23rd November 1994, 221B Baker Street, London, the small private study, 7:42 PM
The fire in the hearth at 221B had been built up properly for the November cold, and the small private study at the rear of the house had taken on the precise warm low-lit register that Ethan reserved, on quiet evenings, for the small company of his closest friends. The room smelt of old leather and pine-smoke and the careful Earl Grey Sam preferred. A long oak table at the centre of the room held a small array of papers; on either side of the papers, small mismatched cups of tea sat at varying degrees of cooling.
Through the tall window at the room's far end, Osian was visible in the small private courtyard below. The young Re'em had been brushed clean by Sirius approximately an hour before and was now, by all reasonable measurement, conducting his usual evening dignity-protest at Sirius's continued attempts to interest him in a small toy ball Sirius had brought specifically for this purpose. Osian's enormous dark eyes were half-closed in the precise unimpressed manner of a small magical bovine who had been informed that play was a thing he was now required to participate in.
"Sirius," came up faintly through the window's slightly open pane, "it is a ball, Osian. You knock it. With your head. No. No, not like that. The ball, Osian. Not the wall."
Lupin, at the long oak table, was suppressing a small wry smile.
"He's not going to play, you know," he said, in the general direction of the window.
"I will outlast him," Sirius's voice came back. "I will outlast all of you."
Ethan, at the head of the table, lifted his teacup with the precise unhurried motion of a man whose evening was, on balance, going as he wished it to go.
He looked at Sam.
Sam, opposite him, returned the look. His deep-blue eyes, behind their precise watchful intelligence, had the small particular quality they took on when a Head of the Department of Mysteries had been reading reports that he had not enjoyed reading and was about to speak about them.
"All right," Ethan said softly. "Tell us where we are."
Sam slid the topmost folder across the table.
It was Moody's case-file, in its complete updated form. The cover was marked with the precise Department-of-Mysteries restricted sigils Ethan recognised at a glance.
"The August attack on Moody's house," Sam began, in the precise level tone he used when he was reporting facts and not speculation. "The Ministry had two senior Aurors on the trace since the day of the incident. The home was breached by a single party, who used a sequence of unlocking charms that suggested professional training, removed Moody's emergency wards in less than ninety seconds, and engaged him in his kitchen. The attacker took the place of a Hogwarts professor; that we know because Moody returned from St Mungo's exactly four days behind the original schedule and walked into the Hogwarts staff briefing with a story that none of the senior Aurors who knew him in the seventies would have permitted him to tell."
Lupin, at the other end of the table, lifted his head.
"You're saying," Lupin said quietly, "the Moody at Hogwarts is not Moody."
Sam's mouth tightened, very slightly. "I am saying the trace of the attacker's identity is concerning. I am not yet saying the man at Hogwarts is the attacker. I am saying Ethan and I have been watching, and that we have not yet ruled out the possibility."
"Mm," Ethan said.
Lupin's face did the small precise grim-thing it did when his quiet guts began to register a thing that the rest of him had not yet acknowledged. He set his cup down. He looked at Ethan.
"You think it's possible."
"I think," Ethan said gently, "that it is not impossible. The Moody at Hogwarts has, in three months of observation, performed certain things that the Moody Sam knew in the seventies would have done, and certain things that he would not have done. The cumulative pattern is—" he turned the folder, "—it is not yet enough to act on. It is, however, enough to watch."
He paused.
"The second file."
Sam slid the second folder across.
This one was labelled in the precise neat handwriting of Verrona Rogeiros's deputy at Atid Stella's intelligence branch, and contained, in Lupin's brief glance, approximately forty pages of correspondence, surveillance records, and small interview-summaries collected over the last eighteen months.
"Mordred Slythra's contact network," Sam said, with quiet flatness. "Or what is left of it. After the boy's transfer to St Mungo's secure psychiatric ward last autumn, my office continued the parallel investigation into who had been training him. Where his magical theory was coming from. Whose money had been funding the apprenticeship contracts he had been entering into at the Knockturn end of London during his second year. We traced six addresses."
A small precise pause.
"All six contacts," Sam said, "are now dead."
Lupin's face changed colour fractionally.
"Six."
"Yes."
"In what timeframe."
"The first was found in February. The most recent, a fortnight ago in Prague, was found by the local Aurors with the precise small ritual residue of a curse-purge of the kind the Death Eaters used in the late seventies to clean their lower assets after a security breach." Sam's voice had gone, briefly, to a very controlled flatness. "Someone has been closing the trail. Each of these six was a witness to who originally trained Mordred. Each of them, in the order of how much they would have known, has been found dead."
