A/N: Many, many chapters (and months) ago, I had almost given up writing this story because nobody was reading it. Then a few very precious readers somehow came and saved it, and they are the reason why I've continued this story and have tried to make it as good as possible. So I say thank you, thank you, to my readers,  A Very Interested Reader, Lbj5411,and Potterlover. Thank you also to angel, for reviewing.( I know I take forever to update, but I'm trying my best!) This chapter is shorter than others, but I knew that with midterms and term papers coming up, I'd be unable to write more this week. (plus it ended almost by itself shortly and sweetly). In this chapter: letter reading and angst. I really liked the way I portrayed Harry's train of thoughts in this one. Read and tell me if you agree. I love you guys!!!!

Chapter Nineteen: To Love a Gryffindor

            After walking for what seemed like hours through endless corridors of the castle, all with Eve's light, yet heartbreakingly limp figure in his arms, Harry finally reached the hospital wing and laid her down gently on the first bed he saw. The crisp whiteness and silence was a sharp contrast to the dark and commotion from Snape's classroom. Instead of eerie torchlight, bright rays of sunshine spilled through the large, high windows, giving Harry some comfort and peace.

            Unfortunately, it was short-lived. Madame Pomfrey walked into the room with a very sober expression. She examined Eve, checking her pulse again.

            "Dumbledore says to treat her as a regular patient, but I do not really see the point, especially after the spell she used, poor dear…." She muttered to herself and gave a start as she noticed Harry was still there, standing forlorn at a small distance.

            "Oh, I'm sorry dear, I didn't know you were still here. I thought you would have been talking with Dumbledore with your friends. Then again…" She broke off.

Harry was silent. He couldn't stand being near Ron right at that moment. And the next person that ran in made it even worse. It was Hermione, with bitter tears in her red eyes, looking as if Ron had in fact died anyway. She was clutching a piece of parchment, and as soon as she saw Harry, she ran to him and cried painfully into his shirt. Harry held her, thunderstruck.

"Harry, oh God," she gasped. Her tears were staining his robes but seemed to go deeper than that. He wanted to ask her what on earth was going on, but Hermione had become temporarily incoherent with sobbing. She was trembling violently. He awkwardly patted her head, knowing that this had something to do with Ron.

He looked entreatingly at Madame Pomfrey, who was already beginning to leave, looking uncomfortable, muttering, "I'd better go and get some potion ingredients from Professor Snape."

Finally Hermione broke away slightly, sniffing, her cheeks hot and red with tears, and showed Harry the parchment, which was now extremely wrinkled; she had been gripping it so tightly that there were red fingernail marks in her palms: so tightly as if she was fighting her fingers from ripping the letter apart.

"Read this," she choked. Harry took the letter from her, and after trying to smooth it out on his leg, he read:

I really don't know exactly how to say what I want to in this letter; until two weeks ago I had never really written a letter to anyone before. Moreover, I've been terrified of telling you this for so long: I know what all its implications are. I'm still scared of even addressing this letter to you, to write out your name, I'm so frightened. But this letter will find itself in the right hands, soon enough. If anyone else ever found out what my true feelings are, I don't know what would happen. I'd be a traitor to my House and my father would kill you in a second. Yet I can't keep it inside me anymore, to deny it like an idiot or a child. It's a different type of hell, knowing the one person left that I love is in constant danger, precisely because I love him. To love a Gryffindor is to suffer…

The letter was short, but it said enough to fill eons in his bleak honesty. Harry looked up and asked, "Who wrote this?"

Hermione took a crumpled envelope, unsigned from her pocket. However, the envelope had a beautiful golden seal with an intricately decorated "P" on it. "It's Pendragon stationary," she said, "Eve wrote it."

"Who did she send it to?"

Hermione covered her face in her hands, her mouth contorted with heartbreak. "He said he had never seen it before, that it couldn't be his. But…Oh Harry, it was in Ron's bag." At this she fell to her knees and let the spasms of grief pass over her. Harry crawled over to her and held her more tightly.

"Look, Hermione, we don't know everything. I thought you believed Ron," he said.

