as a new well of fear surged up in Harry's gut.
He shepherded the Hufflepuffs and Slytherins out of the classroom, watching closely to make sure they weren't going to drop the uneasy truce they adopted for his classes in favor of sudden hostilities. Fortunately, they moved off in two separate, silent groups, leaving him alone in the hallway. As the last Hufflepuff turned the far corner, Harry let himself collapsed back against the wall. /That was an ordeal,/ he thought, unsure whether he was thinking of the class or sending the letter. Probably both things, he decided, forcing his body upright again. His leg was aching a little and he needed to sit down... and he needed to think some more, which was frightening.
So, Harry made his way back to his office, where he ended up hiding out for his one free period of the day, and where Ron found him, clutching a cup of tea that had gone cold. When he tried to explain himself, Ron told him not to worry about it, and told him in such a way that made Harry think Ron was also talking about the letter and was wanting to let him know, in an unexpectedly tactful way, that everything had gone smoothly.
(Ovid )
CHAPTER TWO
When he woke for the second time, it was to the chattering of his alarm clock, which was reeling off his itinerary for the day. "Don't forget to hand those quizzes back to the Hufflepuffs this morning," the clock instructed as Harry pushed his covers off, half fell out of bed, and stumbled blindly for the shower. "And the Ravenclaw test!" the clock shouted after him. "Don't forget that!"
Although he had managed to get back to sleep and avoid more dreams, Harry found that he couldn't shake off the memory of staring at his own face in that hall of mirrors, *talking* to himself as if he were so many different people. It haunted him through his ritual preparations for the day: shower, shave, dress, frantically compose a single essay question for the fifth-year Ravenclaws (and hope it would take them an hour and a half to answer it.) The interference of the dream kept distracting him from that last, though, and it was a welcome relief when Ron appeared at his door to collect him for breakfast.
"You look a bit peaked," was Ron's helpful observation, made the second Harry opened the door.
"*Thank* you." Harry scrubbed a hand through his hair, immediately destroying two minutes' worth of hard labor with a comb and brush. Ron was looking at him with an expression halfway between curiosity and concern, his face shadowed in the half-light that permeated the castle halls at such an early hour. When Ron's look began to shade toward a mixture of concern and impatience, Harry sighed and said, "Just a weird dream last night. Don't get your panties in a twist."
Ron's gaze sharpened and the hazel eyes flickered reflexively to the scar on Harry's forehead. Harry squirmed under the pressing weight of Ron's scrutiny; it was moments like this that he was reminded forcibly of his friend's chosen occupation. He wondered a bit irrationally if Ron hadn't exchanged one of his eyes for a magic one, as Alastor Moody had done; the intensity in those hazel depths made Harry feel as if Ron were peering directly into his skull. After a few moments of standing stock-still in the hallway, staring at each other, Harry realized Ron wasn't going to let up until he said something to ease his friend's anxiety.
"It wasn't *that* kind of dream," he said at last, a bit irritably. He felt bad for snapping at Ron - for a moment, anyway. /I *deserve* to be irritable. I'm damn well entitled to it./ Ron, though, didn't look chastened, or repentant at the thought of once again using Harry as a Voldemort weather vane, although he did mutter something that sounded like an apology. "It was just another weird dream that *everyone's allowed to have*," Harry added for good measure, glaring at Ron, who shrugged.
"Did it involve sex?"
"No, Ron."
"Damn."
* * *
By the time he got to class, the fifth-year Ravenclaws were staring at him expectantly, quills at the ready and notes and textbooks already tucked neatly underneath their desks. While Harry usually appreciated such promptness (as he rarely got it from the rest of his students, even the Gryffindors), it was a bit disturbing to actually have students *anticipating* a test. Each one of the Ravenclaws was practically quivering with excitement.
/Just like Hermione,/ he thought with a fond, private smile, thinking of his longtime friend and the bizarre energy that overtook her whenever the rest of the class would be slogging through a multiple-choice test in Potions. She'd be bent over her desk, quill flying over her parchment, not even bothering to push out the thick mop of brown hair that inevitably fell in her face.
The memory was so strong that Harry was briefly taken aback. For a moment, he wasn't in his Transfigurations classroom, but in Snape's dungeon-slash-lecture hall, sitting for their sixth-year final exam, and he was glowering at Draco Malfoy across the room and trying to resist the temptation to throw a spitball at him, or something equally disgusting. In his memory, Malfoy turned his head slightly, looking up from his paper enough to catch Harry's eye. They traded furious glares, Malfoy mouthed something nasty enough to get points taken off if Snape had ever heard it (or if Draco were anyone else but a Slytherin), Harry replied in kind, and then they turned back to their respective tests.