Ethan's amber eyes had gone, very briefly, to the deeper amber of the True Sight at low frequency.
He did not say anything.
"Ethan," Lupin said quietly. "You're surprised."
Ethan let the Sight subside. He set his teacup down. His face, when he answered, was the precise composed scholarly thoughtfulness of a man who had been expecting some of what the second folder contained, but not all of it. "I had thought," he said carefully, "that the trail might have a longer half-life than this. I had thought we would have time to interview at least one or two of them properly before they became inaccessible. Sam's office has done admirable work to find these traces. They will, on the surface, look like cold leads. Beneath the surface—" he tapped the folder lightly, "—they tell us a great deal."
"Such as?"
"That the controller exists. That the controller is active. That the controller has, since at least February of this year, been operationally clearing the field of anyone who could identify him."
"And that he is doing it successfully," Sam added, with the small dry weariness of a Head of Department who had been three months too slow on every successive Prague.
A small, heavy quiet settled in the small private study.
Sirius, by the window, had given up on Osian. He turned back into the room with his hands in the pockets of his Muggle jacket and his face flushed by the November cold of the courtyard. He looked at the three of them at the table. He registered, in the small precise reading of someone who had spent twelve years in Azkaban learning to read silences, that the silence was a heavy one.
He sat down.
He looked at the folders.
"Right," Sirius said quietly. "Tell me how bad."
Sam told him.
Sirius listened. When Sam had finished, Sirius drew a long breath and let it out, and—against the precise grim composed weight of the room—did the small precise Sirius-thing he had done all his life when the room had grown too heavy for the people in it.
He lifted his teacup.
"Right," he said. "Right. Six dead contacts. A possibly-impostor at Hogwarts. The Tournament running through to June. A controller clearing the field, and a target on my godson's back. Ethan—" he turned to him with the small wry warmth of an oldest friend, "—is this the part of the evening where you tell us you have known about all of this for a fortnight and have already, quietly, in your spare hours, set up a small private operation to deal with it?"
A small precise pause.
Ethan's mouth did the small yes-of-course-but-don't-say-it-like-that twitch he reserved for Sirius's particular variety of public flattery.
"Sirius."
"I am only asking."
"Sirius, please."
"Moony, look at his face. He has known about all of this for a fortnight. He has set up an operation. Probably two operations. Probably one of the operations is named after a poet, because he names his operations after poets when he is enjoying himself, and—"
"Sirius."
"I trust him," Sirius said simply, "and I trust Dumbledore. And I have decided, over the course of this morning's tea, that the part of this conversation in which we look at the size of the threat and become quietly terrified is now concluded, and we should move to the part in which we discuss what we are doing about it."
Lupin, beside him, exhaled. His face had not lightened, but the precise grim weight had lifted by a precise small fraction.
"Padfoot," he said, with affection, "you are an unreasonable optimist."
"I am an Azkaban-trained optimist, Moony. They are the most stubborn kind."
Ethan, at the head of the table, was smiling.
He let the smile settle. Then his face, with the small precise efficiency of a man returning to operational mode, composed itself.
"Watch Moody," he said, simply. "All three of you. We do not act yet. We watch. The First Task has come and gone. The Second Task is three months out. In the interim, the controller will act again. He cannot help it. The clearing of the trail tells us he is on a schedule."
A small precise pause. Ethan's amber eyes, briefly, hardened.
"And in addition," he said, with quiet firmness, "at every Task from this morning forward—and at every public Tournament event, and at every Hogwarts gathering you can credibly attend without drawing attention—the safety of those children is the utmost priority. The utmost. Above intelligence-gathering. Above the controller's identification. Above the Department's case. The children come first."
Lupin's face had gone dark. The small werewolf-quiet that was Lupin's particular interior register had settled into the careful resolve of a man who had been a teacher and who had not forgotten what it meant to have students.
"Yes," Lupin said simply.
Sam was, briefly, in contemplation. His fingers tapped, once, against the edge of the folder. Then he looked up with a nod.
Sirius's grey eyes, across the table, were burning with the precise focused determination Ethan had not seen in him since before Azkaban.
"Right," Sirius said. "The children..."
The four men sat for a long quiet moment in the warm low-lit study. Outside the window, Osian had—against all reasonable expectation—decided, in the absence of further provocation, to give the small toy ball a small experimental head-bump, which had sent the ball rolling approximately four feet across the courtyard cobbles. The Re'em was now staring at the rolling ball with the precise expression of a creature who had just discovered a new principle of physics and was uncertain what to do with it.
