Chapter 14

Was life one long cavalcade of facing things you're obligated to, preparing to do so, or out-and-out avoiding doing so? I know I should answer that, and I'll get to it, but I don't feel like it right now.

Ginny had sat at the table across from me and was helping herself to tea.

It occurred to me that I was in a roomful of Weasleys, and that I'd just shouted down their mother. Maybe they had had enough time to grow attached to her, I mean a few days isn't much but she looked like them, had carried them around in her and all that, Ginny had her temper and Ron had her eyes, and I really felt a little exposed, if you want to know the truth.

So I said, "Any of you matchsticks about to light up?"

Charlie stirred. "Not me, I rather enjoyed that. Besides, she raised you, not us. You probably have more of a right to have a go at her than we do."

"He did the right thing," Ginny said. Her face was placid.

"I always dreamed of having a mum," Fred said, "so that one day I could put her in her place that way."

Clearly he would joke about anything.

"Well –" I said, not expecting this response. "Ron?"

I turned to my friend. I'd been thinking of him in that way for a while. He wasn't overly talkative – he chose his words as if he were playing chess, which he'd said he liked to do when he was younger. He'd stopped playing after the war but was still a man who thought, took care with his actions. I thought that that was what got him through the war, and what made him good for Hermione as well. That woman was impulsive. I'd made things right with her since my outburst at the hospital but I felt that he had every right to be miffed at me, but he wasn't. There were things I didn't know about him, and I knew I wasn't going to take that knowledge from him, because he didn't like that idea, and I could respect that. I would have to be content to let that one unfold. And that was okay with me.

"I'd say you were right," he said. "Surprised me, but you were right. Mum's a little off and I don't like anyone saying bad things about my little sister – even though I know she can take care of herself…" This sounded like a commonly-added phrase, and I was not surprised. "Mum needs to know there are limits – that she can feel as mixed up as she wants, but she can't take that out on us. Better for her in the long run – she sounded a bit hysterical to me, and the less of that she can do, the better."

Well, okay then.

"You might want to consider not making a habit of that," Ron said. "Telling people how they ought to be … bit of a burden really."

Bit of a …

"Everyone gets it wrong most of the time, you see," he said. "Long as no one's getting hurt… it might be best to let them make their own mistakes and leave the big ones to the Aurors."

After a pause, he said, "As long as their mistakes aren't pointed at my sister, anyway."

Ginny rose from the table, went to her brother and kissed his cheek before saying, "Prat", softly. Then she returned to her tea.

"Fair enough," I said, watching her sit. "I'll give it a try."

"Now onto more difficult work," Fred said.

"Weasley family protocol dictates that certain actions be taken," George said.

"Not that we don't appreciate you."

"Or the command you have over rugs."

"Or your ability to throw off the body bind."

"In your sleep."

"Gave our Ronald a bit of a shock, when he first met you."

"Which is saying something."

"Doesn't shock easily, that one."

"Though there was that time we turned his pillow into a spider."

It was like watching tennis.

"We appeared to have wandered a bit, Fred."

"Quite right, George."

"Hold on a second," I said. "You're George and you're Fred."

The one I knew to be Fred grinned. "You're clearly a force to be reckoned with."

"Do you reckon you might be getting to the point?" I said.

"Surely, D, just killing time," George said. "We're giving it what's known as a respectful interval."

"During which Dad has a go at appeasing Mum."

"But it's a fruitless endeavor, as he well knows."

"Only one thing can make this better."

"As he also knows."

"And what might that be?" I said.

Ginny smirked. Not a good sign for me.

"It's like a rule we have in our store." George looked me mournfully in the eye. "You broke it, you pay for it," he said.

I sighed and got up.

They were sitting at opposite ends of a sofa when I came in, Molly sort of fuming at nothing. Arthur was examining the cuff of his robes. It appeared that they'd been quiet a little while. He looked calm, but resigned.

"Did you two even talk about this?" I said.

"We don't have to talk as much as we did," he said, getting up from his chair and heading for the door. "We seem to have an understanding."

"Of course you do," I said. "You were sharing a skull with her."

She was giving me what should have been a sour look, but without much juice.

