Harry started, as if Ron had pricked him with a pin. “Do I not what?”
“You heard me.” Ron was looking at his feet again. “Sometimes you, ah, just stop feeling a certain way about a person, and there isn't anything you can do about it. But you should, you should tell her, because it isn't fair to make her wait around and wonder what's going on with you, and not tell her, and —”
“Is this sentence going to end anytime soon?” Harry said rather sharply.
Ron swallowed his next words, looking mutinous. “You should tell her,” he said again.
Harry shook his head. “If there was something to tell her,” he said quietly, “I would. But I love her, and I always will love her, and to tell her anything else would be a lie.”
Ron looked surprised, so much so that Harry in return was surprised. “But lots of people do…just stop feelings things,” he said. “Don't they?”
“Do I look like I've got the faintest idea what lots of people do?” Harry rubbed his hands over his face. He felt tired again. Tired and worn down.
“Look,” he said, more quietly. “I appreciate you looking out for Hermione, and for me as well. I know how it looks from the outside. I'm sure it looks bad. But of course I still love her. In fact sometimes I worry…”
“Worry what?” Ron said quickly.
“That she doesn't love me.”
“Oh,” said Ron, and then again, “Oh.” He paused. “I'm sure she does.”
“I know.” Harry raised his head and looked at Ron, really looked at him, for the first time in days. At the steady blue eyes, the set mouth, the familiar face. “It's just that I can't talk to her about my parents,” Harry heard himself say.
“Your parents?” Ron looked astonished. “Did something…happen with your parents?”
No, Harry thought acidly, they're still dead, thanks for asking. But he didn't say that. “Not exactly. I've been thinking about them a lot, and I guess that's what's been on my mind. And I know it seems like I should be able to talk to her about that, but I can't…and I'm not the only one who's been distant lately,” he added firmly. “She seems distant too. Distant and kind of…strange.”
“Strange?” Ron echoed.
But Harry didn't want to elaborate. His gaze had lit on what they had come to the trophy room for. “Hey, there it is.”
“There what — oh, right,” said Ron, and got down on his knees just as Harry did. Harry reached out and flipped open the glass case in front of him, and took out a tall bronze-colored cup, to the front of which was affixed a shield inscribed in flowing script: For Special Services To the School: Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, and Ronald Weasley. In the year 1992. “We going to use that?” Ron asked.
“Sure,” Harry said. “It's ours…we can use whatever we want. Hermione said something that looked as much like the cup in the picture as possible, and this does.”
Ron grinned. “I was kind of hoping we could use Tom Riddle's award for special services.”
Harry laughed. “Now that's a brilliant idea. But…Hermione said it had to be a cup.”
“Why? What's the difference? It's getting Transfigured anyway.”
“Yeah,” Harry said, “but it has to be a very, very low-level transfiguration spell, because a stronger spell would set off the detectors in the museum.
So it'll start fading over time. The more it looks like what it's supposed to be, the longer it'll take anyone to notice.”
Ron shook his head. “Does anyone have all the details of this robbery plan besides Hermione?”
Harry shook his head, standing up. “No,” he said. “But I trust her.”
An odd spasm went across Ron's face. Then he smiled, and reached out and touched the cup in Harry's hand. “I remember when we got this,” he said. “Second year.”
Harry looked at Ron narrowly; there was something in Ron's tone he didn't like, as if his best friend were mourning some lost, elegiac Golden Age. “Yeah. I remember.” He held the cup out. “You want to carry it?”
But Ron shook his head, hands in his pockets. “No. It's all right.” He looked towards the door. “We should go,” he said, and ducked his head as Harry swirled the cloak over both of them, and they vanished from sight.
When Ron and Harry returned to the library, Ginny had gone, and Draco and Hermione were sitting together at the table. Hermione had her head on her arms and appeared to be asleep; Draco was reading. He lifted a finger to his lips as Harry and Ron approached.
Harry looked at Draco, then set the cup down on the table and crouched down next to Hermione's seat. She was indeed asleep, her head resting on her crossed arms, her eyes shut. He could see how tired she must be: her eyelids had a waxy, pearlescent sheen, and there were shadows under her eyes. Her lips were parted softly and the tumbled hair that has escaped from its bun stirred with her breathing. He forgot that Draco and Ron were there as he knelt next to her, forgot that anyone else was there besides the two of them, and for that timeless moment hung in a space occupied only by Hermione and himself. He could never forget how much he loved her, but now he was reminded again and forcefully, and he felt it as an ache inside himself, a hard pain in the depths of his soul. If she only knew…
He had not spoken, but her eyelids fluttered open as if she had heard him. She smiled slowly, her clear dark eyes focusing on his face. “Harry…”
He leaned over and kissed her cheek. “I didn't realize you were so tired,” he said gently. “I brought the cup.”
“Oh!” she said, and sat up, rubbing at her eyes. “Thank you.” She yawned, and touched the cup with a smile. “It's adorable, isn't it. What a shame we have to use it for something like this.”
“It's a good cause,” Draco said, without looking up from his book.