She looked up at him, her chestnut eyes wide. Stray brown curls were falling to her face, but she didn't wipe them away: Ron was always the one who would do that.

"Harry, what else could be going on?  What happened today…and now this goddamn letter. The one she loves is supposed to be her perfect match! She can't love someone who wouldn't love her back!" She cried in total despair. At this Harry was totally at loss as to what to say. He just continued to hold her while she cried. He had never been so close to her, holding her in his arms, for such a prolonged period of time. It gave him a pang thinking how quickly Hermione had gone to look for him for comfort. Over the years he had always denied it to himself that she had grown into a beautiful, intelligent young woman, but it made it easier for him to do so because she still retained her childlike vulnerability when it came to people she cared for  most of all—something she had probably learned from Harry. She was so unafraid to approach him; with Ron she was always slightly hesitant because she had felt something else than friendship.  But with Harry, all of her gestures-- when she scolded him, helped him with homework, or worried about him-- were different; when she kissed him on the cheek at the end of their fourth year, it was like a sister kissing her brother. Now she just clutched him tighter and tighter, as if she'd collapse if he weren't holding her up.

Finally a short, hollow laugh made them both turn.

"Well, well, well. No wonder Weasley cheated on the Mudblood," came a familiar voice. Draco was standing against the doorway to the hospital wing. His voice didn't have its normal lazy drawl—it was sharp and piercing.

"Well, according to your accusation, she wasn't the only one who was cheated. Eve was your girlfriend, wasn't she?" Harry could think of nothing else to reprimand him with because that was what he was thinking about the whole time.

"She wasn't my girlfriend, Potter. I never said she was. We just had a little….fun," he grinned wickedly.

"What are you doing here anyway, Malfoy? It's your fault she's dead in the first place. I'm surprised you're not ashamed to even look at her."

Something flickered for an instant behind his stony eyes, but it vanished as quickly as it appeared. "Trust me, I'd rather see Crabbe and Goyle do a pole dance than witness a Gryfinndor lovefest. But Dumbledore sent me to tell you that he wants a second look at that letter. And you can take it to him yourself. I'm not touching it now that a filthy Mudblood has sobbed all over it. Too bad," he added, "that was really expensive stationary." He smirked one last time, uncrossed his arms, and left. His initial fury had seemed to have left him (or if it hadn't, he was sure masking it well enough), but his normal acrid demeanor was just as vexing.

Harry watched him go with his fists balled up at his sides. Hermione heaved a great sigh. "I guess I'd better go take it to him," she said.

Harry asked the next question with extreme uneasiness. "Where's Ron?"

"He was talking with Dumbledore until I saw the letter fall out of his bag and read it. And I couldn't…..Well all I could do was run out of there and try to find you."

"Do you want me to come with you, in case, you know….Ron's still there?"

Hermione lowered her eyelids. " I would want that more than anything, Harry, but no. If he is there, I need to talk to him. Privately." She turned her head away from Harry, her curls brushing her shoulders. After a brief uncomfortable silence, she walked out the door, leaving Harry strangely relieved yet worried at the same time. He didn't want to see Ron at the moment, even more so than before, but he was worried about what would happen between those two. He felt how moist his shirt was from Hermione's tears.

Then Harry did the one thing that might have mysteriously comforted him at the moment. He looked at Eve up and down; before, he would always steal quick, furtive glances at her, too embarrassed to make it obvious that he was staring. But now, he was able to gaze at her for as long as he liked, memorizing all the curves of her body, her slightly angular face, her hair like smooth, black silk. Her eyes were closed, her long lashes like pen strokes on he cheeks. She seemed to be a porcelain doll, or in a merely peaceful sleep. Harry had to constantly remind himself that she was dead; his logical thoughts told him that much anyway, but not his heart. Maybe he was still in denial, or in shock. Yet he somehow felt that if Eve had really been dead, he would feel it to; he would know it. Something in him would die also, like that night when he had seen her with Draco and the scene had struck him like a bucket of ice water splashing over him. Harry had always had a degree of confidence in himself when it came to certain things, like Quidditch, and especially about always doing the honorable thing. But in almost everything else, he always felt insecure; but most of all, he was insecure when it came to girls. Sure, he was comfortable enough with Hermione, yet she didn't act like most girls, and even with her he had some awkwardness; when Ron had stopped talking to him in a fight their fourth year, he felt an enormous void in himself. He couldn't talk about everything with Hermione. And so his insecurity about himself with girls had made him sure that Eve had liked Draco; she had been kissing him in such a furor as if she wanted to extract as much as possible from him. He had been positive that she probably wanted nothing to do with him, a foolish Mudblood-loving Gryffindor who was the worst enemy of her father; that all she felt was mere fascination with him, just as Tom Riddle had when he came out of his diary, a 50-year younger version of Voldemort; only mere fascination before he tried to kill him, as if caressing a piece of crystal before smashing it.

