Hermione Granger.
Outstanding student of Gryffindor.
Never late, rarely absent, and almost never known to sleep past breakfast — yet her place at the Tuesday table was conspicuously empty.
Draco Malfoy kept this troubling observation in the back of his mind while writing back to his Muggle investment manager.
Since February, Muggle stock investments — guided by a few scattered memories from his previous life — had been yielding impressively. This was, on the whole, a good thing.
The problem was that he couldn't concentrate.
His thoughts kept drifting to what, exactly, Hermione Granger was doing in the Gryffindor common room.
The only evidence that she was safe and unharmed was her "Morning" on the ring — sent to him earlier that day, tone perfectly normal.
Draco frowned, ticked a few more Muggle stocks on his investment plan, and waited.
He waited patiently through lunchtime. By then he had finished a letter to his investment manager, settled the sale of a London flat, and signed off on a property recommendation from an estate agent in Manchester.
Still no sign of her at the Gryffindor table.
Honestly. Had she been dragged off by some emerging threat from the depths? Draco pressed his lips together.
The Marauder's Map told him she was wandering freely around the Gryffindor common room.
Not imprisoned, then. No need to hold a wand to the Fat Lady's portrait or resort to more dramatic measures.
Then, through careful observation, he identified the evidence that she still had an appetite: Ginny Weasley left the Great Hall carrying an impressive tray of food in the direction of Gryffindor Tower.
If that wasn't for Hermione, something very peculiar was happening.
He noted with interest that the tray included several slices of Avalanche Strawberry Cake — Hermione Granger's particular weakness.
What was she doing?
Draco, puzzled and restless, found his way to the large oak tree by the Black Lake and stared at the giant squid drifting in the sunshine for a while, trying to feel calm about it.
He was not trying to be an insufferable, clingy boyfriend.
But the sun was warm, the shade was pleasant, the grass smelled faintly of green and earth — and the urge to simply tell her all of that was, apparently, overwhelming.
"Waiting for you under the oak tree."
He sent it, half-tentative.
She's probably napping. He waited. That was fine.
"I'm busy."
She was awake. She seemed safe. Her mouth and the finger with the ring were both functional. Draco thought, with detached relief.
He lay back and looked up at the underside of the oak's broad canopy: oval leaves backlit green-gold, the old dark bark above him, a grey squirrel making itself comfortable in a fork of the branches.
It was a good tree. He had never particularly noticed that before.
He still didn't quite understand why squirrels preferred oaks. The Forbidden Forest was full of perfectly adequate pines. Why torment an innocent boy under an oak tree?
He recalled, with fresh irritation, that the squirrel above him had once tried to hit Hermione in the face with a pine cone.
"Still waiting for you, just to mention."
He addressed the ring in a tone of mild grievance.
Correct. Draco Malfoy — a moving target for Hermione Granger's conscience.
He had long since perfected the art of subtle, helpless-seeming patience where she was concerned.
Any moment now, he thought. She'll come out immediately — she's kept me waiting.
He had so much he wanted to say. Or nothing at all. She could just lie here beside him and look at the sky through the leaves.
"Still busy."
Heartless. Draco frowned at the ring.
Where had her overflowing kindness gone? Her soft heart that always seemed to have too much feeling in it and nowhere to put it all?
After an entire night apart, she remained unmoved. This was not promising.
What could possibly be more pressing than him? Exam week was over. Harry was well. Cedric was alive. The Dark Lord had been defeated and retreated. Yesterday they had been perfectly fine together in the library — reading, or near enough—
He felt heat rise to his cheeks at the thought of what had actually happened in the library.
Wait.
The avoidance. The silence. The pointed excuses.
He knew this pattern.
He had seen it before — most memorably after their first kiss in the library, when she had avoided him for three full days.
Draco sat up slowly, struck by a particular certainty.
This was shyness.
Typical Hermione Granger shyness — the specific, stubborn, self-conscious variety that led her to remove herself from situations that had become too much for her to comfortably face.
He smiled, with the quiet smugness of someone who had just confirmed their own theory.
"Is it too late to be shy?"
She had been anything but shy yesterday. At first, a little reserved — but afterwards, spectacularly, unreservedly enthusiastic.
Shy and passionate in perfect alternation — the combination was enough to ruin him entirely.
He'd lost control a bit himself, he could admit that. But she hadn't exactly been better off.
