Night falls. Ron over-feeds the fire, nursing it with large branches until it threatens to lap up the tent and steal the air from their lungs. Harry slumps against the canvas, watching smoke pirouette from the blackening toes of his boots. Tomorrow, he'll knock baked seed husks and clumps of ash from his hair, but tonight it's best to stay out here, burning, back turned to the shrine she left at the centre of her bunk.

A purse. A locket. A thumb-worn book of faerie tales. A cluster of Girl Things on a faded blue blanket. They slouch around it, two wary pilgrims. Harry can't look. He tries, but the tableau twists and blurs, swims behind pale, watery forms. He calls it spectral interference.

They slog through three vague days. Ron says, "We should take off, soon," and tumbles another log into the shoulder-high inferno. Their nightly beacons fail to draw her, but, like any fresh habit, there's still comfort in the ritual.

Harry holds out his hands, lets the flames fork around his fingertips.

"In the morning," he says.

Inside, he watches the glimmer of her imprint from his pillow. Brief arcs of light, visible only in the early hours after the fire burns out, skim across the places where knees knelt and knuckles bent, where parted lips passed breath as she lay down all she thought they needed.

This, and this.

And this.

The locket she left last. It sits before everything, a glint of marigold yellow in the corner of his eye.

Finally lifting the chain from the mattress, Harry's taken back at the chill biting through the numb pads of his fingers. And it's just another item added to the list of Things Lost, Now She's Gone: The heat of her skin, coiled in his hand.