"Alohomora!"

"One can easily tell you're in the schools' choir."

She eyes me suspiciously. "What do you mean? I was merely whispering."

"I can hear that anyways," I boldly claim.

Playfully reserved, she looks up and down at me. "You seem to hear a lot."

"I sure do." I push the swinging door open – not particularly resistant against burglary anyway – and motion Harper to enter.

"Very charming," she murmurs while passing. "I still can't believe even first years could walk in here."

"Audacity wins." I let my eyes wander over the solid wood of the shelves and give a half-shrug. "The no-entry sign keeps most people out. Presumed barriers are quite enough for the narrow-minded."

"Which we're not?"

"Obviously not," I reply, smirking as cheekily as she does as I point my wand at the door again. "Colloportus!"

Better safe than sorry. If someone patrols and the door to the Restricted Section is wide open, we find ourselves in trouble.

"And don't forget the barrier of screaming books," Harper murmurs. "It almost cost me my life last time …"

She really almost died of shock, just like I did the first time I was here.
But a few months ago, Professor Slughorn was kind enough, albeit unintentionally, to mention a librarian's spell preventing this unpleasant accompaniment.
The man has no idea how helpful he is to me … It took me a bit of trial and error, but in the end it was literally no complicated witchcraft.

"Lumos!" Harper whispers, then she's already lighting up the spines of books on the dark shelves with her wand. "What was it again that you mentioned yesterday? The word sounded so strange …"

"Horcrux," I repeat, meanwhile tracing my wand over the ancient covers as well.

"What do you know about it so far?"

I'm about to answer, but then I pause – I hear that voice, again …
It follows me. Almost as though it were in the walls, as if it were directly under, above, or beside me … Or in my head.

I had initially tried to ignore it, to give it no space, but it becomes louder. More urgent. As though there were something that was just for me to hear. A fateful destiny that I ought to follow. Unless, of course, these whispered words are really only just in my imagination …

I ask, "Do you hear that?"

Harper freezes at once and looks around, then she glares at me. "What?" she asks, swallowing. "Is someone coming?"

I slowly shake my head, causing her to put her hands on her hips in annoyance.

"Then how can you scare me like that?"

I want to retort something, but that whispering ... I can barely hear myself think.

"Tom?" She looks at me with traces of concern on her face. "Are you alright?"

I just nod as the whispering seems to move away, after all.
There is no point in talking about it. If I ask Harper whether she also hears phrases like 'I'm waiting for you' coming from the walls, I'm rather sure we'd already be two to doubt my sanity …

"If we're caught here, we'll be expelled at once," Harper urges, startling me out of my reveries. "While I really like being here with you, we should at least hurry up."

"Yes," I agree with her, "we should indeed."

And we do carry on swiftly. We keep searching until we find it – an unimpressive book with a black leather cover. On its spine, a tiny oak tree, split by lightning, can be seen in silver lines.

"This …" Carefully I take it off the shelf, wishing to keep the ancient binding from flying apart before I can even begin to read. "This must be it."

Harper moves closer to look over my shoulder.

"Do you want to try it again?" I ask her.

She gives a dismissive wave of her hand. "Thank you, no. Do what you do best."

I nod, then I inwardly thank Professor Slughorn.

"Silencio occultatum!" I lift the librarian's curse so our ears won't have to bleed again.

Before I can even open to turn the pages, however, Harper lets her fingers glide over the spine of the book. She has really nice little hands. And always leftover ink on her fingers.

"What does the oak tree mean?" she asks.

"It's just a symbol." I already beginning to skim our source. At some point, still lost in thought, I add, "The splitting of the tree is supposed to represent the parting of the soul."

"What?" With slight irritation she lowers the book out of my field of vision so she can directly look at me. "Tom, that's blackest magic again, isn't it?"

"It is," I admit, and am about to continue reading just when –

"Let me see for myself." She takes the book from me, then she reads and reads as her eyes grow wider. Until she looks up at me again.

"Tom, did you ..." She swallows, not wanting to let her concern show, but her facial expressions speak volumes nonetheless. "Did you read this?"

She points her finger at the paragraph defining the conditions, then she turns the book, examining the cover with the split oak again. "Someone has to die for this to happen," she whispers. "One life for another. For several –"

"Since you mention the plural –"

"The plural?" She shakes her head hastily. "What do you mean by that?"

"What can be split once can be split several times, don't you think?"