"Well," he said, "It's your turn now."

The door closed.

She looked at me a few times, furtively. It felt like she was trying to get up the momentum to give me a good dressing down, but couldn't quite muster it. After a few attempts, she sighed and looked down.

She said, "How could you speak to me that way."

I could tell her heart wasn't in it.

"How could I not?" I said. "You did end up telling me the truth about myself, didn't you? I'll always tell you the truth."

"As you see it," she said, keeping a bit of her own.

I thought about that. "You're right, I guess. That's all I have, Aunt Molly. If I was wrong, then you have to tell me. But only if I'm really wrong, not just if you don't like it, okay?"

I wasn't playing fair. I called her Aunt Molly. The hug I received was sure to become legendary, and my intestines were sure to become visible shortly.

"We've been there and back, you and I," she said over my shoulder. "It's just so hard sometimes. My children don't know me, and all I want to do is hold them, but every time I think about how long I was gone from them, I feel so …"

"Behind in your chores?"

She laughed a little as she released me, perhaps hearing the strain in my voice. "You might say that. Lily and James have done wonderfully with them, as I knew they would, and I don't mean to insult them. Oh my, I've said horrible things."

She truly looked stricken. "They will understand," I said. "But I think you should talk to them about it sooner rather than later."

"Of course, dear," she said, dabbing at her eyes. "It's only … well … do you think I'm jealous, D- Harry?"

You know I said it. You know I'd been waiting for it. "The D is silent. Maybe a little. You gave up – I mean, you gave …"

I felt my throat thickening. She'd given up everything she loved for me. I had two choices, extreme crippling guilt or overwhelming gratitude, and this is why my relationship with her was so complex. This once, looking at this beautiful woman, round and short and completely loving, I thought I would go for gratitude. My eyes were wet. I hadn't hugged her enough and there was no reason to be stingy about it. I enveloped her and squeezed. "It's loss," I said. "It's okay."

"Oh, my boy," she said, and I suppose that did it. We cried together for a timeless time, her body shaking and mine as well, two people taken out of the world and then dropped back in any old way and left to right themselves. There was no way it could not hurt. The good things made the pain a little worse, I think.

When we were both done, I thought of something. As she wiped her eyes some more, I reached out to her arm, and she looked up at me.

"Thank you for protecting Ginny," I said.

Her expression went through a few changes, ending with a small knowing smile.

"I didn't do it just for you, you know," she said.

"You may as well have," I said.

•

Okay, let me back up. As long as we are on about making things better, I shouldn't skim over my other heading-off of problems and fixing them, my fendings and mendings, and on that list is Hermione. Not so much on the current list anymore, but back then, there it was. So the day before, I think, I was in a little bit of a state. Loosely moored, buffeted by strong winds. And welcoming, in a way, being torn from my moorings, if only to be carried somewhere else. Anywhere.

It was a quiet day in Godric's Hollow, and I was wandering down a crooked path. That's not a metaphor or anything – it was an actual crooked path out in the grounds of my parents' home. Being stared down by rangy clumps of flowers is humiliating as well as weird, but when you feel like the world is looking to you for something, the most innocuous of things take on a disproportionate significance. I was currently being scrutinizeded by a crowd of blue and yellow columbine flowers my mother had crossbred with some other, magic plant, gifting them with the ability to pulse, like octopi swimming, and somehow granting them an awareness of my presence, so that as I passed them they would orient their stamens upon me and flex the thin petals below and whistle a bit. It wasn't scary, in fact the whistling was high and sweet and whooping and sounded like gentle coaxing more than anything else, but it was not what I expected from foliage, and I was feeling a little bit put upon. All of the things going wobbly in my life were vying for my attention, and I was wishing that perhaps one of them at a time would make its presence known so that I could deal with it in a reasonable way and then move on. For better or worse, I found myself thinking about Hermione, and more specifically being a few feet away from her, and so the universe had a bit of reflux and there I was.

Salient features of the room I appeared into included an overall atmosphere of gloom brought on by dust and black marble and dully glowing lamps, a number of glass cases on the walls intermingled with shelves of ancient-looking books and rolls of parchment, a large desk of dark wood covered with papers and open texts, and behind the desk, a shrieking woman who I recognized as Hermione.