Just when he'd been on the verge of letting her go, she'd gone ahead again on her own initiative. An agonising battle of mutual restraint where neither of them was willing to yield first. He adored her madness.
How perfectly matched they were. Who could have predicted it? On the surface — one upright and principled, the other composed and controlled; in private — scheming endlessly, burning, wishing they could exhaust each other completely.
Who would have guessed this passionate thing would wake up the next morning and decide to be bashful?
"Shut up."
Her reply came back fast.
Draco could picture the exact expression that had accompanied it.
A look of coquettish annoyance — as if she were silently threatening a Memory Charm if he said one more word. Eyebrows drawn into a single straight line. A shimmer of brown in the corners of her eyes. Lips pressed together but tilting upward at the edges, like the very beginning of a flower opening. Her small, round chin with that faint dimple — at which he immediately wanted to kiss her.
Her tone — proud, trying to sound firm, that warm voice of hers that sounded like a well-bred princess on the surface and something far more interesting underneath. Only he ever got to hear that other layer.
He loved the pride. He loved the attempted firmness. He loved, unreservedly, the wildness.
His girl.
Hermione.
Her name.
One name, several syllables, infinite pronunciations.
Her-my-oh-nee.
How exquisite. How layered.
That stupid Krum couldn't even say it properly.
Draco felt a fresh surge of unreasonable irritation at the memory.
"Hermione... Hermione... Hermione... Hermione... Hermione... Hermione... Hermione..."
He called her name into the ring, delighted by the discovery that her name had become its own kind of game.
He'd called it probably a hundred times yesterday and still felt he hadn't called it enough.
"You are so annoying!"
Emotion. Actual emotion. She couldn't ignore him any more. Draco thought, with considerable satisfaction.
She was embarrassed and slightly cross.
She might have thought he was implying something.
He had, in all sincerity, simply been thinking about how her name sounded. That was all.
It sounded like a declaration.
Her. My. Own.
A faint smile drifted across Draco's face, the way warmth moves through treetops.
The birds in the oak were singing, he realised. How had he never listened to them before?
Thinking of you at this moment.
He decided to be honest. He missed her.
The ring was silent.
He stared up through the leaves.
That girl. She couldn't even manage "I miss you" back.
Was she too angry? Or had her anger burned off, leaving only embarrassment?
Because she had been happy yesterday — he knew that. He always watched her closely. When she truly wanted to stop, when she truly wanted to push him away, she did — and he always, always respected it. But she never had.
Not once.
She had been happy, and warm, and wonderfully unguarded about it. And then she had kissed him again of her own accord. And yet here she was, apparently treating him like a scandal to be managed.
"I haven't got any pride left," Draco thought, with grim amusement.
He glared at the grey squirrel overhead, who was holding an acorn with the self-satisfied air of someone who had their life entirely in order.
"That's last season's acorn," Draco said aloud. "It's gone off. You've wasted your morning."
The squirrel wagged its tail with cheerful indifference.
He was absolutely fine. Perfectly rational. Completely composed.
It was perfectly normal for a wizard to have a brief, pointed conversation with a squirrel.
"Hermione... Hermione... Hermione... Hermione... Hermione... Hermione... Hermione... Hermione... Hermione... Hermione... Hermione... Hermione... Hermione..."
He filled the ring to capacity — seven calls — out of something between spite and desperation. If she was going to ignore him, at least the warmth against her finger would remind her that she was not succeeding.
He couldn't simply pretend nothing had happened in the library. Couldn't pretend the memory of her against that mahogany table wasn't sitting in the centre of his mind, vivid and irresistible.
At one point she had seemed perfectly willing to give him whatever he asked for.
He had been the one to hold back. He still felt it was the right decision. She deserved better than that.
"Draco Malfoy," he muttered to himself, "you have left your entire rational mind with her and you are completely lost."
Right. Stop. Think about something else.
Think about Hermione's investigation being compromised. Think about Fudge demonstrating his political leverage. Think about what the Prophet's smear campaign against Hogwarts actually means. Think about where the weakened Dark Lord might currently be lurking. Think about whether the fragment of his soul potentially embedded in Harry's forehead is in any way aware of itself. Think about Sirius's account, and the events of June 24th, and what loose ends haven't yet been examined.
