Molly and Arthur had transfigured beach towels from palm fronds and everyone had dried off and laid out in the sun on the sand. Molly was fussing over her children who had already started showing signs of sunburns and she was applying essence of dittany to their shoulders and backs. Harry slipped his sunglasses back on so he didn't have to squeeze his eyes closed so hard against the sunlight. He pressed his arms to see if there was a sting of a sunburn and felt a twinge. "Harry, it looks like you're getting burned, too," Molly said. "Can I rub some on you, too?"

"Sure, thanks, Mrs. Weasley," he said.

"Harry, thank you so much for talking with Ginny," Molly said in a low voice as she rubbed the cooling liquid across his shoulders. "Whatever you said made a world of difference! She has been so sad and down since the Chamber of Secrets. First, you save her and now you bring her back from the depths of despair."

She squeezed his shoulders for emphasis and Harry was glad for the dittany.

"The Healer said that coming here and talking to you would help her and, goodness, it has been better than I ever imagined. This place is astounding. And everything that you're learning how to do! You get along so well with that staff of yours… I keep forgetting that you can't see," she said.

"Er. Mrs. Weasley? She's going to keep working with the Mind Healer, right?" he asked.

"Yes, Harry. Why?"

"Just some things she said… made me really worried… for her," he said.

He wasn't sure he could say what was worrying him. Ginny hadn't asked him to not say anything, but he didn't want to betray her trust. And saying that she should have died was bigger than that. It had scared him to hear her talking that way.

"Yes, she's been having some dark thoughts. It was so good to hear her laughing and playing in the water. And with the dolphin and the mermaid. It was something that only Morgana herself could have imagined," Molly said.

"Er, Mei doesn't like to be called a mermaid," Harry said.

"Oh, so right; I'm sorry. I hope she didn't hear me say that," Molly said, her voice directed behind her, toward the beach.

"I thought she went back out to sea?" Harry asked.

"She did, but she came back. She's sitting in the surf talking to Ginny now," Molly said.

"Oh, that's good."

"Harry, you're looking very thin. Are you eating enough here? And getting sleep? There's something about your pallor that makes me think of Ginny. You're working with a Mind Healer, too? Right? I mean, goodness, you and Ginny look like you've been set on by Dementors," she said as she rubbed the essence of dittany into his arms and chest. "I imagine you have… in some ways… "

"Yeah, I'm eating and Healer Jordan's been giving me a nutrition potion. And I'm sleeping okay, I guess. It has just been rough. I am working with a Mind Healer. She's all right."

"Yes, it has been rough. Well, I'm glad you're here and not with those Dursleys," she said with a venom that made him start. He felt his breath hitch—what if the Weasleys started going after the Dursleys, too? He tried to push the thought away.

She patted him on the back, "You're all done."

"Thank you," Harry said and he hugged his knees. The salt was making his skin feel like it was stretched taut. He felt too nervous to sit now. He dug his staff out of the pocket of his trunks and stood up and carefully shook it out.

"Where are you going, Harry?" Ron said.

"I thought I'd go talk to Mei and Ginny," Harry said, muttering "Navigant Mei."

"That's cool how you can find people with your stick thing," Ron said, walking along with him. Harry's staff was guiding him around the towels laid out in the sand and everyone's arms and legs. From the sound of it, he was doing a better job of avoiding stepping on people than Ron was.

"Yeah, it's called a staff."

"It's so cool—like the wizard's staff that Merlin had! You should put a ruby or something in the handle," Ron said, oblivious to Hermione's indignant cry. "So does it do magic, too?"

"Yeah, though when I use it to repair things, it makes them rainbow colored, I guess."

"What? No way! You've got to show me!"

"Do you have something that needs to be repaired?"

"Er, no. Maybe we can do it later. Hang on, here's a broken bottle," Ron ran off and came back. Harry stopped and collapsed his staff so it was smaller and held out his hand and waited.

"Oh, right, there you go," Ron put it in Harry's hand. "Careful, it's broken."

Harry gingerly ran his fingers over the broken glass, flinching at a sharp edge.

"What kind of bottle was it before it was broken?"

It was such a small fragment, that he had no idea what it should have looked like whole.

"I think it was a coke bottle, see it has the… " Ron stopped himself. "Oh, sorry."

"It's okay," Harry said. "I don't know if it'll do it on transparent glass, the other things I repaired were opaque, I think."

"Harry, are you trying your repairing charm?" Hermione asked as she hurried up to them. "Don't you have to have all the parts to make it work? I don't think… "

"Yeah, so here goes nothing," he said as he touched his staff to the broken glass, saying "Reparo coke bottle." Suddenly the bottle was heavy in his hand and he struggled to keep it from falling.