"You – you can't be in here!" she said. Her hands clutched at the papers in front of her and they began to move around in a pattern that it took me a moment to recognize - she was frantically trying to straighten up.

"How – now see here," she said, "you can't just apparate into the Department of Mysteries, there are wards… and - things." She was rapidly moving from surprised to irritated. "There are reasons that no one but Unspeakables are allowed here."

"Like they might see this unholy rat's nest of a mess you work in…"

I had a very, very small hint of a smile on my face.

"… and speak of it?"

It was too small.

"How dare you!" She stopped straightening and stepped around her desk to get right up in my face. "Do you realize that no one will believe that I didn't let you in here and that my job is as good as terminated?"

"What if I leave now?"

"That would be good. That might be a good bloody move. What the bloody hell are you doing here, anyway?"

I would have to remember that her curiosity got in the way of her self-preservation instincts. "I came to talk to you. The last time we spoke, apparently I'd forgotten most of the words I know that don't have four letters."

Oh, but she didn't want to smile. It was a pitched battle between her eyebrows and lips. The brows won, but only just. "Very well. If you want to talk, you can meet me in the Three Broomsticks. Do you know where that is?"

"Yes, Ron 's brought me there before."

"Of course he has. Go there and wait. I'll be no more than one quarter of an hour."

She was official again. I took that as a good sign. If she felt in control of herself, I thought, we would be able to talk.

"Okay," I said – and then paused.

Three Broomsticks.

Three…Broomsticks.

I heard footsteps down the hall.

Was that the place with the goat, or was it the kind of pub, or were they the same thing? Which was the one with the entrance to the Alley? The Dripping… the Sloppy Something or … was that the place Arthur went? No, that was the…

Hermione's face looked like someone was pulling on her ears from behind. The rapidity with which her eyes flickered between the door and me was something to behold.

"Go!" she said.

"Just a second…"

The steps were increasing in volume. Her eyes were increasing in size.

"Is it the one with the wall thing?"

"Wall thing?"

"The entrance to the Alley."

"The Leaky Cauldron."

"Yeah."

"No."

"Huh?"

"That's not it. Can you just …"

"Which is the Broomsticks one again?"

"The one in Hogsmeade."

"Where's that again?"

"Can you meet me in the lobby upstairs?"

"I've never been there."

"What?"

"What does it look like?"

"It's a big marble room with fireplaces and – what bloody difference does it make? You haven't been there. Just go home and I'll meet you there!" Her voice was a fierce whisper and both of her hands were clenched into fists.

"Do you mean my mum and dad's–"

"I don't care – go anywhere, just bugger off!" As soon as it left her mouth she looked horrified, and I realized it was going to be fun seeing her later. I started thinking about the foyer of the house, and Hermione looked like she was getting ready to jump up and catch a marshmallow in her mouth, I mean she was wound up like a spring and her mouth was open. As I shrank to the proverbial dot, I thought I heard her sneeze.

Well, it was feeling like Christmas where I was when she appeared. She knew it, too. I must have looked a little smug. She took one look at me and her face fell.

I found myself feeling guilty. She knew I was going to give her grief about the "bugger off" and she was going to have to swallow something bitter. I decided then that I wouldn't make her do it. Not sure why.

"I won't hold it over your head, and I won't tell anyone about it ever," I said.

She looked a little surprised, and then narrowed her eyes at me.

"Besides," I said, gesturing to a sofa, "I wanted to see you so I could apologize."

She thought about it, then nodded and sat down.

I was become aware of something. An apology to her required clarity and strength. I figured that much, because she was not a fool by any means. But this needed to be good, and I wasn't really sure why, other than that I liked her and I'd been a little out of sorts from learning what a hero was and she'd just spoken up at the wrong time and I would have growled at anyone, probably. In any event I was paying attention.

"You have to promise me something," she said.

"What's that?"

"Don't – don't read me, please. I have a – well, it's impolite."

I said, "I won't look you in the eye – but it's not just impolite to you, is it? Okay, I'll do my part, but you have to be honest with me, and I'll believe you when you say you will be."

