"It was amazing," Hermione said excitedly.
She was still visibly euphoric after her time on the stage, and she was surrounded by a crowd of Gryffindor and Hufflepuff girls, with a few Ravenclaws mixed in.
"What was it like?" Parvati Patil asked.
She and Padma and Cho were standing together in the center of the crowd, with Ron and Harry on the outskirts, barely able to hear what Hermione was saying, even though the Weird Sisters were between sets.
"It's like...nothing I've ever experienced in my life. It must be what it's like to be Steven all the time."
Harry couldn't help but feel a flash of envy. Being Steven seemed like it would be much better than being Harry.
Steven knew how to talk to people; he understood girls. Almost everybody liked him, and the ones who didn't weren't good people anyway. He had family that loved him, and his childhood had been one filled with love and happiness.
He had power, but that wasn't what Harry envied. He envied Steven's ability to not worry what people thought.
It was Steven's innocence that he envied. Harry had always felt that he had a darkness inside him. The Sorting Hat had even tried to put him in Slytherin, which only reinforced his feelings that he wasn't innately good.
He'd been told his entire life that he came from bad stock; that his parents were worthless and that he was just as worthless as they were. Learning that they'd been heroes should have made that better, but it had made Harry feel that he wasn't living up to their legacy.
"I felt like I could do anything...like we could do anything," Hermione said. She grinned. "I've never picked up a guitar in my life, and then we did...that."
Ron leaned toward Harry and said quietly, "It still seems weird."
"We've got a professor who turns into a cat," Harry said. "And other professors that are half-goblin and half-giant. It's not that weird."
Harry noticed Steven slipping out of the great Hall. He frowned; there was something about Steven's expression that made him uneasy.
"I'm off to the loo," he told Ron. "Tell Cho if she comes looking for me."
Ron nodded absently, staring at the group of girls surrounding Hermione. "Don't think she'll be peeling away from that lot from a while."
Harry nodded. He quietly headed for the exit Steven had taken.
By the time he got there, Steven had vanished.
Amethyst was there though, talking animatedly with Pearl. They both looked up as Harry stepped through the door.
"Have you guys seen Steven?" Harry asked.
They glanced at each other, giving each other a significant look. Pearl spoke, finally, saying. "He said he wanted to be alone for a while."
"He'd being totally unreasonable." Amethyst said. She looked irritated.
"I'd like to help," Harry said. "He's my friend."
"You're still a child," Pearl said. "What could you tell him that we couldn't?"
Harry forced himself to ignore the flash of anger he felt at her words. Pearl was thousands of years old and to her, even Nicholas Flamel was still a child. He forced himself to shrug. "From what I hear, you guys were never kids. What can you tell him about being one of us?"
"I'm still a kid, buddy!" Amethyst protested. She quieted after a moment and glanced at Pearl. "He's got a point, though."
"Where did he go?" he asked.
"There's this special room," Amethyst said. "It's a little like Rose's old room in that it can become anything you want."
"A more primitive version," Pearl sniffed. "But adequate, given the limits of magic."
"I've never heard of a room like that," Harry admitted.
"It's a secret," Amethyst said. "I found it when I was being a cat. There's a trick to getting inside."
She told him where it was, and how to get into it.
Harry found himself heading for the seventh floor, wondering what he was getting himself into. Steven was his friend, but he didn't understand anything about what had happened.
Hermione was ecstatic, so nothing had gone with the process, whatever it was. Yet from the reactions of Pearl and Amethyst, something was wrong.
Even if he found Steven, he didn't know what he was going to say. Despite what he'd told the gems, he really didn't know any more about being a teenager than anyone else. Really, he knew less. He'd never really had a normal childhood, and his teenage years were turning out every bit as freakish as the Dursleys had suspected.
He found the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy trying to teach trolls ballet. He found himself hoping that talking to Steven wouldn't be as monumental a task.
He walked to the other side of the hall and began pacing back and forth, telling himself he wanted to see Steven.
On his third pass a door appeared.
He took a deep breath and stepped inside.
As he stepped inside, he blinked. The room wasn't anything like the rest of the castle. It was completely made of wood. There was a lounge and a fireplace and a kitchen bar. There was a refrigerator and microwave, and Harry wondered if they actually worked through the magic of the room or if they were just decorative.
There were stairs leading up to a low loft, and he could see the edge of a bed up there. One wall was made of stone with a door that clearly looked magical.
He could hear the sounds of the ocean; the splashing of waves and the cries of seagulls in the distance.
The whole place looked well lived in and homey. There was a picture of Pearl attached to the refrigerator and as harry turned back to the door he'd come through, he saw a picture of a huge woman, beautiful and very pink. She had a gem on her stomach.