Ron hooted and jumped up and down, "That's brilliant!"

"Did it work? What does it look like?" he asked as he felt the bottle, "Is it filled with coke?"

"Harry, that's really remarkable!" Hermione said. "How did you do that? It's supposed to be really hard to get liquid back into a container you've broken and that's when it is freshly broken and you have all the pieces and liquid right in front of you."

"I don't know," he admitted. "Will you describe it to me?"

"It is actually beautiful—the glass is iridescent like the sheen inside a seashell. It's still transparent, but also filled with so many colors. There's a mosaic of lines all around it—like where it had been broken. The liquid inside has a similar quality—dark amber but with threads of rainbow colors going through it like you'd see on an oil spill," Hermione said in an awe infused voice.

"Wow, that's weird," Harry said, his fingers trying to find the fault lines that Hermione mentioned.

"What happens when you do the charm with your wand?" Hermione asked.

"I haven't tried," Harry said. "My wand!" He suddenly remembered that he had noticed that his wand and holster had been removed the night he had shut down, but he didn't know where they were now. He couldn't believe he hadn't thought about it. He handed the bottle back to Hermione and opened the storage part of his staff and tried summoning the wand and holster. He was relieved when they both hit his outstretched hand.

"What's that belt thing?" Ron asked.

"It's a holster for my wand," he said as he strapped it to his arm.

"Oh, that's cool. I've seen some of the wizards at the Ministry with those," Ron said. "But why do you need one?"

"So I don't lose my wand," Harry said.

Hermione had run off while he was putting the holster on. She came back a little breathless, "Here, Harry here's another piece of broken glass. Why don't you try it with your wand now."

Harry held out his hand and she carefully placed the glass fragment in his palm. The edges weren't sharp like the other one, it felt like a skipping rock with rounded edges, except it was light.

"Do you think this was a glass bottle, too?" Harry asked.

"Yep, it's green like a 7-Up bottle," Hermione explained.

"Reparo 7-Up bottle," Harry said tapping his wand on the piece of glass, then flicked his wand back into his holster as he caught the heavy bottle that materialized in his palm.

"Wow! Wicked!" Ron said.

"What did this one do?" Harry asked; it was heavy in his hand again. He felt the contours. The shape was different from the other bottle.

"Why can't you just do that on your eyes?" Ron asked.

Harry was stunned.

"I don't know," he said slowly. He resisted the urge to lift his wand to his eyes and utter the charm. Surely, if it was possible, then someone would have tried it… Madam Pomfrey, Professor Dumbledore, Professor McGonagall, Healer Smethwyck, Healer Andy, Healer Jordan, Madam Flamel…

"Ron, you know full well that that charm only works on non-organic objects!" Hermione said in a huff. "It states clearly in The Standard Book of Spells that any attempt to repair damage on organic life forms with the reparo charm would spell disaster!"

"D-i-s-a-s-t-e-r?" Ron teased.

Ignoring him, she continued, "It says that it would cause terrible scaring… though I am curious if the book says anything about the color changes in repaired objects. And also, you restored pieces that must have been missing for ages, not to mention the liquid inside."

"I've got it here, if you want to look," Harry joked, shaking his staff.

"Do you really?" Hermione asked, brightly.

Ron groaned as Harry summoned the book from his staff after handing Hermione the bottle. She must have passed it on to Ron because after a second he heard a bottle top being popped off.

"You're not drinking that, are you?" Harry asked in amazement.

"Ew! That's disgusting," Ron spat it out and Harry recoiled as it hit his legs.

"Ron, you prat!" he shouted.

"Why didn't you move?" Ron yelled.

"Oh, I don't know. Maybe it is—because—I—can—not—see—" Harry seethed. He turned, shook out his staff, and stalked toward the ocean, swinging his staff angrily as Hermione and Ron's voices rose behind him.

Harry went past Ginny and Mei (his staff told him) and walked into the waves to wash whatever it was in the bottle off his legs. It felt sticky and he couldn't identify the odor, but it stank. He kicked at the waves. He collapsed his staff and put it in his pocket, zipping it up, and then sank down to sit in the water.

The waves broke over his knees and splashed in his face. He dug his hands into the sand and hung his head.

Why does it have to be so hard? Why can't it be like it was?

His chest ached. He couldn't hear Mei and Ginny talking anymore or Ron and Hermione shouting and realized that he must be making a spectacle of himself. He got up slowly, trying to regain control of himself.

I hope that Ginny didn't hear what I said to Ron.

He decided to walk along the beach for a bit—alone.