I was looking at my hands and so I couldn't see her expression when she said softly, "I wouldn't lie to you."

"All right. Then I need to tell you something. I'd just been getting to know Neville, and when you came in I'd been listening to him and seeing what he'd been through, with the war and all that –" (no words seemed enough, and I wasn't really going to try and paint the perfect picture) "- and it was an awful lot to take in. And he's amazing. He's just a – a tremendous person. Nothing like what I had expected and really really a hero in every way, and I was looking for words that expressed how I felt and found one or two good ones and then you tried to cut me off in mid-release, and so I pointed them at you, and that surely wasn't great to be on the receiving end of –"

"But you were right," she said. "I was telling you how to react, and that wasn't what you needed at the time, was it? So we sort of did the same thing to each other. It was not fair all 'round." She was performing a detailed assessment of the quality of the lining of her robes. "And you were the better person about it – you came to me to make things better, and I just went 'round being mad about it and didn't say a word." She sounded very defeated.

"Well, I didn't make it very safe for you, did I?" I said.

"How do you mean?"

"Okay, I'm not looking at you, right? But it seems like we're a little weird around each other. I want to know why that is, and I feel like it's been like that from the beginning. Gesundheit."

"What?"

"When I left your office. You sneezed."

"It wasn't a real one."

"A mock sneeze?"

"I was trying to cover the sound of your apparating. As it was, it was virtually silent. So I was standing in the middle of my office, alone, sneezing falsely, and my immediate superior, who dislikes me for no good reason, chose that moment to enter, and now thinks I'm a loony."

"Because you were mock-sneezing in your office."

"It didn't look very…"

"I'm sorry that happened," I said.

"Then try not to smile while you're saying so," she said.

"Why are we weird?"

"I – I'm not sure. I mean, we're not weird… are we? Are you?"

"Yeah, I'm plenty weird." She laughed as I said, "Is that what it is?"

"Well, maybe." She expelled a breath. "Look, I'm a very – a very well-educated witch. I like to think I know a great deal about magic and the magical world. I wasn't born to it like most people, but I've worked very hard to-" (belong.) "-understand the way of things, and even in this bizarre world of bent physics and barking logic, things make some sense. They follow rules. Except – except you. I don't understand how on earth you do anything or why things work around you, or what you're thinking or fee- well, in any event, it's a bit hard for me to…"

The thing with her is, it's often what she doesn't say.

I thought she was a little confused. There were only parts of what she was chewing on that I could address, so I thought I'd do what I could. "I promised you that I would give you some time before, and I never have. You don't like mysteries that you can't solve, and I'm not giving you anything to solve me with. That's got to make you nuts."

"You're not just some problem, you're a person."

"Right. And with people, if you don't understand them, you have to ask questions. But maybe you feel like I'm so weird that you can't ask me things like you would any other person –"

"No," she said softly. "It's because I've been – this is so bloody embarrassing!"

"No point in being embarrassed in front of me," I said. "I don't know anything, so as far as I know, you're doing everything right."

"Not this," she said.

"Out with it," I said. "Teach me something."

She sniffed. "It's really the other way 'round. You've made me realize something about myself. I've been treating you like a problem all this time, and not just you. It's everything that I'm not sure about. Like equations, like list of numbers instead of people and feelings, because I'm so much more at ease with figures."

"You're using what you're really good at to deal with a problem. That's not bad."

"It is when you forget every other way of doing it. I read a wonderful book on the subject of distancing one's self from feelings and just filed the information away as if it had no practical use in the world, and it's funny because I never think of feelings as practical, but quite the opposite."

"But they give things meaning."

"Exactly, and that's what I've not been … I'm talking to you an awful lot. Are you sure you're not…"

"I promise. We're just talking."

"Well, it's rough work, isn't it. Ginny must be beside herself."

"You know – I think maybe I might have barked at you a little because of her –"

"I know, I know," she said, "and you're right, and she was right, and I was just trying to – I don't know –"

"To do what was right."

"Well – I suppose."

"And I think you did. Ginny and I – it's not simple, and it's not exactly a healer-patient thing, you know."

