The first time he hugs you, time freezes into a thousand eternities–just as you do. And you will never know that the moment lasted for just what it is–a moment, not even half a grain in the sands of time.

For you, that moment will always signify those long-forgotten daydreams that suddenly, unexpectedly, came to life right when they shouldn’t: him walking towards you, face alight with mirth, each purposeful step telling you that he wants you and nothing else, and a quick gust of breath fanning your forehead before his arms enfolds you.

You forget to breathe. You forget everything else, in fact. You are, however, aware of all the littlest minutiae that compose the moment. You are aware of the fact that your heart longs to implode with the sudden lack of air circulating into it, that he smells of damp autumn air, and that his arms are like…the Burrow. Like home.

The concept of time comes back to you when you feel his arms stiffen. He lets you go. The mirth in his eyes is gone; you can only see his gaze vainly trying to evade yours. You see his Adam’s apple bob once as he gives you a quick nod. And he walks away towards Ron, just as stiffly, leaving you slightly open-mouthed.

It is Dean’s grin that shakes you out of your shock. He embraces you and whispers something in your ear, but you don’t hear him; you have been busily trying to rationalize what just took place.

You later reckon that this was when it all started. Again. You replay the scene over and over again in your head and always come to the same conclusion: there’s something in Harry’s eyes whenever he looks at you, something you’ve never seen in them before but have always hoped to see.

And you shake your head and bury it under your pillow, realizing how wrong it is to think about him in this way. Wrong, you tell yourself over and over again. This is just so wrong.

But it doesn’t really have to start all over again. It has been shut in the deepest recesses of your heart through a willful effort of your own from the moment Michael Corner asked you to dance a couple of years ago. It has always existed, however, occasionally stirring from its prison when he smiles at you, or during that time when he stood in front of you to shield you from Death Eaters. With every stirring, you silence it, sometimes deliberately.

But when Harry hugged you, he freed the feeling. It is back, and as time passes, it continues to flood your whole being. You are unable to contain it any longer.

* * *

The feeling is more distinct than ever when, months later, his eyes do not meet yours as he tells you that he wants you to play Seeker on Saturday.

You gape at him. You know that’s impossible; you haven’t Seeked since last year, and no one else can win the Quidditch Cup for Gryffindor but him. His eyes do not leave the floor. He seems determined not to look back at you.

"Dean will have to join you as Chaser," he tells you. "Don’t worry, you…you can still win. You have to."

He doesn’t sound as enthusiastic as his words. You can only hear the regret, the devastation, as his voice cracks. You want to say something comforting and perhaps embrace him too. In fact, you are bursting to do exactly just that.

But you can only stare at his averted face, unable to speak.

Hermione chastises him. Ron makes her stop; Harry answers her back obstinately, although you can see the guilt laced in his voice. And yet, how can he be guilty? How can Quidditch or detention matter over the fact that he just had to save his own life from Malfoy? And why can’t he just look at you?

You force the teasing voice down. You’ve sensed it, of course, during those times when you caught his eyes during practice or when he ran after you so that you could go back to the castle together after practice. You’ve tried to keep yourself focused on the game, but when his minor Bludger injuries have become too many to be real, you felt awash with a thrill you only know too well.

Is that what he’s so anxious about? Wasting all the time and energy you and the rest of your teammates have put in the recent practices?

What are you going to do on tomorrow’s match, anyway?

Harry and Hermione are still snapping at each other, and when Hermione gives a particularly nasty remark, you couldn’t help yourself any longer. "Give it a rest, Hermione! By the sound of it, Malfoy was trying to use an Unforgivable Curse, you should be glad Harry had something good up his sleeve!"

You surprise yourself; you have never yelled at Hermione before. She looks surprised and offended. "Well, of course I’m glad Harry wasn’t cursed! But you can’t call that Sectumsempra spell good, Ginny, look where it’s landed him! And I’d have thought, seeing what this has done to your chances in the match–"

Her words strike hard. "Oh don’t start acting as though you understand Quidditch," you tell her, feeling anger and dread well up in you. "You’ll only embarrass yourself."

