Harry had been seeing Pansy in his spare time for a few days to help his memory and he was sure he was making progress.

He still had memory lapses but he was confident he could fill them.

They had arranged to meet early that morning, that they had the whole day off and she would be waiting for him on one of the benches in the courtyard. He decided to surprise her and show up there hidden under his father's invisibility cloak that was given to him in his first year of school.

It was nice to be able to blend in and be able to disappear from the spotlight.

He had come out of the large wooden door and could not hold back a smile. He saw Pansy waiting for him wearing a beige cap to match her ankle boots, her white school summer shirt and a black gingham miniskirt to match her stockings and thin choker. He wanted to approach from behind and then reveal himself to the girl but he stopped.

A smaller girl with long, straight red hair and her freckled face was approaching Pansy menacingly.

The redhead coughed loudly to try and get the Slytherin's attention.

"Is there any problem?" Pansy asked smugly.

"Yes, you are the problem." She answered the other sharply.

"I don't know what you are talking about."

"I think you know the situation perfectly, Pugface. Stay away from my Harry Potter."

Pansy snorted.

"Don't tell me you're another one of his stalkers... And anyway he's my friend, I couldn't stay away from him."

The redhead was seething with anger.

"LIAR, YOU ARE NOT HIS FRIEND!" she yelled as she kept her grip on her wand tight.

"I don't know what game you're playing you filthy snake but stop going out with him or..."

"Or what?"

The redhead whipped around to see Harry Potter magically appearing behind her.

The slytherin was also surprised but she was very good at hiding it.

"H-harry I wanted to help you..." the girl answered hesitantly.

"Ginny, threatening people around me doesn't help at all." He answered coldly.

"But Harry, he's manipulating you! He's simply trying to take advantage of your situation and..."

"Ginny, she's not Tom."

Ginny shivered at that name.

"I-I thought..."

"You thought wrong. She's not manipulating me but helping because I asked her to."

Ginny was almost crying.

"H-Harry I don't understand you, w-why?"

"Because she's my friend. Apologize to her and get out of my sight."

Ginny fought back her tears with a huge effort.

She turned her head down to Pansy.

"Sorry…" she said softly then ran away from them, bursting into a vale of tears.

Harry was angry but was holding back his feelings with all his might.

Pansy understood it, there had to be a particular reason why he was so angry and abrupt with his best friend's sister.

"...do you want to talk about it?" she suggested looking at him.

The boy was having that emotional block again and he couldn't answer her.

The girl held out her hand. Harry shivered a little at the grip but quickly calmed down.

"Follow me." She invited him and they walked away hand in hand.

They walked for a few minutes until they came to a large isolated tree near the lake.

They sat by the roots of that tree, with their hands still together.

She waited silently for him to speak.

"Seeing Ginny approach you reminded me of a lot of things about my second year."

He said in a tired and depressed voice.

"Even Lockhart's Spongify carpets?"

"Unfortunately I remembered those even before." He smiled back at the memory of those nasty bouncing carpets their second year DADA professor had placed all over the school.

"She reminded me of the events in the chamber of secrets, how everyone thought I was Salazar's heir and...and the beast that was petrifying the students."

he took a deep breath.

"These are events I shouldn't tell anyone about but I trust you."

The girl looked away embarrassed.

She herself thought that a lying snake like her did not deserve to be defended or to have his trust.

Still, she was so happy that he was giving this to her.

"It was a Basilisk. The beast that was petrifying the students was a gigantic basilisk hidden in the school pipes. I was the only one who heard its voice because I am a parselmouth. And think, the entrance to the room was hidden in Myrtle's bathroom..."

"It was a dark, damp and above all terrifying place but never like the scene I saw. There was Ginny passed out and bleeding on the ground and next to her was whoever had really opened the room: a student who attended Hogwarts years ago, Tom Riddle."

"Tom had manipulated and controlled Ginny in her naivety and crush on me into opening the chamber and attacking the students via a diary containing his memories. But he needed her soul to return to his real body, that of Lord Voldemort."

"I fought him and the basilisk. That beast had bitten me, if it wasn't for the headmaster's phoenix I would be dead now."

He showed the scar of the bite on his arm.

"I still remember when I was about to die, my whole miserable life was passing in front of me. I just wanted to disappear and stop suffering but when I was about to give up, I saw a face. It was yours and you smiled at me, you told me to go on.

Yet when I left there I remember never going to talk to you or thank you..."

A voice hissed in his head.

"You're as pathetic as Wormtail. Why didn't you die there?"

The boy didn't notice a tear down his face.

"I shouldn't have reacted so harshly to Ginny yet when I saw her there threatening you I couldn't take it anymore. I was going to die to save her and she treats like this the only person who really saved my life?"

There was a moment of silence.

The girl gently touched the scar on the boy's arm.

"It must have been a terrible experience but you have to look on the bright side of it: you're alive. That's what really matters, Harry."

She brought his arm to her lips and kissed his scar.

"And look on the bright side: you have an everlasting memory of me on your body!"

Both burst out laughing, while tears finished falling from the boy's eyes.

"Thank you. Thanks for existing." Harry commented as he wiped his eyes.

Pansy looked at him apprehensively.

They spent the rest of the morning much more cheerfully, recounting lighter matters and memories.

They were on their way to the castle for lunch.

"So you're telling me you have an invisibility cloak? Sometimes you have to lend it to me!"

"Sorry, exclusive Potter property."

The girl gleefully slapped his arm in protest. Soon an evil idea flashed into her head.

She brought her lips perilously close to his ear.

"So if I became Mrs. Potter I wouldn't have this problem, right?" She whispered to him.

Harry preferred not to answer even though he had turned totally red.

The boy hadn't even realized that they had entered the Great Hall still holding hands.

"Would you like to sit at the Gryffindor table?" He proposed to her while he scratched the back of his neck with his free hand.

Pansy noticed that some curious students at the Gryffindor and Slytherin tables were watching them.

She accepted by nodding her head.

They sat down in one of the seats at the far end of the table and continued to talk merrily on the sidelines.

The rumors around them increased but on that moment they were too happy to care about the opinion of others.