"I noticed," she said. "And really, that's not healthy for the patient, because he is in a vulnerable position, and the healer is in a position of authority and that makes for a dynamic that –"

"Yes, I get that," I said. "I don't think that was what was happening with us, at least from my end, but I know it bothered her because – well, I'm not sure why."

"That's simple," she said. "She didn't want to see you as a patient. She wanted to see you as a man."

Okay, that sounded amazing to me. My cheeks flushed, and I felt like throwing my chest out and wearing animal skins and howling a bit. As it was, in a somewhat less manly fashion, the area rug flexed and shook itself before stalking off through the house, presumably in search of a female rug or Ginny, and I hoped it was the former.

I wasn't looking at her, but I'd swear she was grinning a little.

"I, um, owe you for that insight," I said.

"I think we're even."

"Then tell me something."

"What's that?"

"Did you have a bad experience with legilimency before?"

"No," she said. "It's – it's nothing, now."

"What was it?"

"Well – " She was quiet for a moment. In the brief lull I could faintly hear someone elsewhere in the house saying, "Gerroff me, you bloody rug!"

She shifted in her seat and said, "Please don't take this badly."

"I'll be fine. I like you, Hermione."

"I – I like you too," she said, not much above a whisper. "But I wasn't clear on how I – liked you, and also, before, I think I was a little afraid of you."

"Will you let me look at you now?"

A hesitation, a breath. "Yes."

"Then listen."

•

She was thoughtful and still. Her eyes were downcast, but she was smiling.

"You know," she said, "I saw something that I really wasn't expecting, when you were thinking about Ron."

"What's that?"

"He's a fine strategist, I knew that from the war and chess and all that, but when it's people in front of him, it's people. He knows when to let things happen, and he knows when to step in and take action." Her cheeks colored faintly. "He's a good, good man. I needed to see him from another point of view, I suppose."

After a moment's pause, she said softly, "That's the man that I'm going to marry."

"Hard to say who's the luckier one," I said. "You're both amazing."

"Mm," she said as she stood up. "You have your own qualities as well, you know."

"Thanks," I said, feeling at this moment that nothing was simple when men and women were together. She gave me a quick peck on the cheek, which she completely owned (the peck, not the cheek) and disapparated in mid turn, leaving me with an afterimage of her profile, her chin a little down, with a little smile on her face. I had absolutely no right to, but when she left, a little different and a little more convinced of her future with another man, I felt a little loss, and a little jealousy. No woman is more beautiful than when she is wanted by someone else, I thought.

The fact that these thoughts were followed by acrimony, guilt and disgust at myself didn't make things any calmer in my mind. Ah. Another thing to learn to live with.

•

So we can jump later again. Just a day or two. Molly and I were sorted. I was back at Potter Manor, sitting in the living room, alone with various thoughts, some about how long or short my life might be, and some about Ginny. Not all of her. Well, actually all of her but some parts were being featured. I was thinking, "I have got to find something to take my mind off of her so I can think," when all at once the solution presented itself. The solution was this: give up trying not to think about her – here she is in tight jeans and a t-shirt, right in front of you. Why don't you just throw yourself headlong into thinking about her. It's what you want anyway.

She settled on the couch by me, a cup of tea in each hand, and pushed one at me. Quite the tea-drinker. It was a strange offering. Here, take this, it's a little surly gift from me to you. She was very hard to read when I couldn't look closely. That was getting to bother me, I can tell you – it's like being used to walking straight out of your door and across the street to the ice cream shop and then having someone tell you no, you'll have to go out the back door and hitchhike to the airport and take a rattle-y prop plane to Phoenix and then walk back on skis wearing the back half of a rhino costume if you want any more Fudge Ripple. The funny thing was, I felt like she wanted me to. I couldn't say why, but it seemed like it would have been easier for her if I just went in and looked around – but I didn't want to do that. Again, I couldn't say why.

She was, for lack of a better term, in a bit of a mood.

It tasted similar to Earl Grey.

That made me wonder about something. It came and went, the wondering, like headlights from a passing car.

Oh, and it was the tea that tasted of Earl Grey, not the mood – if the mood tasted like anything it wasn't bergamot. More like cayenne and lemons.