"Harry?" A gentle voice sounded out of nowhere, and Harry jumped, wondering which student of his would be so familiar as to address him by his first name. He blinked, staggered a bit when he saw that it was Hermione who'd called him, materializing as if summoned by the memory he'd just played over so clearly a minute ago. Her face, oddly and perpetually young despite the years and all their trials, was concerned. /Ron probably told her about my 'weird dream',/ he thought. He had Ron had ended up discussing it over breakfast.
"Could I borrow you for a minute?" Hermione asked after watching him stew in silence. "I mean, as soon as you're done doing... whatever it is you're doing." There was obviously no tactful way to say that what Harry was doing was staring into space, having his students stare at him.
"Uhhh, yes. Yes, of course. Right away. Hang on a second, Herm - I mean, Dr. Granger." He shook himself out of memory and turned his attention to his students. "I thought I'd shake things up and change our usual multiple-choice and short answer test format." The class buzzed excitedly at that. "You'll have the following hour and... uh, twenty minutes to write on the following: Explain fully each step involved in the transfiguring of humans into animals, including the steps required to become an Animagi, and discuss the ethics involved in such processes, as outlined in Proteus Ovidian's 'Ethics of Metamorphosis.' Finally, construct an argument either for or against human-to-animal transfiguration as a method of espionage as it applies to the Ministry's decision in Black vs. the Wizarding World, 1996."
/*That* should keep them busy,/ he thought smugly. The smugness faded as each of the students exchanged wide grins and bent to their papers, quills moving over them like things possessed. /Wit and learning?/ he thought, remembering his school days of slacking off with a shudder. /That's one thing... this is just unnatural./ He saw that Hermione, former Head Girl and possessor of the highest grade-point average in Hogwarts history, looked a little bit unnerved herself.
"I'll be back in a moment," he told the class, acutely aware that his words were falling on deaf ears. He strode past Hermione and out the door, shutting it behind them as soon as she passed through. The hallway stretched on, long and echoing, and he lowered his voice. "What is it?" he asked. "If it's about that stupid dream, don't bother - I'll skin Ron myself when I see him."
"What dream?" Hermione asked impatiently. "No, Ron asked me to come and tell you something - he couldn't come himself. Ministry business and all that." Her voice was low too, though, and the unnerved expression Harry had perceived earlier was now distinctly strained. "He told me what he's trying to do for you and... and Draco," she said, in a voice that failed to tell Harry whether or not Hermione approved of her husband's actions. "And he also told me that the Ministry was starting to get suspicious - he's got some meeting or other with Fudge right now."
/Oh, God./ Harry prayed his best friend wasn't going to get fired by Fudge - or worse, knowing the paranoiac mind of the Minister of Magic. Thoughts of Azkaban loomed in Harry's mind and he swallowed the sudden rush of fear. But there was fear, too - guilty fear, and Harry tried to banish it - that this meant his chance to talk with Draco again, or ever again for that matter, had vanished. /It can't stop here,/ he thought desperately, thinking of his promise to send Draco an owl. When he'd said that, it had seemed like a little, routine thing, and he hadn't truly been aware of the ramifications of his actions, or any possible impediment to carrying them out. Now he thought of Draco in his exile, alone and slowly crumbling under the weight of it, and saw his offhand offer of correspondence take on a heavier weight than it had before.
"Ron told me to tell you he got an owl arranged to send to Draco," Hermione said quietly, her voice little more than warm breath against Harry's robes. "It's a routine owl that gets sent out there - asking him if he needs anything that the house-elves can't pick up. He has to send it at two today; usually it's the Department of Magical Law higher-ups that see to it, but Ron managed to convince them to let him send it, because he had Auror-related material to send as well and there was no sense in sending two - well, you understand."
/Thank you, Ron./
Aloud, Harry said: "Thanks, Hermione. Could you tell Ron that too?"
Hermione nodded and turned to go. She paused in mid-turn and swung back to face Harry, her face still pale and set. "Ron told me why he's doing this for you," she said in that soft voice Harry remembered from so long ago, the voice that hadn't changed over the years - still comforting despite the determination it could carry. "I can't say that I agree totally, but I haven't seen Malf- Draco since the war, so I only have my old memories of him." Memories of him calling her Mudblood, hearing about how he had rejoiced when she'd been Petrified second year - and there were many more, but even just one would suffice to make every ounce of her hate justified ten times over. "If you're sure... I mean, that is, if you think you can be happy with him, or if there's still things you need to work out, I'll help you any way I can."