Slughorn's look at these words was one of timid disbelief. As though he had always suspected it. Suspected that something like this would keep me awake at night. That dull magic tricks, for Muggles to smile at, could never excite me, while the Dark Arts had always been my interest.

There was bitter realization in Slughorn's gaze.

Harper, on the other hand, is looking at me like a stranger right now – and I can't help but notice that I don't like it at all.
It feels unexpectedly and peculiarly stale …

With Slughorn, it basically amused me. As I was like a light in the fog. Easy to see, but by no means easy to capture.

But with Harper, it's the other way around. I'm the darkness in her light, and it doesn't amuse me in the least to admit that to myself.

"Why would anyone rip the soul apart multiple times?" she asks, troubled. "And commit multiple murders to do so?"

"The murders would clearly only be a means to an end – and I don't know if I'd really necessarily call it ripping the soul apart."

"Call it what you will, but in the end it requires a sacrifice. Each time." She takes a deep breath, then she looks at me, no fear in her eyes. "Tell me – who would it be?" She almost smiles. "Me?"

"Of course not," I reply, more quickly than I intend. Dully, I follow up with, "That would be foolish."

"Why?"

The real reason is obvious. And yet I say, "What would the choir do without its nightingale?"

"It would keep singing," she says firmly. "The world would be the same."

Not mine.
And she knows fully well that this thought is crossing my mind right now.

Maybe that's why she looks at me so sternly. "So if I don't gift you my life for your immortality," she says under her breath, "who would, Tom? Who would you not miss? Whose beloved would you take to split your soul?"

"Harper, these are purely theoretical thoughts –"

"Death is not," she softly protests.

"Look," I sigh, "basically we're just talking about some kind of … protection. Of an eternal part of the soul."

She nods, snorting. Then she crosses her arms and whispers, "May be true in theory, but in practice, normal people just have kids for that kind of thing!"

I look at her and frown. "Normal people?"

"Yes!" she hisses. "Family is a form of immortality. Love, faith, friendship ... memories ... All that makes you immortal as well!"

"Quite kitschy," I say.

"So what? Tearing a soul apart is just cheating! And I may sound kitschy, but you sound a lot more machiavellian than you really are!"

"Is that what you really think?"

I do not ask her this cynically. I want a serious answer.

And she nods.

But something within myself resists believing her. "The ends," I continue, "justifies the means, that's how life plays – feelings are nothing but chemistry, and smoke and mirrors."

"Like sugar and fat?" she shoots back. "Still, it made you smile, didn't it? The way Elliott makes you laugh when he tells you about his mice. The way you make me laugh when you look at me with that scowl of thoughtfulness that, after all, only equals devoted contentment. The way –"

"I have to smile when you talk about family?" I look at her for a bit. "What makes you so sure I'm not smiling at it? I've never had a family, Harper."

She hesitates for a moment. And if I didn't know better, I'd say she's wrestling with herself.

"Tom," she finally says, looking up again. "Yes. I know what happened. But I can also imagine what is. And what will be."

"That would be equivalent to the elective course of Divination, wouldn't it? There's a reason it's not mandatory …"

She expels her breath in such an annoyed manner that I'm beginning to think she's about to turn her back on me to never speak another word.

But she does not let go of me. Figuratively speaking …

"Now listen to me carefully!" she insists. "You and I, we share this mad fascination with the darkness of this world. But that doesn't make us bad people. And even though we come from completely different backgrounds, in the end, there's only this one, real difference between you and me."

I look at her questioningly.

"You're not only fascinated by it – you're also not afraid of black magic at all," she says. "You think it's been a part of you for a long time. But it's not, I know better."

I tilt my head, for a few heartbeats.
She truly means it.
But why is it so hard for me to believe even the one person who has never lied to me?

As though she could sense my doubts, she smiles for me. "And, Tom, what was, your past – that doesn't determine the future. We're so young. We could do anything, with a little luck. Immortality all without broken pieces to cut ourselves with. After all, we hold all the cards …"

"We?"

She nods. "You and me. Right?" After a moment of silence, she glances at the floor impatiently. "At least as long as the brightest head I've ever met stops pretending he doesn't know what I'm talking about …"

I know it for a fact. I've known what she was talking about for years. What she hints at with charming restraint.
But why she, of all people, seeks my proximity and looks out for warmth where there cannot actually be any, I just can't wrap my head around. While I unsettle everyone else and puzzle them, Harper thinks she has solved my riddles.

But here, where we should not be, under the cover of the night, with the book about Horcruxes in her hand, she should recognize what I am. What I will be one day.