She said, "I know I should thank you for bringing my mother back to me. And my father. I know I should tell you that you've given me a special gift that I will never be able to repay you for, and that you've done an amazing thing for my family for which we will all be eternally grateful."

"But you're not going to."

"No."

"Why not?"

"Don't want it to go to your head. Besides, you can't really take credit for all of it. Dad and Mum brought you back. You were mostly a catalyst."

"Just a little spark, that's me. Anyway it's my fault they were gone."

She sighed very softly. "It was nowhere near being your fault. It was just bad luck all round."

"You're being good about it."

"I'm not being good about any bloody thing at all," she said. "I've been talking to my mother."

"Yeah? What about?"

"We're trying to get closer to each other by drawing lines."

"Lines."

"In the sand."

"Meaning…"

"That there are… things… that we don't talk about, by agreement, at least for a while."

"Like…"

"Well, she's agreed not to try to re-parent me, as it was done perfectly well the first time. It's difficult for her, because time has sort of passed and not-passed for her when she was in with Dad. She's told me that she loves being with her daughter, and was even willing to …"

She stopped talking and her shoulders drooped a little.

"To what?" I said.

"She said… she asked me if I wanted to call her 'Molly'."

"Oh. Ooooh."

"I know, I mean that was the last thing I wanted to hear. 'We can be friends.' I have plenty of friends already," she said.

"You want to have a mother."

"Exactly."

"Only, one who can't tell you how to act."

"Yes … huh?"

"You know," I said, "someone who's perfectly loving with you all the time, makes you feel safe and well-taken-care-of, but some one who is okay with everything you do. She won't tell you to dress a certain way or who to be with or tell you to behave or correct your language."

"Well, yes, though you're making it sound unreasonable, thank you very much."

"No, well, yes, maybe - I mean that you want unconditional love from her."

"Well, of course, who wouldn't?"

"Sure," I said. "I'm just saying that unconditional love is the kind that only comes from mothers. You know, from the moment you're born, no matter what, she thinks you're perfect, she loves you no matter what."

"That's it," she said.

"She was doing that before you were born," I said. "She's still doing it. It's a schizoid mother thing. If you're a gardener and you have climbing roses, and you love roses, that won't stop you from trying to get them to go up the pergola where the sun is, will it? It doesn't mean you don't love roses."

She looked mad and thoughtful. She was complicated. I liked it.

"What did you say you'd do?" I said.

There was a pause.

"I'm trying not to be unreasonably mad at her for being gone all my life."

I tried to keep my face straight as I said, "That sounds fair."

"Oh, shut up."

"That's me over here, keeping quiet. The D is silent."

"For Merlin's sake. Let's just stop talking about me then, if you can manage that. What are you doing about your…problem?"

"Which one – the one where somehow I make people want to change the subject, or the one where there's a prophecy that says I have to kill some psychopath before he kills me?"

"The second one. The first one's irreparable."

"Thanks. I think they're about equal."

"What does that mean?" she said.

"I've talked to my parents and Remus about it. They know bits and pieces about this, but unfortunately the authority on this whole thing is that jackass Dumbledore. He's clearly out of his mind or something, and is also missing. No one has seen him since he left our house."

"Brilliant. Do you know, when we were searching for the horcruxes, he'd gone and done all of this obscure research on the subject, but when we asked him for help, he never gave us straight answers. It was always in the form of a riddle. As if testing our acumen were more important than killing off Tom. "

She got up and began to pace the room.

"I wanted help from him," she said. "I'd always looked up to him at school as this impossibly great figure. He had defeated Grindelwald and headed the Wizengamot and my brothers all thought he was amazing. Fred and George were actually a little afraid of him, and that made him all right in my eyes. I thought he was this giant, benevolent grandfather-figure who would protect and defend us through anything. But when things started getting dark…" She shook her head as she walked. "It seemed like he was above it all. After the Chamber of Secrets, there was a lot of hand-wringing and so on, but somehow he thought it was a good idea to let things lie. Never mind that racism was rampant in his school, and that he'd stood by and done nothing while three students were petrified by a giant bloody snake, including our Hermione," she said, pointing a finger at me as if I'd had anything to do it. "Somehow no one that mattered could remember how he'd stood back and allowed it to happen – that the night I'd gone down to the – the chamber –" I heard a moment's unsteadiness, but only a moment, and I felt a very strong thing for her, very strong, though I had no idea what it was "- he had gone off to sort out some administrative nonsense and left us all unprotected."