Maybe I don't need to use my staff, maybe I can just walk and use the ocean as a guide.

As he stood there thinking about walking along the beach, the water had created little craters around his feet, so that he was sinking into holes. He wiggled his toes, then started walking with the ocean on his right and the entrance they came in on his left. He kept one foot in the water and one on the more firm sand, but he wasn't sure he was walking in a straight line.

After he slipped on something slimy (seaweed he hoped) he decided to pull out his staff and was able to walk a little faster and keep track of where the ocean met the beach.

He kept mulling over the things that Ron had said and done since he arrived… only a couple hours ago… he had so been looking forward to being with Ron and now he just wanted to get away from him. He felt like he was being crushed by Devil's Snare again.

He heard someone running up behind him but kept walking. He wasn't sure he was ready to talk to anyone just yet.

They didn't say anything, but came alongside him and put their hand on his left arm.

"Hi, Gemma," Harry said, stopping.

I can talk to Gemma.

She waved across his wrist, "hi," then took his hand and pulled it to her chest "I" and turned his palm up, writing "H-A-V-E" space "T-O" space "G-O" space "F-A-M-I-L-Y" space "C-O-M-I-N-G" space "S-O-O-N" space "Y-O-U" space "A-L-R-I-G-H-T-?"

"Yeah," he sighed. "Just my friend, Ron, he's… "

"B-E-I-N-G" space "A" space "P-R-A-T?" she supplied.

He laughed weakly, "Yeah, you can tell, too, can't you?"

"Yes," she tapped. "I-T-S" space "H-A-R-D" space "T-O" space "G-E-T" space "U-S-E-D" space "T-O" space "C-H-A-N-G-E" space "S-O-M-E" space "P-E-O-P-L-E" space "T-A-K-E" space "A" space "L-O-N-G" space "T-I-M-E."

"Yeah, I suppose," Harry agreed.

Harry had been living with this change for about a month, but even though Ron had known about it for the same amount of time, he wasn't really living with it until today.

"I'll try to cut him some slack. I just wish it was more obvious that he was trying to understand."

She tapped his arm three times, "I understand."

"I" space "H-A-V-E" space "H-A-D" space "F-R-I-E-N-D" space "L-I-K-E" space "R-O-N"

"Had or have?" Harry interrupted.

She put his hand on her shoulder and shrugged, then continued, "S-T-E-W-A-R-T" space "I'L-L" space "T-E-L-L" she tapped his sternum, "you," space "A-B-O-U-T" space "H-I-M" space "L-A-T-E-R."

She ran two fingers across his palm.

"Yeah, let's head back. Thanks, Gemma," he said as he took her arm and stuck his collapsed staff back into his pocket.

She bent down and when she stood up she was pressing something sandy into his hand. He felt it, dusting off the sand, and discovered a seashell that had ridges on the convex side and was pearly smooth on the concave side.

He rubbed his thumb against the smooth interior surface as they walked back to the group, the voices getting louder as they neared.

It sounded like the twins were taking the piss out of someone.

Ron.

And it sounded like he wasn't taking it well.

He slowed. He wasn't sure he wanted to be nearby when Ron blew up. First Hermione was laying into him and now the twins.

Gemma tugged on his arm. She probably didn't know what was going on as they were probably too far away for her to be able to read the Scribunt loqui papers that were no doubt fluttering by everyone's lips.

He took his arm off of Gemma's so that he could unzip his pocket and get his staff out. Gemma impatiently pulled on his wrist.

"Do you need to go?" Harry asked.

"Yes," she tapped.

"Go ahead. I'll see you later, right? At lunch? Is your family staying for lunch?" Harry wondered.

"Yes," she tapped, then pulled two fingers across the back of his hand.

"And then you're going home?" he asked.

"Yes," she tapped.

"Okay, I'll see you at lunch," Harry said.

She gave him a quick squeeze and ran off, waving across his back as she hugged him.

Harry asked his staff to take him to Mei again; he was pretty sure that she and Ginny were still sitting in the surf, talking.

As he approached, Hermione called out, "Hi, Harry. We're sitting down here if you want to join us."

He walked closer to them, glad for his staff's ability to warn him before he actually hit people with it and then found a spot to sit with them, avoiding a mound of sand, collapsing his staff, and sinking into the wet sand.

"Where'd Gemma run off to?" Mei asked.

"Her family is going to arrive soon," Harry explained.

"Oh, Fred is helping her transfigure her swimsuit back to clothes," Ginny supplied. She was making scraping noises in the sand—he cocked his head trying to figure out what she was doing.

"He's quite the fashion designer—I like the suit he made for her," Mei said.