You cannot, he told himself firmly, spend every waking thought on Hermione Granger.
Presumably she was very embarrassed right now. Presumably whatever had happened in the library had been — for a sober Hermione Granger — too much to face calmly this morning.
She had complained it was "too much," hadn't she?
He was rather glad he'd held back when he did.
Behind his closed eyes, her image surfaced with perfect clarity: flushed, breathless, gazing at him with complete, open trust.
She was a delicate girl. He had to be careful. He had to go at her pace.
And he had to find the right setting. A proper one.
A comfortable, properly furnished room. A bed that was expensive enough to be worthy of her. Privacy. Warmth. Everything arranged properly.
He was not going to let her first experience of that kind be some rushed, impractical event on a library table. He refused. She deserved far better.
He exhaled slowly in the dappled shade, running a hand through his hair. He remembered, vaguely, her tipsy complaint that the attic bed was uncomfortable and she couldn't sleep in it.
A bed. The right bed. He'd have to think about that.
"I promise I won't do anything."
He sent it honestly, backing down step by step, trying to recover her trust.
"You can set the pace."
He meant it. Let her do whatever she wanted, however slowly. He could wait.
"Thud."
Something hard struck him squarely on the head.
He opened his eyes. A shrivelled acorn bounced off his knee. The grey squirrel above him was making irate noises.
"Now even you," Draco said, standing up with deliberate menace, "are going to bully me."
He drew his wand and fixed the squirrel with a look of absolute seriousness.
Hermione Granger, preoccupied with the matter of one fugitive beetle, was entirely unaware that she had missed two quite sincere messages on the ring, and equally unaware of the considerable inner storm her boyfriend was navigating.
She came through the portrait hole like a gust of wind, startling Cormac McLaggen, who was just stepping in.
"Sorry," she said quickly, eyes bright, and kept running.
She ran down the stairs, across the entrance hall, out into the warm afternoon.
She ran across the grounds to the large oak tree by the Black Lake.
Beneath it, a scowling boy was carved into the bark of the trunk with what appeared to be considerable feeling. Behind him, a small dog the colour of acorns was gnawing determinedly on a grey bone.
"Draco! You're here!"
The boy turned at once, and the cold expression vanished, replaced immediately by something considerably warmer.
Hermione. Draco stared at her, briefly thunderstruck.
She was standing there catching her breath, holding a glass jar in one hand and a book in the other, looking at him with the smuggest expression he had seen on a human face.
"You came," Draco said, taking two steps toward her, and reached out and pulled her into his arms.
This warm, energetic, entirely alive girl.
"Yes!" she said, breathless, her voice bright as a spring thaw.
"Good." He pressed his face into her slightly windswept hair, inhaled, and felt the knot of the afternoon slowly release. Why had she come at such speed? Just when he'd given up entirely on seeing her today.
Maybe the promise to behave himself had done something. He kissed her hair.
"Draco, I don't even know which thing to tell you first!" Hermione struggled back out of his arms with the purposeful energy of someone who had made a discovery, kissed him quickly on the cheek, and said, unable to quite contain her excitement, "There are two things—"
The kiss on the cheek lit something warm inside him.
All right. Her pace. Whatever she needed.
He gazed at her face, thoroughly besotted.
Lucky, he thought. Most submissive boyfriend in existence. And entirely fine with it. He looked at what she was carrying. One hand: a glass jar with something inside it. The other: a copy of "An Easy Introduction to Ancient Runes." He knew that particular book — a beginner's text she must have had memorised years ago.
The beetle in the jar, however, he recognised on sight.
He had seen it in a previous life — it had passed through his own hands once, on a Quidditch pitch, and he had spoken a few words to it.
He had also seen it in her hands, in another life — on the Hogwarts Express, where she had announced to Harry and Ron with enormous satisfaction that she'd caught Rita Skeeter.
At the time, he had been a rude, arrogant, thoroughly unpleasant sixteen-year-old. He had still, privately, been obliged to admit that she'd been very clever about it.
"Well done, Hermione," Draco said, with a low whistle. The words were much the same as they'd been in that other life; the feeling behind them was entirely different.
Hermione looked up at him with shining eyes and a smile of unmistakable pride.
After all the complications and reversals of this year, this formidable and insufferable woman, Rita Skeeter, had not escaped her fate. Once again, Hermione Granger had caught her. Draco looked at the glass jar with private satisfaction.