"The Chamber of Secrets," I said, instead of "that's awful" or "what a jackass" or "I know exactly how you feel even without reading your mind."

"That's what it was called."

"What were they?"

"What were what?"

"The secrets."

"Well, one of them was that there was a bloody giant basilisk in there. There's a secret for you."

"Fair enough. But were there any others?"

"That was well enough to be getting on with."

"I know, but –"

"Another one was how it survived without food for so long."

"Yeah."

"But I don't know any others."

"Have you…" Shut yourself, Deasil. Shut your entire self.

"Have I what?" she said.

Oh, well. "Have you been down there since?"

"Well, there's the yearly birthday celebrations there, and the snogging opportunities, but mostly I just go down there for the quiet time. What the bloody hell do you imagine?"

"Sorry."

"No, I haven't bloody been down there since. I get to visit anytime I want to in my dre– ooOOOOhh, bloody hell, I am NOT talking about this!"

"Language?"

"Shut it, you. Honestly I don't know why I put up with you. It's not that you aren't good looking."

"It's not that I'm not good looking?"

"What did I say?"

"Basically that I am good looking."

"Bugger. It's a curse, is what it is."

"I thought we were going to talk about me for a while."

She opened her mouth in anger and was seriously about to break me off a piece of her mind, but then abruptly thought better of it and grimaced briefly before fastening some composure onto her face in the way that one might board up one's windows before a storm.

"So we did," she said. "You were going to tell me…"

"Probably about what Remus and I have worked out about the prophecy."

"Go on, then."

"Well, clearly I need to be getting in shape."

"That's what you two geniuses have come up with?"

"Part of it. I am going to have to fight Tom for my life and everyone else's at some point, and I'm completely unprepared for anything like that. I've never fought anyone over anything as far as I know. I don't know if I should be learning karate or practicing my quick-draw technique."

"Er…"

"I don't know any spells, I don't know how magic works or why, I don't know why I'm the one, I just know that I am, or anyway Tom thinks I am."

"How … how pressing is this?" If anything, her pacing was faster.

"He said that one or the other of us would live, and there appears to be an expiration date on this situation. I mean, it's implicit that there must be, otherwise, why would neither of us be able to live while the other lived? It could go on forever otherwise – I think. I'm not sure what I'm saying anymore." Thick. Very thick. "Wait. Here it is. Neither one can live while the other survives. So that kind of means that I – even though I'm alive right now, and it feels like I am and it's great, pretty terrific actually, I can't, you know, really live while he's still around. Maybe that means I can't have like a really great life, with horseback riding and the wind in my hair and winning the lottery and everything - only an… okay life. Honestly, that still doesn't sound really terrible, if this, what I'm living now, is just okay. Not really bad enough to, you know, destroy someone. But it's not just about me, of course, Tom's evil, terrible and crazy, and he's hurt you and countless other people, and it has to stop. It has to end, and I'm the only one who can do it, so there you go."

She stopped pacing and put her hands on her hips, cocking her head at me. "And that's it?"

It was hard not to read her. A little hurtful. The world wasn't liking me. But it was for the best. Don't read her. Keep talking. "What do you mean? What's on your mind?"

"Why do you just accept it? Someone says it's your duty to save the world and all you can say is, okay then? I mean, wouldn't you want a… a second opinion or something? Bloody hell, I'm starting to sound like you." Ginny shook her head again.

"Or I sound like you," I said.

"Oh, no you don't," she said. "I make sense most of the time. Except when I'm around y- Except when I'm around … that … time. What on earth…" She appeared to be casting about for something and not liking what she caught. Her cheeks colored. "That was genius. Actually, I mean … Oh, I don't bloody know what I'm saying."

I was having a thought. It was as if I hadn't been having them in a long time and my mind was grinding a bit from disuse. But this was something I had said before.