You don’t need to glance at Harry to see that relief has cleared his expression of guilt.

You wake up before anyone else the next day to practice. You are determined to finish what you and the team have worked hard for this year. But above all, you want to prove to yourself that Harry has chosen you to replace him for a good reason. You will not disappoint yourself...and certainly not him.

It is his trust in you that drives you to lead the team to its limits, to its best–to its victory.

When he comes back to Gryffindor Tower, you can’t help but rush over to him, your heart bursting with your triumph over your doubts about yourself, and with the knowledge that he knew you can still win.

You don’t know what it is that brought you to him, but in his arms, everything feels right.

And the day turns out to be more wonderful than it already is.

* * *

Weeks pass, and in those days you forget the difference between right and wrong. Or, more aptly, you can no longer comprehend what is so wrong with what you are feeling. Afternoons of spring sunlight filtering through tree branches, stolen kisses during lunchtime, and black, messy hair through your fingers do that to you.

There is, however, a part of you that attempts to close the floodgates of your heart. In vain it tries, whispering that this is wrong, so wrong. You don’t heed it–in fact, you cannot hear it–for you have never felt so right about something.

So it tries to whisper something else to you.

The thought occurs to you one lazy, tranquil moment as you lean against his legs and his hand gets lost in your hair. There should have been no unwelcome thought pervading your mind. But then, you see the Daily Prophet Hermione has just discarded to the floor, and pick it up unthinkingly.

Another dementor attack. The third this week. This time, it is a young mother of two.

It never ends.

You know you should have gotten used to it by now, but as is the case every time you read the papers, your heart sinks to the pit of your stomach. Half of the time it is in the anxiety of seeing the name of someone you know on the paper; otherwise, it is in the realization of the inevitability of the Death Eaters’ campaign against...well, the whole world in general.

Harry doesn’t seem to be aware of any of your ruminations; he is sitting on the couch, intent on listening to your brother’s self-glorifying version of the last Quidditch match. And something at the back of your mind asks, Why should this matter to you?

And you suddenly feel sick to the stomach. Of course it matters; you are a part of the fight as much as the family of that poor woman is. This is everybody’s fight. You cannot stand watching it all happen on the impersonal newspapers. You cannot stand waiting, waiting for someone outside Hogwarts to take care of whatever is happening out there, waiting until you’re told that you’re old enough to do something about it. All these will keep on happening until Voldemort gets defeated.

You are stunned by the sudden way the thought has presented itself. And when you become aware of Harry’s hand in your hair again, you give an involuntary shudder.

Harry freezes. You suppose he has stopped to read the dreadful news–and so you blurt out, forcing a light tone of voice, "Three dementor attacks in a week, and all Romilda Vane does is ask me if it’s true you’ve got a hippogriff tattooed across your chest."

Ron and Hermione burst out laughing.

For the next half hour, you manage to hide your thoughts under laughter and jibe as you join in the conversation and mock your brother. The common room slowly empties, and when you hear the old clock above the fireplace chime twelve times, Hermione declares sleepiness. Ron stands up from Harry’s side soon after.

"I’m staying for a while," Harry says. You feel a slight, surreptitious tug at your hair.

Ron throws a suspicious look at the two of you. "Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, then."

"That doesn’t leave out much, does it?" you say with a mischievous grin. Harry laughs; Ron scowls and climbs up the stairs, his cheeks flaming red as his hair.

You take Ron’s recently vacated seat, tuck your legs under you, and prop History of Magic on your lap. Out of the corner of your eye, you see Harry looking at you with a small smile on his lips. You keep your lips sealed and your eyes glued to the book, trying hard not to grin broadly.

"So are we going to stare at each other all night?"

You raise your eyes at him and immediately regret it. His cocky smile disarms you for a moment; you promptly put your gaze back on your book. "Whoever said I’m staring at you? I’m studying, Harry."