He reached out his hand to find the mound of sand that was being shaped into a tower of some sort with teeth-shaped parapets. Small shells had been pressed into the sides at regular intervals.

"Nice sandcastle, Ginny," Harry said.

"Thanks."

"Mine's not bad, either," Hermione said. Harry thought she was talking about her sandcastle until she went on, "Not too frilly. Just basic navy blue. I was kind of nervous after I saw Percy's neon green speedo!"

Ginny giggled.

"It was a good color for him, actually," Mei said. "It looked nice against his red freckles and hair."

"I bet Penelope Clearwater would have liked it," Ginny said.

"Isn't she the Ravenclaw prefect who was petrified, too?" Hermione said.

"Yeah, I saw them kissing in a classroom… " Ginny said and then her voice lowered, "It was the secret that Percy thought I was trying to tell you, Harry, when what I wanted to do was tell you about the Chamber."

"Oh," was all Harry could say as he envisioned how knowing about the diary and the Chamber before Ginny was taken could have changed everything… and then it hit him, Ginny had been carrying this burden for so long by herself. She had been wasting away in front of them, literally, while Voldemort was slowly siphoning her soul through the diary throughout that entire year.

How does someone recover from that?

He tried to listen carefully—straining to hear any clues about how she was doing.

"What?" Ginny asked.

"What what ?"

"Why are you looking at me like that?" Ginny asked.

"See, Harry! I'm not the only one who thinks you're looking at them!" Mei interjected.

"Oh, am I? Sorry," he dropped his chin, though he was listening just as intently, "I was just thinking… it's been about a month for me, but for you, it's been since you found that diary, hasn't it? That's a really long time."

"Yeah," she sighed.

Harry heard Mrs. Weasley calling to them and feet pounding on the sand. Sand sprayed them as the boys surrounded them and then plopped down in the surf next to them.

"Impressive sandcastle, Gin!"

Harry noticed that this twin's voice was slightly lower than the other's voice, though he didn't know if it was Fred or George. He slipped his hand into his pocket to take out his staff and ask quietly Reveleo memento.

"What are you doing, there, Potter?"

"I'm just figuring out who's who, George," Harry said, smiling. He could tell them apart.

Lee hooted, "Your staff tells you who is who? Brilliant! How does it do that? Can I do that with my wand? Hey, that's a neat holster you got for your wand."

"Thanks, I don't know. I can try to teach it to you. I know it works with my staff. I haven't tried it with my wand," Harry said.

"Hey, can I take a look at your staff?" Fred asked, coming over to them.

The sun's intensity lessened as the boys crowded around him, blocking the sun. Harry noticed that Ron was hanging back and quiet, though his staff had identified him as part of the group. He silently hoped that Ron wouldn't say anything that would upset Mei.

"Sure," Harry held the staff out in Fred's direction. He really liked being able to tell them apart.

"I saw you putting things into the staff and taking them out," Fred said.

"Yeah, it has a storage compartment. I have all my things in it," Harry said.

"You mean like everything that you'd put in your trunk?" George said in amazement.

"Yeah, even Hedwig's cage," Harry said.

"How do you get things out?" Lee asked.

"You use the summoning charm, Accio," Harry explained.

"That's a really advanced charm—one that you learn in fourth year, I think," Hermione said.

"Ginny knows it," Harry said.

"Well, she's not supposed to know it!" Percy sniffed, coming up behind them. "Come on, you lot, we're supposed to be changing and going into lunch."

"Well, I'm going back to my tank. See you all at lunch," Mei said.

"Oh, are you going to change back into a human?" Ron asked.

Harry groaned.

"Ron!" Hermione exclaimed.

"What did I do?" he asked defensively.

"No, I'm going to change into a centaur, you git," Mei huffed and her tail slapped in the shallow water, spraying them all with water. Her tail was thumping rhythmically in the surf and Harry guessed she was headed back to sea.

They started standing up.

"Nice one, Ron," George muttered, brushing sand off his legs.

"Way to brass off the mer-girl," Lee said.

"Don't call Mei that," Ginny said quietly.

"Right," Lee said.

"Why is everyone so tetchy?" Ron whined.

"Why are you so daft?" George poked.

"She's a lot more pleasant today than she was on Monday," Hermione said in hushed tones. They were quiet and then there was a splash a ways out. Harry wondered if they were watching Mei swim away.

"Here you go, Harry," Fred said as if coming out of a trance and tapping the side of Harry's hand with his staff.

"What else does it do?" Lee asked as Harry shook out his staff.

They started walking back to their towels, Harry explaining the other features of his staff as he used it to walk around clumps of grasses and craters in the sand.