("Ah, yes—courage! If one only had that!...Then life would perhaps be livable, after all")

.

It isn't easy getting to know her.

First of all, he is in Hufflepuff.

Lysander tries to sit next to her in their classes and when she drops her quill, he grabs it off the floor and hands it to her.

But he is no Gryffindor: he never says a word to her otherwise.

She doesn't have that problem. She is brighter than the sun; she is pretty:

He has seen pictures of her mother before and she is beautiful, but this girl is a gorgeous-sharp mix of her mother and aunt. She is tall even in their first year and her eyes are so dark, high-cut cheekbones, with that wavy hair...

She is popular too.

Outside classes, in the corridors and between the bookshelves of the library, he never sees her alone. Always, always surrounded by a pride of friends, but he never remembers any of them, her Gryffindor fire burns so brightly—