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As the sun dropped behind the mountains, Hermione glanced at her watch and her eyes went wide.
"Goodness we've been talking for ages!" She rose quickly, gathering her books. "Thank you, Your Highness Henry. It was a genuinely lovely afternoon."
"Same here," Harry said, standing. "I hope we can do this again sometime."
Ron got to his feet and brushed non-existent crumbs from his robes with studied casualness.
He looked at Henry for a moment, then said, in a voice that was somewhat muffled but deliberately aimed, "The tea was quite good, by the way."
A brief pause.
"Thanks," he added, and this time it was neither mumbled nor reluctant.
It was not the same sound he had produced in the corridor that morning. It was, in its own understated way, a meaningful step forward.
Henry smiled and saw them to the door. When it had closed behind the three of them, he allowed himself a quiet breath.
The afternoon had gone considerably better than he had expected.
He had opened a channel into Gryffindor that had not existed this morning, and he had received, without pressing for it, an invitation to visit Hagrid's hut.
He had also come away with something more precise than his earlier impressions: Hermione's careful attentiveness, which was not unfriendliness but a kind of rigorous fairness she applied to everything; Harry's openness, which was as natural as breathing and entirely without calculation; and Ron's particular need to be seen and valued on his own terms, buried under layers of bluster and House loyalty that were not, at their core, as solid as they appeared.
He committed all of it to memory. Every piece had its place.
Lucy appeared silently at this point, as though she had been waiting just beyond the edge of perception for the room to be hers again.
She moved through the space with the quiet efficiency of someone who had tidied a hundred rooms and could do it without thought, the teaware responding to her hands as if it understood what was expected and wished to cooperate.
Henry did not leave immediately. He settled back into his chair and watched her work for a moment.
"Lucy," he said conversationally, "you've been at Hogwarts for a long time, haven't you?"
Lucy stopped and turned to him with respectful attention. "Yes, Your Highness. Lucy and her family have served the castle for many generations. Hogwarts is our home."
"Many generations," Henry repeated, as though turning the idea over with genuine interest. "Then you must know every corridor and corner of this place far better than any student or professor ever could. An old castle like this, something must happen in it every single day."
Lucy's large eyes brightened. The question had touched something she was genuinely proud of. "Yes, Your Highness! The castle is very large, so many rooms, so many corridors, so many portraits and suits of armour, and there is always something happening. The students are always interesting, the professors are always busy, Peeves is always finding new ways to cause trouble—"
She counted on her slender fingers as she went, with the manner of someone reciting a beloved and well-known list.
"That sounds far more interesting than sitting in one place," Henry said, smiling. "Sometimes I feel I know almost nothing about this castle beyond the classrooms and the common room. I find myself wondering whether the ghosts hold their own gatherings in the empty rooms at night, or whether anyone besides the house-elves ever finds their way into the kitchens. I've also heard that Mr. Filch always manages to appear exactly where students least expect him, I've sometimes wondered whether he has some kind of secret map."
He said it all in the curious, slightly fanciful way of someone who has only recently discovered that the world is stranger and more interesting than they had been led to believe, exactly the kind of thing a first-year Muggle-raised student might genuinely wonder about.
Lucy leaned forward a little, the excitement of sharing something valuable working its way into her expression.
"Your Highness, Lucy knows many of the castle's secrets! The portraits see absolutely everything, and they love to carry messages between one another! Mr. Filch is always with Mrs Norris, that cat's nose and ears are extraordinary, she can hear a footstep three corridors away. The kitchens? Sometimes adventurous young wizards do sneak in, and there was one occasion when a goblin tried to get into the vegetable garden for the potatoes! And Peeves—" she lowered her voice with conspiratorial pleasure "—yesterday Peeves hid a bucket of foul-smelling green paint inside the hood of the armour on the fourth-floor corridor. He is waiting for whoever is unlucky enough to walk underneath it."
She had gathered considerable momentum by this point and continued for some time, working her way through a series of small, vivid, entirely harmless accounts of daily life in the castle that painted Hogwarts as something rather more inhabited and eventful than its classrooms and Great Hall suggested.
Henry listened without interrupting, and when she had finished he said, with the manner of someone who has been given something unexpectedly generous, "That's truly fascinating. Hogwarts feels like an enormous puzzle, and discovering a little more of it each day is one of the real pleasures of being here." He paused, looking at her with genuine warmth. "Thank you, Lucy. It makes me feel considerably more at home. If you come across any more of these stories in future, when it's no trouble to you, I'd love to hear them. It would help me find my footing here."
He did not issue an instruction. He did not make it a command. He expressed a wish, framed it as something that would help him, and left it entirely to her.
For a house-elf, there was almost nothing more powerful than the sense that a young master needed her, not her labour but her knowledge, her attention, her particular understanding of the world she moved through.
The request lit something in Lucy that no direct order could have produced.
Her eyes shone. The pointed tip of her tea-towel trembled slightly.
"Lucy understands completely! Your Highness wants to know more about the castle! Lucy knows many things, and Lucy's friends among the other house-elves know many things too, we are in every part of the castle every day, and we see and hear a great deal! Lucy will pay attention and tell Your Highness whatever is interesting! That way, Your Highness will never feel like a stranger here!"
She had, without being asked, already expanded the scope from what she personally knew to what she and every house-elf in the castle knew collectively. It seemed entirely natural to her.
"Then I'll rely on you, Lucy," Henry said. "But the most important thing is your work and your own wellbeing. Only share what you happen to notice in the ordinary course of things, don't go out of your way, and never put yourself in any difficulty on my account."
Lucy appeared to be fighting a considerable battle with her own emotions at this.
Her head trembled with the effort of not expressing herself in the way house-elves were sometimes inclined to express strong feeling.
Henry suspected she was exercising considerable self-control.
"Your Highness can be completely certain! Lucy will not cause any trouble!" she said, and was already mentally composing a conversation she intended to have with Toby and Bobo the next time she went down to the kitchens, to find out what else was happening in the castle that their young master might find worth knowing.
"Off you go, then," Henry said.
After she had gone, he stood and moved to the window. Outside, the last of the light was withdrawing from the Hogwarts grounds, and the towers were beginning to darken against the sky.
He looked out at it quietly for a moment, then murmured something to himself: "Family affairs, national affairs, world affairs. I dare not be unaware of any of them."