head at Harry, very intently, as if he were trying to communicate something — which he probably was.
Harry put his fork down carefully on his plate, and glanced at Hermione, who had propped against the juice jug and was turning the pages between bites of her toast. 'Hermione,' he said, very softly, 'could I talk to you for a minute?'
She didn't glance up. 'Yes, of course.'
'No, I mean…' His voice dropped even lower. 'Alone. Outside?'
Now Hermione did look up, a look of slight surprise in her eyes. 'Sure,' she said, tucking a dark curl behind her ear, 'we could take a walk, I suppose.'
Ginny knew what that meant; they would go down to the lake, as they always did. She could not count the amount of times she had looked out a classroom window during her third year, and even her fourth, and seen Harry and Hermione walking together along the narrow path that circumnavigated the lake. They would walk very close together, shoulders not quite touching, in perfect alignment, always in step.
Harry pushed his chair back and stood up. 'Let's go.'
Hermione, gathering her books into her bag, glanced over at Ron. 'We have that meeting today, don't we?'
Ron nodded. 'Yeah, right after lunch. You plan on attending this time?'
Hermione made a face at him, and reached to take Harry's outstretched hand. Then she paused, shook her head, took her wand out of her pocket, and pointed it at her boyfriend. 'Detergere,' she said, and the soot vanished from Harry's clothes and hands, leaving just a grimy streak across his left cheekbone. Harry grumbled.
'Honestly,' Hermione said, putting her wand away, 'you'd think you wanted to be filthy.'
'I thought it looked dashing,' said Harry, and took her hand. 'Come on -
let's go.' And as they walked away, Ginny realized that she was staring after them, and returned her eyes hurriedly to her plate — only to realize that everyone else at the table was staring after them as well.
'I think there's something actually going on between Ginny and Seamus,'
Hermione said conversationally, as Harry tugged her along the path.
'Elizabeth said she saw Seamus coming out of Ginny's room at four in the morning. That's good, isn't it? I mean, Seamus is a nice guy, right?'
Harry didn't reply. They were at the perimeter of the lake now, on the narrow path that wound in between the stands of leafless trees. Bare and black, the branches rose into the sky, piled with icing sugar snow.
Hermione wondered briefly where the giant squid went in the winter, when the snow drifts blew across the thick glassy ice and everything seemed so cold and so dead.
'Did you hear me, Harry?'
Harry dropped her hand and turned to face her, standing at the lake's edge. The iced-over water behind him was spangled with glittering snow, the sky very silver. Against it, Harry's black hair, the red in his pale cheeks, the dark burgundy and gold scarf, stood out like splashes of paint on a white canvas. His breath came out in puffs of white frost when he spoke. 'Yes, I heard you. And Seamus is a great guy. Spectacular. I'd date him myself. Whatever. Just — there was something I wanted to talk about with you, and it wasn't Ginny or Seamus.'
Hermione blinked in surprise at his stern tone, then shrugged. 'All right. I wanted to talk to you anyway.'
'Did you?' His green eyes were serious. 'All right, but let me talk first, will you?'
She nodded, a feeling of foreboding tightening her stomach. 'All right, Harry.' She sat down carefully at the base of the nearest oak tree, wrapping her cloak around her knees. 'What is it?'
Harry hunched his shoulders inside his cloak, and was silent for a long time. Hermione sat where she was, letting him think. It always paid to be quiet and let Harry talk when he wanted to. 'I've been thinking,' he said finally, in a very quiet voice. 'And wanting to talk to you, but I wasn't sure when would be a good time.'
Hermione looked more closely at him, a bit startled. His face was set, unexpressive. She had seen that same look on his face before. She remembered Slytherin's castle, Harry chained to the wall, refusing to tell her what Draco had said to him that was terrible enough to shatter an adamantine door. I'll just tell you that it was something really, really terrible. Something I won't forget. Ever. Something… unforgivable.
'I know I've been…distant lately,' he said finally, in a low voice, shoving his balled fists into his pockets. She wondered suddenly if he had brought her out there to break up with her, and the thought made her stomach lurch crazily in protest. I knew it, she thought, I knew it. 'Harry…' she whispered.
He went on as if she hadn't spoken. 'I wish I wasn't, but…I don't know how else to be right now. When I was…' He hesitated a moment, seeming to gather himself together, then went on with the air of someone falling into a bottomless black pit. 'When I lived with the Dursleys, when I was a kid, I used to imagine what my parents might have been like, if they'd lived.'
Hermione's lips parted in surprise. Harry never talked about his childhood before he had come to school. Never. 'Well, of course, anyone would — '
'No,' he said, cutting her off, although not unkindly. 'I really imagined it.
I didn't know what my parents had looked like. The Dursleys told me they'd been ugly, low-class, but I never believed that. I assumed my mother had been beautiful, that my father had been handsome, and that, of course, they'd loved me more than anything in the world.'
Hermione felt the back of her eyes sting. 'I'm sure they did,' she said softly.
'I didn't know what color hair my mother had. I thought maybe she'd had black hair, and I'd inherited it…I thought maybe my father was blond, I pictured him being tall and strong. I thought about that car accident they were supposed to have died in. I wondered where they'd been driving from, where they'd been going. I told myself that they'd been spies, working for the government, that they hadn't really died, they'd just been forced to go underground and leave me behind because the work they'd been doing was so dangerous. I told myself they'd be back to get me one day. I knew where we'd live together, what the house would look like -
blue, with every room painted a different color, because everything at the Dursleys was the same shade of gray…' His voice cracked a little, as it had when it had been changing. 'I furnished every room inside my head. I knew where all my toys would be. The names of the pets I'd have. I wrote everything down so I wouldn't forget. I didn't live in that dark closet under the stairs. I lived in that house, with my parents.'
Hermione realized she was crying. She ducked her head so Harry wouldn't see. She wanted him to go on.
'I used to write everything down in an old notebook of Dudley's,' said Harry quietly, looking out over the lake. 'And one day of course, I was careless, and my uncle found it and read it. He dragged me out of the broom closet and shoved me up against the wall and I still remember what he said to me. 'Your parents are dead, boy. They're not spies, they're not working for the government. They're dead. They'll never come to take you anywhere. They died stupid, pointless deaths, and they lived stupid, pointless lives, and I'd be glad they were dead if it hadn't landed us with you. And all your dreaming won't bring them back.' And that was that.'
He paused. 'That was when I was eight years old.'
'Your notebook…' Hermione whispered.
'I burned it,' said Harry flatly. 'I knew my uncle was right. I couldn't bring them back.'
'You believed him? That they were dead?'
'I knew it. I could see it in his eyes. He looked triumphant. He wouldn't have looked like that if he'd been lying.' Harry's voice was thick with loathing. 'He really was glad they were dead. I despised him. But I never thought about that house again. It was ruined. And it was hard. Like losing my parents again.' His words came out clipped and staccato. 'And then I came here, and I had another home — a real one. And I saw what my parents really looked like. And I knew that they had loved me. Would have been proud of me. Were proud of me. A world where ghosts walk and talk…I just assumed they were somewhere, watching me. That my father could see me fly. That my mother knew I'd faced a dragon. That they knew that everything I did, every day, was in some way an effort to redeem the sacrifice they'd made to keep me alive.'
'Oh, Harry,' Hermione whispered. 'Oh, darling, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry.' The snow crackled under her feet
