They woke together in Harry's hospital bed while it was still dark, their arms around each other. Pansy woke first, stirring and kissing Harry's cheek before realising where they were. She bounced out of bed as Harry started to rise to a heavy, syrupy consciousness.
By the time his eyes were fully open, she had pulled her sweater back on and was kissing him.
"I'm sorry, we fell asleep!" she said, kissing him again and again. "I have to get back to the isolation or Snape will skin me alive."
Harry coughed, head spinning, full of the smell of her and the peace found in the dark in her arms. "Go, but come back."
"Always." She kissed him again, mashing their lips together.
Then she was gone, leaving him with a head full of love and an agonisingly full bladder.
While he stood in the bathroom, his soul was still held in her arms, sharing kisses and promises, thanks and apologies and eventually just being content to share the dark.
He wasn't quite recovered – that much was certain. His magic was roaring through his mind, filling his body and some parts more than others after last night, but his body wasn't there yet. His shoulders were tight, his head still foggy and his stomach uncomfortable. But he was feeling much better.
The sky was still dark through the eastern window as he returned to the wing and his bed. He crawled back under his sheets, his body torn between exhaustion and overstimulation. The bed was cold and hollow without her.
He managed a couple of hours of thin sleep, punctuated with the screams of grindylows and tearing shark teeth before the snap of the main door closing woke him.
Pomphrey entered and checked him him over and declared him fit to return to the school proper. When he asked about the book autographed to her, she smiled and turned it over in her hands.
"It's been a long time since I actually read this, Potter," she said, running her finger down the spine. "What did you see in it that you chose this of all those on the shelf – when you should have been resting?"
Harry found he didn't have an answer that didn't sound a little flat and opted for the truth. "Honestly, Madam Pomphrey, I liked the title. I think the whole Great War bit really spoke to me, considering… everything."
She nodded solemnly; her face inscrutable. "Quite."
Her not taking offence at his remark spurred him on. "It wasn't until I read the name of the author and the dedication that I really… I don't know. I guess I've never had to associate war with anything other than loss before. You have always been here to patch us back together when we get hurt, and we don't really learn any healing – or haven't yet."
She scoffed, turning the book over and over in her long, pale hands. "Indeed. The healing arts are neglected here in the early years. At OWL level some of the basics are taught, but it's an extremely taxing field of study; easy to make terrible mistakes. There's a reason there are so few qualified healers."
"Dangerous how?" he asked, his curiosity growing.
"Well frankly – and to grossly oversimplify matters – it's a matter of shaping your own energy and transferring it to another in order to put right whatever is wrong with them. It's very easy to do potentially hideous damage to oneself while trying to do good. Control is key and very few witches and wizards actually have the degree of empathy needed to do more than fix a broken toe. But this is not a lesson in moponurgy, Mr. Potter. Be off with you before I set you to work."
Harry laughed, intrigued. "Thank you Madame Pomphrey, I really appreciate it."
He paused, looking between her and the book.
"You're not having this Potter, this copy is mine. But I understand that there are a couple of copies in the library. Just ask Irma nicely and I'm sure she will help. But if you do decide to try your hand at healing, do let me know. I'll try to stop you killing yourself."
Harry nodded and affected a slight bow before ducking behind his screens and dressing at top speed. When he emerged, Pomphrey was nowhere to be seen, so he left the hospital as quickly and quietly as possible.
He headed straight for the Great Hall, hoping to catch the end of breakfast. As if they'd know he was coming, the twins were waiting at the foot of the back stair for him.
After a high-five, fist bumps and another round of congratulations, the twins threw their arms around Harry's shoulders and forcibly escorted him through the corridors and into the great hall.
"Everyone welcome home," they roared together, "the first of the Hogwarts Triwizard Champions to get their arse out of bed! Greet him, adore him, bask in his radiance!"
Harry elbowed them both in the ribs, grimacing as dozens of faces turned to him and glad it was a Saturday, with most of the school still in bed.
They desisted as Hermione and Ron met them halfway down the hall, Hermione grabbing him in a ferocious hug.
While he was drawn to the Gryffindor benches, he caught Blaise's eye and he made a small shake of his head.
"She's still not free." Hermione said, setting to work buttering a piece of toast.