They settled onto the ground, leaning against the broad trunk of the oak tree, and examined the jar.
"A Stasis Charm?" Draco raised an eyebrow at the subdued beetle.
"Yes! I thought of what you did with Peter Pettigrew. A simple binding charm, and she can't Transfigure out," Hermione said, still glowing. "Which I have to admit — I borrowed that from you, who borrowed it from me in another life. The whole thing is very confusing."
A flicker of unease moved through Draco at that thought. This particular kind of "mutual borrowing" across timelines did not entirely sit well with him. But he set it aside.
She held the jar up toward his face. "Is it her? Definitely her?"
He tapped the glass. The beetle lurched and spun.
He could see the distinctive spectacle-shaped markings clearly.
"Yes. That's her, no question." He tilted his head. "How did you catch her?"
"Crookshanks! He caught her in the common room — she was hovering near Harry, trying to listen in on something." Hermione said this with cheerful contempt.
"Serves her right," Draco said to the beetle in the glass. "I did warn you, didn't I? Quite clearly. And now look."
The beetle contracted, then produced a furious buzz.
Something cold and sharp moved briefly in Draco's eyes.
"If I were you, Hermione, I'd put a Muffliato on that jar." He pointed his wand, cast the charm, then added, "Obscuro on the inside as well — she doesn't need to see or hear anything she shouldn't. And Langlock for good measure. No wandless magic."
He had not forgotten what she'd done to him in the Great Hall yesterday. He felt no particular inclination to be generous.
The jar went still. The buzzing stopped.
"Much better." Draco glanced at Hermione with a faint, deliberate smile. "What do you think?"
He waited.
Would she tell him that was excessive? That he was being unkind to a helpless beetle?
She smiled at him instead.
She kissed his cheek and said, with great warmth, "Have I mentioned recently how wonderful you are? With you as the official Animagus-Catching Expert on our side, she hasn't got a chance."
The effect of Hermione Granger wearing a slightly wicked expression was, frankly, something Draco Malfoy would never recover from.
He smiled at her. Broadly. Somewhat helplessly.
You have absolutely no idea what you've done to me, Hermione Granger.
Not only are you brilliant at doing terrible things, but you also then lavish praise on me for enabling it.
"So. What are you planning to do with her?" he asked.
"Keep her for a few days. Give her some time to reflect on her choices. Then release her when we get back to London for the holidays." Hermione was resting against his shoulder, expression bright. "Perhaps with a small suggestion: that she might consider not writing anything for a year. To help break the habit."
"Reasonable," he said. "If you'd like, give her to me. Keeping her in Gryffindor is too close to Harry." He held out his hand. Hermione passed him the jar without hesitation, and he tucked it away with a smile that boded nothing good for the beetle.
Then Hermione said, in the tone of someone about to reveal something enormous, "There's something else. I found it. Seven."
"Seven?"
"I have reason to believe that man wants to split his soul into seven pieces." She flipped open "An Easy Introduction to Ancient Runes" and held the page toward him. "How did I not see it sooner — I'd looked at this book before! Right here, under this very oak tree, at the end of second year, when I gave you the ring."
Through the dappled light of the oak's canopy, Draco made out a small circle, drawn in faded Klein blue — circled over the numeral 7.
"Tom Riddle?" he asked sharply.
"Yes!" Hermione's voice held a note of slightly stunned disbelief. "I never expected to find evidence in a beginner's runic text. An introductory book. How is this possible—"
"It's not that difficult to understand." Draco took the book and studied the annotation carefully. "Didn't you say it yourself — the influence of what we encounter in childhood runs very deep? According to that Muggle psychology book you gave me—" He paused at the expression on her face. "Yes, I read it. You gave it to me as a birthday present, of course I took it seriously."
The corners of her mouth tried to hide a smile.
He continued, "A person's earliest experiences shape how they see the world, how they behave, what they value. This applies equally to Dark wizards. When he first arrived at Hogwarts — before he'd grown into his caution, before he'd learnt to conceal himself — he was an excited, ambitious boy who hadn't yet learnt to hide his enthusiasm. He wouldn't have been as careful."
"I think we've been approaching this wrong entirely," Hermione said, brightening. "We've been looking at the books he borrowed at sixteen. We should have been looking at what he read the moment he arrived at Hogwarts. That was the beginning — the origin of his thinking in a magical context. Once he'd grown up, he'd never scribble in a library book again."