There was nothing, really, Harry could say to that. /If you're allowed to be generous, then I am, too - I'm doing this because you deserve to try to find your happiness, for once./ Ron's words from last night. He thought back over the years, wondering how it was that his friends had changed so much, and yet changed so little. /There's a saying for that,/ he told himself. "Thanks, Hermione," he whispered, taking one of her hands in both of his. "If you could, tell Ron for me... tell him not to get himself fired."
"You know Ron," Hermione sighed, her lips twitching up in a smile. "I think he's decided on it already."
There was a slight gleam in her brown eyes at that, and Harry remembered that Ron had mentioned starting a family. The thought of Ron with kids was vaguely disturbing, but not as disturbing as it had been when they'd used to discuss it in school. "Kids? I want kids like I want a hole in the head," Ron had said scornfully. It was an opinion Harry had shared without reservation. Now, though... the thought of settling down with someone (Draco) was deeply appealing.
"What will he do?" Harry asked. He glanced at his watch, wondering if the Ravenclaws had finished the test yet or not. Eight minutes... they'd be mostly done, except for the really ambitious ones, or Peter Borges, who had a memory like an encyclopedia and could quote pages - and page numbers - from memory. "I don't really know what the career options are for ex-Aurors. Well, there's always the Defense Against Dark Arts class, but I'd always thought Ron would put his own eyes out before teaching."
"I told him he should write a book." An honest smile brightened Hermione's face. "Really, the memoirs of one of the world's youngest recipients of the Order of Merlin, a tactical wizard (pardon the pun)... It would be a bestseller. He could even put in stuff about killing werewolves and ridding villages of vampires."
"And put his hair in curlers, too, and buy lilac robes."
"And quote chapter and verse from his book on a regular basis."
"You do know that if Ron ever suspected we were entertaining notions of him ending up like Gilderoy Lockhart he would hex us both into the next dimension," Harry said through his laughter.
"No, he would hex *you*," Hermione corrected, grinning now. "I'm his wife - he wouldn't *dare* hex me. And anyway, he's gotten a bit slow in his old age - I'd have him in a Full-Body Bind before he could even blink."
"What's this?" Ron's voice boomed down the hallway like thunder, startling Harry and Hermione both. "'Full-Body Bind? That sounds sort of kinky, 'Mione - I don't think Harry wants to hear about stuff like that." Soundlessly, Ron swept up to stand behind Hermione, who twisted around to glare at him. He fairly towered above his petite wife, lanky where she was softly rounded, bright and flashing where she was subdued. His long arms wrapped effortlessly around her shoulders in a gesture that made Harry's heart twinge a bit with sadness and not a bit of jealousy.
/But even if you did have someone to do that to,/ a little voice said from the back of Harry's head, somewhere near the base of his skull, /would you have the guts to do it? Here you are, twenty-seven and never been kissed. Never even held *hands* with a real, honest-to-God boyfriend./ The voice paused. /That you're gay is bad enough, but to not even have a *relationship*... that's just pathetic./
Harry blocked the voice out as best he could. It had started up around sixth year, when he'd finally realized he could never, ever in a million years like Ginny the way she wanted him to (and she had probably been better off with Colin Creevey, anyway, before she... no, he wasn't going there...), and it had never shut up. Even after Ron had assured him that it made no difference to him - "I'm not your dick's best friend, I'm *yours*," had been his precise words - the voice never really went away. It had gotten louder as the years passed, and now two years into peacetime when people had finally begun to pair off and settle down, it had reached fever pitch.
"I was just telling Harry," Hermione was saying now, "about your plan - you know, the owl. Is that still a go?" Her voice sharpened with worry. "What did Fudge say?"
"The usual," Ron said dismissively, rocking back and forth a bit so that Hermione swayed with him. "He gave me the usual lecture on my vows as an Auror - I told him I wasn't married to the Ministry because I already have a wife and bigamy is illegal, but he didn't seem to get it - and said I should shape up before I came under review for suspicious activities." He paused. "I really wanted to tell him off, but I told him I'd do my best. It was just typical Fudge ranting, 'Mione. Don't worry about it."
"I *do* worry," Hermione grunted. "I'm your wife. It's my *right* to worry."