Steven was nowhere to be seen.
"Steven," Harry called out cautiously.
He heard the sound of movement from the loft, but Steven didn't speak.
"I'm coming up," he said cautiously.
He made his way up the stairs, and as he climbed them, the loft came into view. There was a low bed and a television. The walls had toys and pictures, and it looked lived in. It all looked like the kind of room he would have dreamed about having in first year, even if the ceiling was lower than he would have liked.
Steven was laying on the bed, facing away from him.
"That was some show you guys put on," Harry said cautiously. He sat awkwardly at the top of the stairs; the loft wasn't tall enough for him to stand or even crouch comfortably for long periods.
Steven still didn't speak.
"Hermione seems really happy," he continued. He wasn't sure what to say, considering that he didn't know what was wrong.
Steven sighed and he slowly turned and sat up. His dress robes looked wrinkled and his eyes were swollen. It looked like he had been crying. In his right hand he was holding a crumpled picture.
"Are you unhappy about it?" Harry asked.
Steven shook his head and said, "No. It was great. Fusion's pretty much always great."
"Then why are you here instead of out there?" Harry asked. Harry glanced down at the picture Steven was holding. It was a picture of a pretty Indian girl, maybe the age of a first or second year.
"Is that Connie?" he asked.
Steven nodded quietly. He sighed again.
Harry had no idea what to say. Rather than say the wrong thing, he didn't say anything. He'd seen Ron and Hermione rushing to fill uncomfortable silences too many times to think it would lead to saying something wise.
Steven spoke, finally.
"She doesn't even look like this anymore. It's been four years and she'd be older than Hermione now." He hesitated. "Hermione reminds me a lot of Connie, actually. They're both smart and passionate and dedicated. Hermione is a lot more serious than Connie was, though."
Steven's voice trailed off and he stared at the picture again. It seemed like an eternity before he spoke again.
"Before I fused with Connie the first time, the gems didn't even think it was possible for a human and a gem to fuse. It was a miracle that nobody saw coming, not even Garnet."
Unconsciously, Steven smoothed out the picture. "It was a miracle to me too...you can't fuse with just anybody, or at least I can't. You have to really trust them and love them. It's closer than being boyfriend and girlfriend or even being married."
Harry looked at his friend, seeming so dejected. "And you think doing this now with Hermione means you didn't love Connie?"
Steven was silent for a long moment, but his left hand tensed. He grimaced.
"You know why this is only the second time I've come here since Amethyst showed it to me?" he asked. He gestured at the room around them. "This is where I grew up."
Harry simply sat and waited.
"Because I keep expecting the door to open and Dad and Connie to come through. My mom's room could actually make copies of people, even though they weren't very smart and were made of clouds. This place...this is exactly like I remember it, but it's like a museum."
Looking around, Harry had to admit that it looked like a place that had been well loved but hadn't been lived in for a while.
"She's never going to come through the door headed for the warp pad ready for sword lessons," Steven said. "And Dad's never going to be waiting on the beach ready for a cookout or a jam session."
He scowled. "It feels like I could step through that door and be back with them, but that's never going to happen. Those aren't real seagulls or real waves."
It was like the Mirror of Erised, Harry realized suddenly. The real pain of the mirror wasn't just being shown everything you ever desired. The real pain was being able to see it, but never being able to touch it.
"I still miss her," Steven said. "When I have a good day I want to come home and tell her all about it. She loved magic; Hogwarts would have blown her mind."
Harry wasn't sure what to say. He knew he was clueless when it came to girls. He was relatively new even to having friends. Whatever advice he had surely wouldn't be wise or inspired or any of the things he'd come to expect from Steven.
"She always knew what to say to make me feel better," Steven said.
Harry was silent for a long moment. Uncertain what to say, finally he said, "What do you think she'd tell you now?"
Steven closed his eyes and sighed. "She'd tell me to stop moping. That just because you love one person doesn't mean you can't love another."
"She sounds smart," Harry said.
"She was," Steven said.
"What else would she tell you?" Harry asked. He didn't know what else to say, but Steven looked a little happier, and he didn't want to lose whatever progress he'd been making.
Steven looked at the picture one more time, then set it to the side carefully, laying it on the rumpled bed.
"She'd tell me that Hermione is a great person and that if I keep moping like this, she's going to notice and that's going to hurt her."
"That sounds about right," Harry said.
Actually, he had no idea, but he knew that Steven did, and if Steven was able to give himself advice, he was going to agree to whatever he said.
Steven wiped his eyes and forced a smile.
Harry held his hand out to his friend, and said, "Maybe we shouldn't keep the ladies waiting."
Steven nodded, and a moment later they were heading out of the room and back to the ball.