'Is this about this summer?' she asked, her voice cracking. 'I know we went through hell, Harry, and I know how awful it was — '
'You don?t know,' he said, and his voice was like the ice that sparkled on the windowpanes.
' Then tell me.'
Harry seemed to hesitate for a moment. He was sitting with his back against the armchair now, leaning away from her, hair wild and disarranged, flushed from kissing and from anger. His eyes met hers, and held and for a moment, just a moment, she felt the old connection spring to life between them, as vibrant as a living thing.
Then Harry looked away, and it was gone. 'Just let it alone, Hermione,' he said. 'Please.'
'No,' she said. 'I won?t do that.'
'Then we have nothing to say to each other,' he said, and got to his feet.
Hermione looked at him in disbelief.
'Harry-'
'Just leave me alone!' he shouted, and the shock of Harry shouting, actually shouting at her, stunned her into silence. She sat where she was, not moving, as Harry grabbed his red cloak up off the back of his chair and stalked out through the portrait hole.
Harry barely registered his surroundings as he flung himself down the stairs, through the darkened hallways, and through the front doors of the school. He was too full of unreasonable rage, born out of a pain so inarticulate and blinding that it might as well have been physical. His hands still tingled with the feeling of Hermiones skin under his, and his mouth still tasted of hers, and he still saw the expression in her eyes when she had looked at him from the floor. Then tell me!
But I can?t do that.
The cold air hit him like a Bludger as soon as he stepped outside. He pulled his cloak tightly around him, but it still stung his eyes, his mouth.
He went down the stairs and his boots crunched on the snow that had piled there. He had no idea where he was going. The world was beautiful and cold and glittering silver and black, the sky a flawed diamond chased with iron. The edge of the Forbidden Forest loomed dark and jagged in the distance. Harry wanted to disappear into it, into the cold and the darkness. He wanted to be alone and not to have to think or talk to anyone.
He had never felt this way before. There had never been a problem that had not been eased by the presence of Hermione or Ron. He did not know when the subtle shift had taken place inside him, but it had, and while he could bear Rons company, for Ron did not ask him questions, being with Hermione filled him with guilt and shame and pain.
He set off across the snow. More snow had fallen after dinner and the ground was white and trackless and empty, marked only by shadows. He might have been the only person left alive, making his way in solitude across the skin of a deserted world.
He reached the edge of the Forest, and remembered having been here as a first year, terrified, trailing an angry Draco Malfoy in his wake. They had been eleven. It seemed a hundred years ago. He raised his hand to push back a tree branch, and the moonlight caught and glimmered on the watch that banded his wrist.
He paused and stared at it. Its gold face, the black numbers, the watch his father had worn until the day he died, and Sirius had taken it off his dead wrist, and then Hermione had made it work again, for him. He knew by heart what was engraved on the base. For Harry, from Hermione, your best friend.
Hermione. An arrow of dismay shot through him. What have I done? He stopped dead in his tracks and turned to go back to the castle, but his foot caught in a bent tree root, and he fell forward into the snow.
The map led Draco to an old stone wall at the edge of the Forbidden Forest, in the center of a deserted clearing. A tree had grown up through the center of the wall, splitting the stones apart with its roots. Draco leaned back against its trunk in the shadow of its bare leafless branches, and looked out over the frozen landscape.
The sky had darkened to cobalt, marked here and there with the thumbprint of a black cloud. Everywhere the snow stretched white and cold and sparkling, coated with shimmering ice. The lake was an iced-over diamond, softened to a muted blue by the gathering darkness. And in the distance the castle rose, dark and shadowy and ancient, looking as it must have looked a thousand years ago when Salazar Slytherin and Godric Gryffindor had lived there as children.
Sometimes, looking out at the castle, memories of that other life came to him, as easily as the memory of a dream. They had been present here together for the building of the castle, the two young men, still almost children, riding horses side by side through the dry blue waters of the cornflower fields in summer. Just by touching his hands to the old stone wall, he could hear their boys? voices echo in his head.
Come down off the wall, Salazar, why break your neck?
Why not?
You know why not.
Do you love me so much as all that, Godric?
I love you well enough.
Draco opened his eyes. He wondered if Rowena were still alive, would she cry to know what had become of Slytherin, her first love, forever trapped in Hell? He wondered briefly what Hell was like. A burning place, as it was usually depicted? Or a frozen land of ice and snow, warmed by no fires, lit by no light at all?
While he was considering this, there was a loud snapping noise overhead, and a girl fell out of the tree and landed on top of on him.
He tried to get his hands out of his pockets to catch her, but the sound of the breaking branch had startled him and slowed his responses. He did take a step back, but it wasn?t enough. She fell directly onto him and they rolled sideways down a slight incline into a snow bank. When they came to a stop, he found that she was half-lying on top of him, her knees almost pinning his arms to his sides, her familiar gray eyes sparkling with amusement.
'Hallo Draco,' she said, sitting up. 'Are you all right?'
Draco blinked up at her. She was dressed, as she always was, in what amounted almost to period costume. Today she wore a rich dark wool dress, low-necked, with slashed sleeves just visible beneath her violet cloak. The cloak fastened at her shoulder with a gold pin in the shape of a poppy. There were jewels caught in her hair, emeralds and garnets, and when she moved they caught the moonlight and glimmered like Christmas lights, an effect that was probably intentional.
He sighed. 'Rhysenn. Yes. Fortunately I cleverly used my spine to break our fall.'
'You don?t sound pleased to see me.'
'I?m surprised I sound anything. I can?t breathe.'
This was true. Instead of sitting on his stomach, Rhysenn was sitting squarely on his ribs. She was light, but his breathing was still constricted.
Instead of shifting, she merely pouted. As always, she reminded him of a tightly wound musical instrument. A violin, maybe. She was that delicate-looking, and vibrated to that high a pitch.
'I had a really clever comment all worked out,' said Draco wistfully.
'Then you fell on my head and I forgot what it was.'
'Tell me anyway.'
'I can?t, the moments past.'
Rhysenn shook her head and the gems glittered in her hair. 'You think too much,' she said.
The snow was beginning to soak into the back of Dracos cloak. He shivered. 'Such men are dangerous,' he said.
Rhysenn didn?t reply. Her eyes were glittering, flat gray and amused. 'Do you want the message I have for you,' she said at last, 'or not?'
Draco yawned. Snow went into his mouth. He tried not to splutter. 'Have I got a choice?'
'Not really.' Rhysenn was smirking. This was her favorite part, when Draco had to play hide-and-seek to find the parchment concealed among her voluminous clothes. Usually Draco played along, but tonight he was feeling