Ethan, who had observed this through the window, gave a small wry private smile.
24th November 1994, Hogwarts Castle, the Transfiguration corridor, 4:47 PM
The Transfiguration classroom had emptied, by the time the lesson ended, in the precise small clatter of fourth-year Gryffindors gathering their books and bags and shuffling toward the door. The afternoon light through the high windows had taken on the deep amber of late November, and a fine snow had begun to drift past the panes for the first time that season.
Professor McGonagall's voice rose from her place by the front desk.
"Before you depart. A small announcement."
The room stilled in mid-clatter.
McGonagall straightened the small pile of essays on her desk with the precise practical motion of a woman who had been delivering this particular announcement for the last forty years and had no intention of dramatising it.
"The Yule Ball," she said. "A Tournament tradition. On Christmas Day, the Great Hall will be transformed for a formal evening event from eight in the evening until midnight, open to fourth-year students and above. Younger students may attend only if invited by an older student as their date. Dress robes are required; if your family has not yet arranged them, please write home in good time. The event is not optional in the sense of school participation, but you are not required to attend with a partner; many students attend in small mixed groups, and that is perfectly acceptable."
A small ripple of interested whispers moved across the room.
McGonagall's eyes settled, briefly, on Harry.
"Mr Potter, would you remain for a moment."
Ron, beside Harry, shot him the precise small what's-this eyebrow.
Harry shrugged with the small precise I-have-no-idea face he had been deploying with regularity over the last year.
The rest of the class departed. McGonagall waited until the door had closed. Then she walked the small distance to Harry's desk with the small precise neutral expression she used for Tournament-related communications, and said, in a tone calibrated for privacy:
"Mr Potter. As one of the six Champions, you will, by Tournament tradition, open the Yule Ball with your dance-partner alongside the other five Champions and their partners. The opening is one dance, public, in front of the assembled hall. The Champions and their dates then take the floor for the second dance. After that the floor is open to all, and you are not expected to remain for any further formal duties."
A small precise pause.
"You will, therefore, need a partner. By Christmas Day. I will not be making suggestions, Mr Potter; I would only ask that you do not leave it to the last week, when the available pool will have considerably narrowed. Is that clear?"
"Y-yes, Professor."
"Excellent. Off you go."
He went.
His mind, as he stepped into the corridor, was not in the corridor. It had, in the precise fraction of a second between partner and Yule Ball, taken the small inconvenient unauthorised excursion it had been increasingly inclined to take whenever the subject of Luna and the future and long-term symbolic occasions had occurred in proximity to one another.
It was a small clear image. Luna. In a dress.
Specifically, in—the image arrived without his having quite consulted himself about whether he wanted it to—
—a wedding dress.
Harry's brain, after approximately one and a half seconds of registering the image with the precise small private interior alarm of a fourteen-year-old who had not, until that exact moment, realised the image was there in his head and ready, engaged Cogitation with the precise emergency-throttle of a boy whose blue moon had recently been getting a great deal of practice.
The image dissolved.
His ears, however, had already done the precise thing his ears had been doing for the last six months when his interior life decided to surface in his exterior face.
"Mate."
It was Ron.
Ron had been waiting at the end of the corridor with Hermione and Draco. He had registered, in the precise small Ron-trained way of an oldest friend, the precise expression now occupying Harry's face. Hermione, beside Ron, had registered it half a second later. Draco had registered it third, with the small wry amusement of a Slytherin who was getting better at reading Gryffindors with each passing month.
"Mate," Ron repeated, with growing delight, "what just happened."
"Nothing happened, Ron."
"Hermione, look at him."
"I have been looking at him, Ronald."
"Draco."
"I see..."
"All of you," Harry said, with the small precise weariness of a boy whose closest friends had developed, over the previous fortnight, a deeply tiresome shared interest in his romantic developments, "are awful. All three of you."
"You just had a thought," Hermione said, with the precise scholarly attention of a girl who treated Harry's interior life as a study-subject, "and the thought was Luna. Wasn't it."
"It was not, Hermione—"
"Was it Luna in a particular configuration, Harry?" Ron added, with delight.
"Mate, I will hex you."
"A dress?*"
"Ronald, I am warning you—"
"A particular kind of dress, perhaps?"
"RONALD!"
Draco's small contained snort indicated that Draco had, in fact, also worked out the precise nature of the thought, and was simply enjoying the spectacle of Ron and Hermione doing his interrogation for him.