"No, you’re not," he says, chuckling. He crawls over to your side of the couch and tugs at your book.

"That’s an insult," you pretend to snap, yanking the book back towards you. You try to scowl, but your lips seem to have a mind of their own.

Harry laughs again and tugs at your book more firmly. Defeated, you let the book go. "If I fail as many O.W.L.s as Fred and George did, I won’t hesitate to blame you," you tell him.

His indignant look doesn’t look too convincing. "I’m doing you a favor! Too much studying can be dead stressing…" he lowers his voice at the last sentence.

And you give up. You make a face before closing your eyes and meeting his lips. He kisses you slowly and teasingly as he circles his arms around your waist and you forget about pretending. You part your lips and snake your arms up his biceps.

"You did it again," you murmur against his lips after several minutes.

"Did what?"

"The lines."

He looks at you and grins cockily. "They work, don’t they?"

"Whatever, Harry."

He smirks and kisses you quickly before he lets his lips trail onto the sensitive spot under your earlobe. You close your eyes, shivering in the burst of pleasure that courses through your veins.

He takes a deep breath in the crook of your neck. "You smell of flowers," he murmurs.

Your eyes flutter open. Harry has spoken as if he’s speaking to himself. Lazily, you smile, gazing upwards until you see the clock on top of the fireplace.

Twelve twenty-five.

The seconds hand continues to go round the clock. Tick, tick, tick. Every second that passes is louder than the one preceding it. Round and round, continuous...time passes, slips through her fingers. It is inevitable, unstoppable.

Something inside you snaps, and before you realize what you’re doing, you push him away.

He blinks at you in surprise. "Sorry–did I–are you okay?"

He pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose. His eyes are fixed steadily at you, filled with apprehension. You are staring at him with an expression not unlike his, but for a different reason: you are thinking of the fleetingness of this moment, while he...he is thinking of nothing else but you. He is wasting no thoughts on Dementors or Death Eaters in the brief time that you have. Right now, his world is all about you.

Anytime soon, the voice in your head whispers. And you whisper back a sudden realization: But not now. You reach out and sweep his hair off his forehead; your fingers brush his scar. At least we have this moment.

You feign a lost, questioning look. "When did Burdock Muldoon become Chief of the Wizard’s Council again?"

Your question incites the desired reaction from him. He stares at you dumbly for a couple of seconds until his face makes way for a look of total incredulity. "I kiss you with all my might and all you can think of is History of bloody Magic?"

You laugh out loud and catch his face in your hands. "I’m kidding," you tell him. And you kiss him, all the while pushing thoughts of clocks and ghastly whispers from your head.

He does something similar a few weeks later. In the midst of a deep kiss, he gently pulls away. His eyes, both brightened by the summer sunlight and deadened by a deep, unfathomable sorrow, gaze at yours. In them you see the pain of vacillation. There is something he has to do, and you know what it is, but something in your eyes–you don’t know what–tells him not to do it.

"Harry?"

He shakes his head and smiles weakly. And he claims your mouth and leaves your lungs screaming for air; he brands your lips with his, and his with yours, as though nothing else should touch your lips while his are gone for a long, long time.

Anytime soon. The voice has spoken again.

But it doesn’t prepare you when the moment arrives. It doesn’t stop your tears from trailing continuously down your cheeks when you’ve finally locked yourself in the privacy of your dormitory.

* * *

His silence unnerves you. He surveys his surroundings, vigilant eyes piercing through lenses. In those moments when you are able to watch him without him seeing, you see that his back is straighter and his head held higher, like a buck sensing danger in a distance. His stance is almost regal. It unnerves you, for you can only remember swinging arms, graceful Quidditch moves, and gentle hands skimming over your skin.

The sun has just sunk over the horizon, and the sky overhead is becoming a darker shade of violet. Fred and George have brought out floating baubles which twinkled with a pale golden light, illuminating your backyard, which since yesterday is rid of unruly vines and gnomes and is now cluttered with the remnants of the recent wedding.