What does she see in me?

And who of us is wrong?

I ask myself the inevitable question that I never wanted to ask because I thought I had answered it for myself long ago. What initially felt like a moral upset in me has since given way to lethargic equanimity. Where nothing is, nothing can be. It is what it is – I thought.

Until now. Because in the end, it burns too much on my soul to be ignored.

"Harper," I say, lifting her chin so I can see her eyes, "swear to me you'll answer honestly."

"To what?" she asks, perplexed. Then she nods in the light of my serious face. "Yes, well – I swear."

"Tell me – do you think I could murder in cold blood?"

Silence falls between us, but she still does not break away from my gaze.

And that is the crux – I hear it quite clearly in her thoughts how she actually believes in me.

My pulse increases, even if that never happens. Her opinion is obviously more important to me than either of us realize.

She just puts the book down next to us, and then instead of moving away from me, instead of gaining distance, she moves even closer. She takes my hands in hers, and I did not see that coming. Her fingers are ice cold, but her gaze is so warm.

"No," she then simply says . "I don't. I don't think you would. I never have, and I never will. Not because you're not capable of it. Not because you couldn't do it skillfully enough to never get caught – there's no question about that. But I know you're not cold-blooded. You never were to me."

For a split second, I feel like I'm suffocating. Or am I just breathing for the very first time? It is as if my dull, gray soul wants to hear just that. Hear that someone believes in something good in me. Just once, and for the first time, hear that there is not only destructiveness, polemics and hatred.

I could've just as easily come here alone. I could have done what I always do - hide my true colors behind the mask of the reserved model student.

I just didn't want to. I wanted her to be with me. Like an anchor.

But now we hear footsteps approaching.

She freezes, I don't. I've done this too many times before …

I hurriedly place the book about Horcruxes back in the appropriate shelf, then I extinguish the lights of our wands and pull Harper to me behind one of the shelves, so that we can't be seen from the corridor.

We both keep holding our breaths as a beam of light from a lantern is quickly approaching us. Harper is soon biting her lower lip tensely, clinging to me. She rests her head on my chest, completely intuitive. And as inappropriate as this fact may be right now – her body heat against my skin is terribly comfortable.

The steps slow down when the cone of light is at our level, and we both immediately turn our faces away from the aisle.

The librarian also does tours at night – we knew that. But the fact that she seemed to be interested in reading in the Restricted Section herself was news to me.

For about half an hour, we stand behind our shelf, quietly and breathing shallowly, while Madam Pince hums and leafs through the books. She keeps muttering terms and spells, and every now and then she chuckles, causing Harper and me to exchange desperately amused glances.

As I begin to assume that we will never leave this library again, I basically make my peace with that thought. Maybe I should never let Harper go … However, Madam Pince eventually yawns wearily and finds it's actually enough for today. The light of the lantern turns from our direction back into the interior of the library and also the steps of Madam Pince move away.

Only when we can't hear anything at all anymore, we begin to relax.

"I thought we were going to get expelled," Harper groans, then laughs softly as she leaves our hiding place. "That was pretty exciting!"

"It was," I confirm and just smile as we both lean back against the high shelves.

And somehow, I'm not so eager to read more books this night. The shadows of the struts from the moonlit glass windows stand out on Harper's pretty face, as they have for the last half hour – this, and her lack of closeness to me now increasingly irritates me.

And then, when she also looks indecisively at my lips, it's like a reflex. As if, after all the hours, days, weeks and months I've already spent with her, I suddenly know exactly what can save me. I may be beside myself, and even more so when I raise my hand to her cheek, pull her to me and simply kiss her, but it's the only thing that feels right.

It's not a rough kiss, more like our mutually soothed souls have long been intertwined anyways.

And I know we've both wondered for a while what it would be like to have our lips touch. But I was admittedly unprepared for it to be so real and surreal at the same time. So frighteningly meaningful …

As we pull away from each other, a broad smile creeps onto her face. "Why didn't you do that earlier?"

"I'm wondering now as well," I admit. Then, though, I claim, "We were just friends."

"You're lying," she whispers. "We were never just friends."

"No?"

She shakes her head. "No. Must be my singing voice, though …"

I laugh to myself and turn my attention to her much too loose tie knot. "That, too, yes. Come on, I'll take you up to your tower so the caretaker won't come for you."

"How heroic," she quips, and shaking my head, but strangely pleased, I pull her along with me.