"Anyway," Ron said loudly before his voice dropped back down to a discreet whisper. "It is, Harry. I need the letter a little early, though - I think one o'clock should do it. Fudge is probably going to screen mail from me at this point - owls going out to former Death Eaters are automatically redirected to the Ministry - so I'll need to do some charm work on your letter before I post it." His expression was serious, but there was a glint of the old Ron Weasley in those gold-hazel eyes that said sneaking stuff past Fudge was more fun than anything else. And if he got caught... well, so what?
"One o'clock it is," Harry agreed. He looked at his watch again and sighed. "I need to get back to class, you two. And thanks, Ron, Hermione. Thank you for everything."
"Don't mention it," they said simultaneously. They exchanged a look that Harry usually associated with sloppy married couples like Ginny and Colin, not his sensible best friends. Not really wanting to see what would happen next, he opened the door back into his classroom and ducked through, shutting it just as he thought he saw Ron lean in for a kiss. When he turned back around, some of the Ravenclaws were looking at him expectantly - most of them were, except for Peter Borges, who was still writing furiously.
"You're *done*?" Harry asked, hoping his voice didn't sound as strangled as he thought it did.
"We are, sir," Jennifer Arendt informed him. "Unless..." Fear creased her face for a moment. "Did you want us to quote precedents from the Black case or not? I wasn't clear on that."
"Yes! Precedent, by all means!" Harry said a bit wildly.
A collective gasp ran through the Ravenclaws and one - Robert Delaney, Harry thought - moaned, "I can't believe I forgot about Ministry precedent!" As one, twenty or so heads bent down to their papers and once again the quills were off, racing across parchments like lightning. Harry sighed as he limped up to his desk, figuring that would give him another ten minutes or so, maybe more if the students remembered things they had left out of their essays. Enough time, maybe, to start figuring out what he wanted to write to Draco. He picked up quill and parchment of his own, hitched himself forward in his chair, and began to think.
'Draco.' /Good start,/ he congratulated himself. He wrote that down.
'It was good talking to you again. I'm sorry about the whole Invisibility Cloak thing, but I have to say that it was all for the best. Ron is sending this by Ministry owl on Auror business' - /You're stating the obvious, Potter./ - 'so I'm sorry if this brief, and I've never been much for writing the important stuff.'
Harry paused, rolling his quill back and forth between thumb and index finger. What *did* he want to say? What was so important? He felt the heavy weight of memory pressing down on him, the difficulty of that short time spent trying to get Draco to open up, and to open himself as well. There had been so much he had never even been able to really admit to himself; telling Draco about the slow shift in his feelings had been a revelation as much for him as it had been for the other. /I never really knew how I felt about you until I saw you again,/ he thought, staring blankly at the few lines on his parchment, wondering if he should dare write that down. /I've had years and years to try to figure that out, but I couldn't manage it until yesterday./
Taking a deep breath, telling himself he could rip up the letter if it ended up being stupid, Harry wrote those very thoughts down. It was odd, looking at the words upon the page, as if they were somehow different than the thoughts behind them. But they were the same, verbatim. He sighed, dipped his quill in the ink again, and thought some more. /I've decided I need to see you again, although I don't know how that will happen. Ron says - / He paused in his own thought. Draco knew Ron was involved, but this seemed like... He didn't know how Draco would react to hearing Ron's offer of help; Harry wasn't able to fully comprehend what kind of agreement Ron and Draco had reached during Draco's brief stint at Hogwarts.
'I've decided I need to see you again, although I don't know how that will happen. Still, I know something will work out sooner or later, at least on my end. I'll let you know when something does. But for now, I just wanted to say thank you for talking to me.'
He paused, scratched out the 'to', and supplied 'with' in its place. That sounded better.
'And I hope I can see you soon.'
That would probably be the extent of it. Harry frowned at his quill, wishing he could blame it for his inability to clearly articulate his feelings. /What would I *write*, though?/ he asked himself. He couldn't write a long, sloppy love confessional - nor would he if he could - and had no desire to rehash everything that had happened between them, whether in the distant or more recent past. What else was there to say? Not much.
'Harry.'
At least there was that. Harry sighed and stared critically at the short missive, hoping that maybe Draco would be able to read between the lines and see what Harry was incapable of writing, hearing what Harry could not say. /If anyone would understand, though, it'd be Draco, wouldn't it?/ Harry was briefly disheartened by the thought of two people with a world of things to say not being able to say them, and he being one of those two people in question. But that was the way of it, wasn't it? The war hadn't allowed close friendships to form, even with people he'd known since school - why bother with the effort, when one person might very well die? He had stayed close with Ron and Hermione as much as their separate duties had allowed, but those eight years had stretched them in some way, and he hadn't found anyone quite like them, hadn't cared to try.