Most of the guests have left; only a few close relatives and friends are still in the backyard, drinking butterbeer and having a laugh. Bill and Fleur are still at the head table with your parents and the Delacours, listening to a seemingly impassioned speech about love and commitment by Fleur’s stunning half-Veela mother. The speech has been going on for perhaps a half an hour now and you can see your father’s eyelids drooping, but Bill is still listening with rapt attention.

You swallow the lump that rises to your throat. There’s no use sobbing like an idiot again; you’ve shed enough tears when the newlyweds kissed a few hours earlier. Those horrible scars on Bill’s face seemed to fade as he grinned down his new wife, and Fleur beamed back at him through his mangled features with what could only be love.

And then, she tilted her face so that her lips easily slid into Bill’s crooked ones.

Love. The word never ceases to engulf you in a whirlwind of emotions. And as though following your instincts, your eyes wander to that corner of the backyard where Harry is sitting by himself.

He looks out of place. While everybody else seems to be having fun, he is simply sitting there, observing.

Or perhaps he isn’t observing at all. He must be...just thinking. Or planning. What exactly, you have absolutely no idea. But you are not surprised.

Your robes itch where the lace brushes your skin. Part of you wants to relieve yourself of the robes, but you are not done yet with the night. You still haven’t spoken to him. There isn’t anything you want to say, really. You don’t expect him to tell you about his plans or let you give you a comforting embrace–or end the night with a kiss.

You wish for it, of course, though you know it is in vain. But then, above all, you just want to pull him out of that chair and make him smile for the first time in days.

Will he even look at you? He has told you that you can’t be together. So stupidly noble of him.

Music drifts to the backyard from somewhere you can’t locate. The last dance for the night. As if on cue, Bill and Fleur stand up and excuse themselves. Everybody watches as they slowly walk to the middle of the yard and draw each other close. Then Remus and Tonks follow them, and Ron and Hermione. And your eyes wander towards Harry again.

He has been gazing at you. And has suddenly looked away.

You take a deep breath. The night will end after this song. Now or never.

You cannot feel the ground underneath your feet; you seem to float towards him, at the corner of the room, as if in a dream. You keep your eyes on him. And sure enough, he seems to feel–feel, rather than see–that you’re coming for him.

He looks away, just for a second, but perhaps he sees that you have no thoughts about leaving. You stand in front of him; he doesn’t look back at you.

"Would you like to dance?"

He swallows and gazes up at you almost pleadingly. Please, he seems to say, you know we can’t.

"It doesn’t have to mean anything."

Several seconds pass until he stands up. He offers his hand, his gaze unfaltering; you let him take you to the dance floor.

The two of you are careful to keep some distance between you. But a mere touch of his hand on yours, and then on your waist, and you feel your earlier reservations begin to crumble down.

When he attempts a rather pathetic waltz, you are flooded with an overwhelming desire to laugh out loud while your heart slowly breaks.

"I’m hopeless at dancing," he mutters.

"I can see that," you say, and you can’t hide a teasing smile anymore. "All we have to do is sway side to side, you know."

Harry glances down at his feet, and then at others. Bill and Fleur, Remus and Tonks, Ron and Hermione, all those who have stood up to dance–they are all slowly swaying side to side, each couple completely oblivious to the world.

Harry snorts in laughter. You laugh back, and you know his gracelessness isn’t the only thing you’re all of a sudden happy about. You marvel at how a laugh changes him, from his shoulders that have loosened to his eyes that have suddenly brightened as they crinkle at the edges. He trains them at you, brilliant green as ever, and you catch yourself staring at their depths.

His smile fades. His eyes remain bright, however, and the expression in them tells you that he has joined you in a world apart from the deliriously happy one that surrounds the two of you.

You feel the hand on your waist draw you close to him ever so gently. You see in his eyes that what was left of his defenses has faded; there is a hopeless longing in them that you know is mirrored in your own. So strong is this need that your senses are blissfully aware of the breath fanning your lips and of the callused fingers caressing your own.