Ron stared at Harry with a grin. "Good night?"
Harry nodded, torn between the white-hot memories and the misery of her absence. "Yeah, thanks for everything."
Hermione looked from Harry to Ron and back again, trying to discern what they were keeping from her, but returned to the toast after a few moments. "Eat this," she ordered, dropping the slice of peanut butter and blackberry jam (his favourite) on his plate. "The oleic will do you good."
Harry sat back and ate his toast in a few minutes of quiet while Ron and Hermione bickered about whether peanut butter was too processed to have enough of the oleic that was – apparently – a key nutrient for magicians to be able to convert their body's energy to magic.
Eventually, peace was broken when Nicholas Abercrombie, Boris Tailor and Angelica Bavairan from the NEWT duelling club arrived, desperate to re-hash and go over the second task.
That proved to be the last drop of water needed to break the dam of excitement held in the room. In the absence of Cedric, Fleur and Krum – all still recovering in their own ways – the tension over desire to get a first-hand account of their time in lake had reached a borderline fever pitch.
Harry spent what felt like hours shaking hands, being clapped on the back and generally badgered for even the most tenuous scrap of information on the Task. By the time he managed to pick his way back to the entrance to the Great Hall – flanked by his friends as a kind of buffer – his pockets filled with chocolate frogs, more than a few little folded scraps of paper, what appeared to be a real rabbit's foot for luck and a little handmade charm bracelet with each charm being a different Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Bean.
They eventually broke free and made their way into the grounds, warming themselves with jets of hot air from Fred and George's wands. Harry, Ron, Hermione, Fred, Angelina and George weaved their way from the greenhouses, to down near Hagrid's, the lake and the edge of the forest to deter hangers-on as they started to really digest the events.
The more he talked, the more he felt a level of tension he had come to accept as normal evaporating from him, leaving behind only the vague misery of not being able to have Pansy with him and a strange sense of some indescribable change in his perception.
As he walked, he found it slightly easier to sense the flow of all the magical energies around him. It normally took a degree of focus to achieve, even among the dense fields of the Hogwarts grounds, but he found his perception sliding a couple of times during their long walk. He consciously avoided discussion of his burnout and how Sirius had helped him through it – if he had at all, the whole thing was very complex in his mind.
Ginny joined them when they wound back through the gardens for the second time. She soared down to meet them, riding Fred's broom, red-faced and sweating in riding leathers.
Then there came another, quicker round of recounting the Task, followed by Ron's siblings vigorously mockery of him for how he had inflated his own part in the event.
"Be glad you didn't get out yesterday," said George, "he was banging on about it with Luna and the other magpies about how he had been ambushed in the corridor by merfolk and they had to beat him unconscious."
Ron turned a vivid scarlet and after a few minutes of ribbing, diverted their attention back to the present and steered them into the warmth of Greenhouse five where they drifted apart. The rest of a lazy Saturday was spent doing little more than chatting and an almost endless pick-up game of five-a-side quidditch during which Hermione, with her normal disdain for the sport – wandered off to the library: an excuse no one believed for one moment.
Over the hour the game became positively cosmopolitan, with Luna being the first non-Gryffindor to join, demonstrating herself a more than capable seeker, after which a couple of Ravenclaws joined. But the biggest shock of all was when Blaise Zabini and Theodore Nott asked if they could join, each taking opposite sides as a chaser and beater respectively.
Harry handed the reins of seeker to Ginny after a while and collapsed onto a bench next to Sophia Andersen and Millicent Bullstrode who were prepared to discuss Pansy's punishment and isolation.
That evening, filled with dinner and sleepy, they returned to a common room decked out in even more scarlet and gold than normal, music blasting and even more food and drink.
Exhausted as he was, he was powerless to resist the pull of the crowd and was dragged into more singing, dancing and eating. He was prevented from asking Ron how he had secured Pansy's brief freedom from the Slytherin isolation rooms, which left him dully frustrated the whole time, and was desperately relieved when he managed to extract himself from the party before it grew too rowdy.
"Don't worry about it," Neville said as they both crashed into their beds a little after midnight, "they won't go too crazy – not after the mess at Christmas."
Harry, glad that he had quit before his head started to spin, tried his best to stay awake for Ron's return.