Now, spat back out into peacetime, things felt like they were going by as if he were flying full-tilt on his Firebolt. Ron and Hermione were thinking of kids. The students he'd been teaching for the past two years had grown up, with younger students to take their places. People came and went, some of whom he thought 'Maybe... maybe there could be something there', but when the moment came, he was left floundering and absolutely clueless. He knew how to interrogate a Death Eater, but not how to talk to another human being about his day, or how to ask him out - not that he was in a position where available single men drifted through on a regular basis. No... Now he was surrounded by people he counted as friends in the strange sort of professional sense. He liked McGonagall, Flitwick, Sprout, and the rest of the professors, but in the back of his mind there was always the nagging knowledge that these people were, first and foremost, the people who had lectured him until his brains dripped out his ears and given him detentions. It was still an effort to call them by their first names and not 'Professor.'
Despite this never-ending sameness, things whirled on and still he was Famous Harry Potter - wonderful Potter with his *scar* and his *broomstick*... The only people who didn't think of him That Way were his two best friends, and they were married.
And Draco. He hoped for that very, very much. /Oh, how I hope./
Mechanically, he folded up the letter and sealed it shut with wax drippings from his candle, using his personal seal - an owl and three stars - instead of leaving a plain white blob congealing on the paper. He stared at the folded square for a moment before tucking it into the pocket of his robe and looking up to see that the Ravenclaws, once again, had finished - with the exception, of course, of Peter, who was still writing furiously in the back. After a few more minutes, he sat back with satisfied sigh and dropped his quill on his desk with an air of finality.
Harry wished he could be that confident.
* * *
By a little clever maneuvering at lunch, Harry managed to slip his letter to Ron, who made it vanish into his robes like a stage magician, complete with dramatic flourish. It attracted the attention of Minerva, who eyed Ron dubiously - she was plainly wondering why an Auror and his wife were continuing to stay on at Hogwarts after the reason for their being there had left to go back into exile. Harry was wondering that himself, and so it was with some curiosity - and reluctance - that he collared Ron on his way out of the Great Hall.
"Ron, it's not that I don't like having you around, but I would have thought you'd be back in London by now," he said in the best casual 'I'm not fishing for information' tone he could manage under the circumstances. The circumstances were the combination of the not-fooled-in-the-least expression Ron wore, and the faint tinge of sadness in his friend's eyes.
"To be honest, it's sort of like a vacation," Ron said ruefully, reaching out a hand to run long fingers down the stone wall as they walked. They skimmed delicately over a tapestry, over the frame and canvas of a painting - the corseted Victorian woman in it shrieked in indignation - danced along a doorframe. "I mean, why'd you come back when the Ministry was drooling to have you work for them?"
"I don't know," Harry mumbled. "Minerva needed someone for the Transfigurations class... and well, I guess this place was always my first home, in a way. And when the war started I always thought about how things here used to be. Even with Sirius and the Tournament and Voldemort and all... It was a place I could feel safe for a bit."
"You got it in one," Ron said. He touched Harry lightly on the shoulder, said, "I need to get going - I have to get this owl ready before Fudge has a coronary", and sped up his steps so he flowed ahead of Harry like a tall, black-draped ghost. Harry stopped outside the door to his classroom and watched Ron walk ahead of him, noticing for the first time the slight depression about his friend's shoulders that bespoke a heavy, pressing weight, and he sighed, recognizing that weight, because he carried it himself.
He opened the door on his seventh-year double class with the Hufflepuffs and Slytherins, smiling slightly at them. This was not his favorite class; even after thirteen years, tension between the two houses had risen to proportions nearly matching that Slytherin shared with Gryffindor. It had started, along with the rest of the war, with Cedric Diggory's death in Harry's fourth year and the fallout resulting from that. The Hufflepuffs nowadays harbored an animosity toward Slytherin that probably would have upset even-tempered, honest Cedric, if he had been alive to see it. Patience had all but disappeared as a byword in their House description; 'patient Hufflepuff' had almost become a contradiction in terms, at least when it came to dealing with Slytherin insults, while 'loyal' was an understatement for what had transformed into something approaching fanatical devotion for their House on the part of each Hufflepuff. When Harry had seen that he would have two Slytherin/Hufflepuff classes a week, he had gone immediately to Minerva, who had dismissed him with atypical irritation.