Draco gave a small nod of agreement.
"By the way," Hermione said, "you actually read Freud?"
"I read everything you give me," he said, with a mildness that was almost insulting in its confidence.
She looked extremely pleased about this and tried not to show it.
She leaned against his shoulder, and they studied the definition of "7" in the book together.
After a while she said, quietly, "Do you remember the Ancient Runes lesson where we talked about the number seven?"
"I'm not likely to forget it," Draco said. He had spent most of that lesson being unreasonably irritated about Krum.
"Do you think it's possible? That he actually aimed for seven? That he split his soul into seven pieces?" She shivered slightly against his shoulder, then caught herself. "Or maybe we're overcomplicating this. Maybe he just circled it at random, a casual note—"
"Seven pieces is a great deal," she added, before he could respond. "It's obscene, even."
"It's possible. The number seven carries extraordinary magical significance," Draco said, frowning. "That would have been very appealing to someone like him." He paused. "Five have already been destroyed — the diary, the diadem, the golden cup, the locket, the ring. If there are two more, it would be a manageable task, even for someone as ruthless as he is."
"That means what remains would be the piece attached to Harry, and the Dark Lord's own surviving soul," Hermione said slowly, breathing in the warm cedar scent of his neck as she thought. "Though there's a question: when we say seven pieces, do we mean the soul was split to produce seven fragments in total — meaning it was broken seven times, producing eight pieces? Or that it was broken into exactly seven?"
"Yes. That distinction matters." His fingers tapped lightly on the number in the page — an unconscious gesture of focused thought. "We need to do more theoretical work on that. There's also the question of what Sirius told us — the Killing Curse bouncing back at the cemetery, Lily's protection causing the dissipation of his body..."
"Which means," Hermione said slowly, "he probably made Harry a Horcrux without intending to. If he'd meant Harry to become a Horcrux, he would never have used the Killing Curse on him in the first place."
"Precisely." Draco had grasped the central point immediately. "The soul dissipation was accidental. Harry was an unplanned Horcrux. Which means either he had already completed his intended number before that night, and Harry is excess — or he hadn't quite finished, and Harry was the accidental result of the disruption."
"There's another possibility," Hermione said. "What if the number he planned was inherently precarious? That it could just barely be sustained by one soul? Then the additional unintentional split — Harry — pushed the total beyond what his soul could bear, which is why his body collapsed entirely?"
"That would fit," Draco said, weighing it. "But the theoretical framework involved is too complex and specific for us to be confident. We'd need to establish the number he intended, the maximum a soul can sustain, and work backwards from Harry's situation."
"Even so," Hermione said, "this book is only circumstantial evidence. A hypothesis. We can't be certain of anything without more direct confirmation."
"Which is why Dumbledore is focused on Slughorn," Draco said.
"If Professor Slughorn told us honestly, that would be direct evidence — strong, verifiable, almost impossible to argue with," Hermione said, her breath warm against the side of his neck. "Without that, we're speculating."
"This needs to be handled with extreme care and cross-referencing." Draco fixed his eyes on the silly dog in front of him — or rather, the object that very much resembled a silly dog — and forced himself to concentrate. He'd promised her he would behave.
And this was a public space, however pleasant.
"I wonder whether Professor Dumbledore has been able to make any progress with Professor Slughorn," Hermione said, following his gaze to where the acorn-coloured dog stood in the full afternoon sun, gnawing with apparent contentment on a grey bone.
Something struck her as odd about that.
"Tell Dumbledore everything we've worked out, and let the most knowledgeable wizard alive take it from there," Draco said, drawing her head back to his shoulder, resting his own against it. He stroked a long strand of her hair absently. "We've done everything we can for now."
They were probably, he reflected, the most tragically industrious couple at Hogwarts.
While every other pair was strolling by the lake or whispering in the Forbidden Forest, they were invariably in the library, surrounded by books on Dark Magic.
An entire year of frantic work under constant pressure, all on account of one noseless Dark wizard with an irritating fondness for Horcruxes.
The time wasted. The youth squandered.
Pansy always said so.
"Your relationship," she would announce from the armchair in the Slytherin common room, with the magisterial certainty of someone stating obvious fact, "is the most profoundly boring romance ever conceived. Feeding each other strawberries in public — that's your crowning achievement? I've already done that, and I've done significantly more besides."