"We're a little … weird around each other."

"Too right. Oh, bugger," she said, looking pained, "I can't stop it, can I?"

"Stop what?"

"Admitting … admitting things to you." She moved her hair away from her eyes. "Look, I'm trying not to look like a complete nutter in front of you, and it never seems to work, I just lose control of my mouth and babble on and on, like I've never even talked to anyone, and it's making me doubt my – yes? What?"

She had tapered off because I'd – well, as she was speaking, I was looking at her mouth, and how it moved, and I have to say, it fascinated me. Press, purse, pout, part, each motion dragging across my mind, obliterating any other thoughts. Almost. I'd come closer to her and put my hands on her elbows.

"Why is it so important that you control it?" I asked. Her scent of unnamed flowers; the familiar yet unknown, the gravity my world was formed with.

"Control what?"

"Your mouth." Your perfect mouth. Yeah, that one.

When I finally found her eyes, they were actually looking at my mouth.

Honestly, I felt that look in my back pocket.

What really needed to happen was, I needed to acquaint that mouth with my own. Maybe they'd have something in common. Maybe they could compare notes. Maybe they could have a friendly wrestling match to settle their differences.

What did happen was, I said, "I like it when you're honest with me. It makes me feel closer to you, you know?" I was not being smooth. I was however the master of the obvious. I was hoping that somehow that would end up being irresistible.

"Closer to you," she said. And she was a little closer to me, actually.

"I… I want to tell you everything," I said.

"Let me be honest with you."

"Okay."

"I'm not very good with talking."

"No, you're –"

"Deasil, I mean, I'm done with talking."

"Oh. Well then, that –"

"Deasil." Her voice was patient. Meaning you could tell she was being patient. Just barely. "No. More. Talking."

"Then wh –"

She was right. It was time to stop talking. And she gave me something else to do.

I am a man given to flowery speech. A man who would use the verbal equivalent of a sledgehammer made entirely of butterfly wings to push in a thumbtack. In other words, not practical or even effective, perhaps, but with any luck interesting to watch. Well, two things come to mind now.

One, I have no words to describe what it was like to kiss her. I mean I have nouns for days, like lips and hands and goosebumps and heartbeat and breath and bosom and warmth, and tongue, which I wasn't expecting to be on the list but as it turns out I am fine with, and hips and a few other nouns that I'll keep to myself, and you know I have adjectives because I've used a lot of soft, smooth, humid, swollen, pulsing, tingling sort of words so far, and verbs, well, I'm going to have to skip most of those, and I've got countless similes and metaphors that I can string together, describing how things felt or tasted or grew or what have you, but it all seems inadequate.

And two, it's kind of private.

Around four or five million years later I came back to myself. I was looking into her eyes from a very short distance, like three or four inches, and I was good with that – I didn't want to stray too far and that seemed like a reasonable trip if I needed to return, and I knew I would. You become aware of different things at that distance from a person. The brown of her eyes was anything but simple. There were streaks of gold and green, and they seemed to change over time, as if sunlight were moving over them. Her pupils were very large.

Without question, the most perfectly beautiful woman imaginable.

"Am I?" she said. Her voice was small and exquisite, like a china rose.

"Now we're talking," I said.

•

"There's something I need to do," I said eventually.

"Mmm."

"I've got to ask Hermione something. "

"You have to what? Now?"

"Well, no, Gin, not right now."

"You called me 'Gin'."

"Yes. Is that okay?"

"Yes. Very. What is it that's so important?"

"I'm just wondering about something."

"What is it?"

"I'm wondering… you're a fabulous kisser, you know."

"Do you think?"

"Yes."

"So are you."

"That's what I was wondering about."

"What?"

"Would you like to know when I learned to kiss?"

"I suppose so."

"So would I."

•

A/N: This chapter could have been called "D, Tea and Women". There are other things going on in the story, but I want these out, so there can be room for the other bits that have more action and so forth. And so I won't be able to rely on them to get me through a chapter. And because I love dialogue between men and women. Thanks to Freja for non-beta beta-ing, and seeing things that I hadn't written yet, and thanks to Jules for being a little fuzzy and saying what she thought. Please review.