"They'll have to learn to get over it," she had snapped. "And you'll have to manage them, *Professor* Potter."
And he had managed, after a fashion. At least, there weren't any transfigured students or furious faces greeting him today, although Holly Ferrars and Elizabeth Sloane (Hufflepuff and Slytherin, respectively) were glaring daggers at each other. Their gazes snapped to him when he coughed a bit to announce his presence, and Holly had the grace to look abashed. /They're seventh year,/ Harry thought, cursorily inspecting the room. /They should be past this petty arguing./ They *should*, he amended, but they, unlike him, didn't have the benefit of hindsight. So much of Harry's life would have been easier if he, and a few other people, had been able to put House rivalries aside with Slytherin and get things done. As it was, though, many in that house had been alienated and refused to provide the Ministry with help in during the war, or the chaos after it.
Fudge had wanted to prosecute them alongside the out-and-out Death Eaters, and had even gone so far as to try to get an extradition order passed through the United States Congress of Supernatural Arts to get Millicent Bulstrode out of her self-imposed exile in Wyoming. She had been one of the best Charms students and an expert in Obliviation, and according to Fudge, she could have provided the Ministry with an invaluable service in the war. Spokesman Charles Stonewall had refused Fudge's request absolutely. As far as Harry knew, Millicent was still out on the range somewhere. He hoped she was happy.
"I believe you all have homework to turn in?" he asked a bit peremptorily. Usually a sharp, nearly-snarky tone worked best with this particular class, which had had six years to stew in its collective dislike, and Harry had found that keeping the students worried about *him* kept them from going at each others' throats. There was a low rumble of muttering at his words and a shuffle of briefcases and books as the students got out their scrolls and passed them forward. They must have sensed something exuding from Harry that told them not to anger their teacher - Harry wished he knew what it was they sensed, so he could exude it more often. As he shuffled scrolls around, he automatically launched into his lecture, sending the class diving for parchment and quills.
He had his lecture on Ministry laws governing Animagi virtually memorized. McGonagall had pounded it into his head when he had been learning, and he could quote it very nearly in his sleep. His mouth moved more or less independently of his mind, which circled distractedly elsewhere, ruminating over the fact that Ron would probably be charming his letter right now. /Would he read it?/ his mind wondered anxiously. Not that there were any passionate outpourings in it, but still... When would Draco get it? What if Fudge found out? What if *Fudge* read it? His stomach froze for a second before doing a hideous little somersault inside him.
For a single moment, Harry was acutely aware that he had stopped talking, but the importance of that faded as he tried to decide whether or not to run in search of Ron and tell him not to send that letter after all. /No,/ he told himself sternly. The students were staring at him worriedly, mouths slightly agape. /No... nothing gets done if you're too afraid to do it./ That thought helped a little. /And Fudge finds out... well, I'll deal with it. I've dealt with everything. Fudge won't be that much different./
"I'm sorry," he said to the students, smiling slightly, "I seem to have drifted off. Where was I?"
"The first Registration Code for Animagi," Holly Ferrars volunteered, a split second before Elizabeth Sloane could present that same information. The two girls glared mortal death at each other.
"Ah, yes. Thank you. Now, the first Registration Codes specified only that an individual who had become an Animagus be reported, but subsequent codes were modified to include prospective trainees and also to require more specific information as to identification..." Harry fell into the lecture again, so fully that he didn't think of the letter until the end of class - and by then it was after two o' clock, and if Ron was running on time, the owl would be on its way to the Ministry even as a new well of fear surged up in Harry's gut.
He shepherded the Hufflepuffs and Slytherins out of the classroom, watching closely to make sure they weren't going to drop the uneasy truce they adopted for his classes in favor of sudden hostilities. Fortunately, they moved off in two separate, silent groups, leaving him alone in the hallway. As the last Hufflepuff turned the far corner, Harry let himself collapsed back against the wall. /That was an ordeal,/ he thought, unsure whether he was thinking of the class or sending the letter. Probably both things, he decided, forcing his body upright again. His leg was aching a little and he needed to sit down... and he needed to think some more, which was frightening.
So, Harry made his way back to his office, where he ended up hiding out for his one free period of the day, and where Ron found him, clutching a cup of tea that had gone cold. When he tried to explain himself, Ron told him not to worry about it, and told him in such a way that made Harry think Ron was also talking about the letter and was wanting to let him know, in an unexpectedly tactful way, that everything had gone smoothly.