Blaise would then add, with a meaningful glance in Draco's direction, "Has she even the faintest idea of your capabilities? Have you had any kind of... date?"
"Your problem," Pansy would conclude, with a cryptic smile, "is that you never go anywhere but the library. The library is not a venue. It barely qualifies as a location."
Faced with this well-meaning but thoroughly presumptuous commentary, Draco would say, with serene calm, "She likes the library."
The two of them would exchange a long-suffering look.
"Boring—" one said.
"Tragic—" said the other.
What utter nonsense.
As if he didn't think about her constantly. As if her warmth didn't reach him at every moment. As if he didn't want to spend every hour they had doing exactly what he pleased with her.
As if he didn't want to do considerably more.
If he had any choice, they would not be spending these golden June afternoons reviewing Horcrux theory.
"Telling Professor Dumbledore is the right move," Hermione said, her voice soft with thought, still looking at the dog with faint puzzlement. "Harry went to see him this morning, though, and found the office empty."
"Hmm." Draco's thoughts were drifting pleasantly in the afternoon warmth.
Sunlight through leaves. The distant splash of the lake. Her voice, low and unhurried, barely above a murmur.
He was drowsy.
"Go first thing tomorrow morning," he said. "Both of us."
"Agreed. Though—" Hermione suddenly pulled away from his shoulder, her voice gone sharp. "Draco. What did you do to that dog?"
"Hmm?" he said, vaguely.
"That dog." She was already reaching for a wand — and then realising, with some chagrin, that she'd left her bag, wand included, on the sofa in the common room in her rush to get here. She frowned, then simply picked up his wand from where it lay beside him and cast a Finite Incantatem with practised ease.
The dog immediately became a shrivelled brown acorn.
"The dispelling of the curse was beautifully done," Draco said, with genuine appreciation, eyes half-shut.
"How could a living dog stand still in direct sunlight for that long without moving?" Hermione said, with a short laugh. "Draco. You've been practicing Transfiguration on acorns."
"That grey squirrel threw them at me," he said, with a slow, dangerous smile. "It was provoked."
Hermione stared at him. Her eyes moved to the grey bone lying in the grass.
She picked up his wand again and cast the countercurse.
The squirrel appeared, trembling and deeply traumatised. It took one look at the acorn where the dog had been, and bolted into the undergrowth without a backward glance.
It would probably not be eating acorns again for some time, given that it had just spent a quarter of an hour being enthusiastically gnawed on by something that used to be one.
"Draco Malfoy." Hermione punched him in the shoulder with feeling. "That was a completely innocent squirrel. It threw acorns at you — an acorn is not an attack. An acorn cannot hurt you. You cannot Transfigure innocent woodland creatures simply because they inconvenience you — there is a fundamental moral distinction between disciplining wrongdoers and bullying those weaker than yourself! If you keep this up, I will Transfigure you into something, so you can experience firsthand what it feels like to be at someone else's mercy."
Why not into a weasel again — so small, so ridiculous... The strange, wicked thought flitted through her mind before she could stop it.
Then she immediately recalled the image of that trembling creature, and thought better of it. Some memories were better left undisturbed.
Draco looked up at her from the grass, unhurried and entirely unrepentant.
"I missed you," he said simply, letting her wave his wand at him without resistance. "I was bored. You left me here."
She faltered slightly.
That look again. The lost, docile, quietly plaintive one that made him appear incapable of any wrongdoing whatsoever.
She thought of him waiting here all afternoon. Being patient. Backing down gracefully. Letting her have the ring to herself without complaint.
She thought of how he always pressed his wand into her hands and let her use it against him, as though it were a perfectly ordinary thing to do.
He was impossible.
She lowered the wand.
"This is the very last time," she said, with a sigh that conceded far more than she intended. He really would get himself into trouble without someone keeping a firm eye on him.
He nodded, looking satisfied, the good-natured honesty of his smile making it thoroughly impossible to maintain a stern face.
She could never actually win against him. Hermione thought, with exasperated affection.
This cunning, ridiculous boy, with his unarguable face and his carefully deployed helplessness, his dependency act — as though he would be absolutely lost without her.
That icy, untouchable demeanour that Ginny had described.
What a fiction.