            But then she had smashed something completely different when she had kissed Ron. He hoped Ron was telling the truth, that nothing had been going on between them. He knew Ron would never hurt Hermione like that; but that didn't mean that she had been secretly in love with him and hadn't revealed it until now. Everyone had always thought Ron was secretly jealous of Harry because of his fame and talent; yet the truth was Harry was sometimes envious of Ron: his happy, warm and wonderfully wacky family life, his blissful anonymity (although Ron himself hated that), and the first girl he loved loving him right back…. Harry was famous all throughout the wizarding world, but that didn't amount to anything if he was always second fiddle in relationships: Cho had always loved Cedric, but now, did Eve really love Ron? He had been perfectly comfortable hating Draco because he thought Eve liked him; yet he could never  hate Ron, his first real, permanent friend. But would he stand remaining his friend when jealousy was tearing at his heart? And what about Hermione? Ron had become the other half of her whole. If Eve loved Ron and if he stayed with Hermione, Eve might do something horribly drastic in anger; she certainly had the abilities. But if Ron would consent to be with Eve he didn't want to think about what would happen to Hermione.

            For him she shall make the ultimate sacrifice….  That part of the prophecy seemed to be fulfilled, but not any other part, and this increased his irrational beliefs that Eve was not really dead. She was supposed to have a decisive part in the "evil beyond your wildest fears," which hadn't seemed to show up yet from the "rising villain," who was for sure Voldemort. She hadn't decided yet whether she'd help him or not—or had she?

            A gentle touch on his shoulder startled him. He turned and saw a pair of kind blue eyes gazing at him from under a white river of a beard. Standing behind him was Ron, who was determined not to look into Harry's eyes.

            "Still here, Harry?" Dumbledore asked.

            Harry sighed. He hadn't realized that while staring at Eve, he had instinctively been holding her hand; now he became aware of her warm fingers.

            "I presume Miss Granger has already shown you the letter?" Dumbledore asked. 

            Harry nodded. Ron gave him a quick glance to see what he felt about it, but Harry had become strangely closed off and unreadable.

            "Well I've been telling Mr. Weasley here that we cannot know the truth for sure until Miss Riddle tells us herself." Harry's head shot up.

            "What? You mean she's not dead?"

            "Certainly not."

            "How? I mean, but the spell…" Harry stammered.

            "Yes, I was afraid that she had perhaps performed it a little too well on your friend." He chuckled.

            "But how could she be alive?"

            "Well Harry it's only natural that-" but he broke off and furrowed his brow when he saw Harry had no idea what he was talking about. "I guess she hasn't told you everything, which I will leave to her." He looked at Eve. "And if you don't believe me, which mr. Weasley didn't either, I will tell you what I told him: see  for yourself." Harry slid his fingers down to her thin wrist, and true enough, he felt the slightest thudding, each throb sending quivers of joy through him. Harry didn't care that at that moment he didn't understand how; so long as he knew she was going to be okay.

            Ron, seeing his happiness, summed up his courage and went to look at her. He touched her face. The burning of her lips had never quite left him. In fact, he had felt a strange sensation radiating through him ever since the potions class that had never stopped. He was glad that she had saved his life, but he felt his stomach twist when he thought about what it might mean.

            Just then Madame Pomfrey entered with a few jars and vials in her hands. Dumbledore said, "Alright boys, I think you should leave now. Poppy here has a patient to attend to." Harry smiled.

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