Does this really have to mean nothing?

Why does something that feels so right have to end?

He will have to fight and he knows it, you remind yourself. You will never understand why he wants to leave you out of it, for this is your fight as well, but he will leave you out; he will not want you to be targeted by Voldemort. That’s what he said last June. That’s why even if nothing feels as right as this, it’ still wrong, wrong!

And as though he has just shared the very same thought with you, Harry quickly tears his eyes off you and gazes into something far off.

You drop your gaze, feeling heat rise to your cheeks, and as you do, you see Bill and Fleur dancing. Their eyes are closed, their cheeks pressed against each other–Fleur’s porcelain skin on Bill’s mangled face.

So wrong...and yet so right.

The final strings of the song fade and you are left with this mystery hanging over your head. Harry slowly releases you. You let your arms slowly drop to your side. He takes a deep breath as though steeling himself to say something important–

"We’ll win the Quidditch Cup again this year, yeah?"

Your eyebrows snap together. "What?"

"We’ll win the Cup this year." There is a tone of finality in his words. Something in his eyes tells you there is something else in it, but before you can ask, before you can respond, he nods curtly and steps away.

His shoulders brush yours as he does. You stand rooted on the spot, wondering if what just took place had actually happened.

The next day, you discover that the lump under Hermione’s sheets is just a couple of pillows crudely piled to create a semblance of a human figure.

You rush to Ron’s room, dread growing in the pit of your stomach, knowing fully well what you are going to find. And sure enough, it is empty.

* * *

Each raindrop is like a prick of ice against your skin. You know that you could be anywhere else but here, preferably someplace warm and comfortable.

But no one forced you to come. In fact, you fought to come here, to be with these people. But long, bitterly cold hours have passed. When? you ask yourself. When will this end?

And like a prayer answered, someone shouts, "There! On the foot of the hill. There they are!"

You shield your eyes from the rain and look up. You see two figures huddled on either side of someone else kneeling on the muddy ground. You cannot see the one kneeling, but one of those hunched over has the vibrant red hair which can only come from your family.

You break away from the group. You hear George call you back, but you don’t heed him; you run down the slope as fast as your feet can take you against the cold rain and mud.

"Ron! Hermione! Harry!"

The three whirl around towards your voice. Their tired faces light up in surprise, and in unison they look up the hill, where the Order of the Phoenix are, rushing towards them.

Ron and Hermione make sounds of relief and trudge up the slope to meet them. Harry, however, does not move; he turns his head from everybody and bows towards the ground.

You approach him carefully. "Harry?"

"They took it away," you hear him croak out. "We let them get away."

"It’s all right, some of the members of the Order are hot on their heels," you tell him.

"No, you don’t understand." His whisper is almost lost in the rain.

And you know that you don’t; you’ll never understand what he’s doing, what he’s after, why he has chosen to embark on this mission only with Ron and Hermione. But perhaps he will tell you–someday, when it is all over.

You kneel beside him. He looks up at you, and you are unsure whether the wet streaks on his face are rain or tears, or both.

You take him in his arms, enveloping him not with your desire for him, but with the only comfort you can offer him in that cold rain and circumstance. You do not care about Harry’s warnings any longer; in that moment, you are what you are, a friend. And he collapses onto you, finally letting go.

When you hug him, time doesn’t freeze; instead, you are aware of it passing quickly. In a few moments the Order will persuade the two of you to go back to the headquarters with them. Soon, perhaps tomorrow, he will have to leave again with Ron and Hermione.

And then, soon–sooner than you think, with a bit of luck–all of this will be over. It might take years, but time passes, the clock will continue its ticking, and the moment will arrive.

And until that moment–and long afterwards–you will continue to embrace him, to love him with all your might, and you will do it again and again until the world sees that nothing could be more right than this.

* Burdock Muldoon became Chief of the Wizard’s Council in 1448. -- HP Lexicon!