Harry pulled the hood of his cloak up over his head with the precise dignity of a Champion who had bound a Hungarian Horntail thirty-six hours ago and was now being publicly humiliated by his three best friends.
"Great Hall," he announced. "Dinner. We are going. The conversation is over."
"The conversation," Hermione said sweetly, "is just beginning, Harry."
The Great Hall, when they arrived, had received its first round of Yule Ball decorations during the late afternoon—small tasteful enchanted holly-wreaths spaced along the upper rafters, a single tall fir tree at the staff end of the hall not yet fully ornamented, and a long banner along the western wall in elegant scripted gold reading Yule Ball — 25 December. The decorations were, by Hogwarts standards, restrained; the full transformation would come closer to the date.
Harry, walking in, looked across the hall toward the Ravenclaw table.
She was there.
Luna was standing on the bench beside the table, with one hand on Astoria's shoulder for balance, pointing up at a small ornament that had clearly caught her interest in the upper rafter-section. She was wearing her usual radish-earrings. Her dirty-blonde hair fell down her back over the deep blue of her Ravenclaw robes. Astoria was looking up at the ornament Luna was indicating with the precise polite attention of a sister-in-spirit who had decided to be interested in Luna's findings.
Harry, registering Luna across the hall, found that the precise small fraction of his attention not occupied by his three best friends' continued teasing had narrowed to a single focused point.
Time, in the small precise inexplicable way of these things, did not exactly slow. But it did open up a small private bubble inside which all that existed was the deep blue of Luna's robes against the gold of the Yule banner, the small bright concentrated radish-earrings, the slow rise and fall of her hair as she gestured, and the small contented private bright smile on her face that Astoria's company tended to produce.
Luna, at the precise moment Harry would later identify as the moment she always knew when I was looking, turned her head.
Her grey eyes found Harry's across approximately sixty feet of Hall.
She lit.
Her face did the precise small bright contained pleased thing it always did when she saw him. Her free hand—the one not on Astoria's shoulder—lifted in a small wave.
Harry, helplessly, waved back.
He kept waving.
For approximately three seconds longer than was customary.
"Mate."
Ron's voice, from very close by his ear.
"Ah, Umm, Err.. W-what, Ron."
"Mate, you are smiling at Luna Lovegood like a complete idiot."
"N-no..."
"A total idiot, Harry. The smile is something I have not previously witnessed. The smile is, frankly, an embarrassment to your dignity as a Champion of Hogwarts."
Harry lowered his hood.
"Harry, sit down at our table. Sit down. Luna and Astoria will come over. Sit down before you trip over a bench."
Harry sat down.
Luna and Astoria, with the precise small unhurried agreement of two best friends who had decided that they were also dining with the Gryffindors tonight, made their way across the Hall and settled into the gaps between Harry, Ron, Hermione, Draco, Lavender, and Daphne, who had arrived at the table approximately six minutes ago and was now in the precise small contented quiet beside her sister.
Luna sat down next to Harry. Her shoulder pressed lightly against his.
"Good evening, Hah-ree."
"L-Luna."
"You were smiling at me from the doorway."
"I—"
"It was very nice."
"Th-thank you."
She picked up her fork. Harry, who was not, exactly, going to be eating very much over the next forty minutes, picked up his.
Dinner was, for Harry, awkward.
It was not, by any objective measurement of the conversation around the table, an awkward dinner.
The conversation was warm and active.
Hermione had brought out her small precise notebook of possible Yule Ball pairings observed in the school over the last forty-eight hours, with the precise small scholarly satisfaction of a girl who had taken an academic interest in the topic. Ron was loudly campaigning for Cedric to ask Cho. Daphne was reporting, with the small dry composed neutrality of a Slytherin who had observed her own house carefully, the precise current state of Slytherin pairings.
The conversation drifted to the golden egg. Hermione had ideas: underwater, perhaps. The pitch of the screech is similar to certain magical creature-calls when distorted by atmospheric refraction. Draco had ideas: the eggshell itself might contain runes that revealed themselves only at specific temperatures. Ron's contribution was: probably we should ask a magical creature, not the egg.
Harry, through the entire forty minutes, was registering exactly three things.
One. Luna's shoulder against his.
Two. The precise rate at which the small bright loose hairs at her temple caught the candlelight when she turned to listen to Hermione.
Three. The fact that he had glanced at her, by his own private later count, sixteen times during the meal, and that on four of those glances she had been looking back at him with the precise small contained pleased smile that meant yes, I am also doing this.
His ears had achieved, by the end of the soup course, the precise colour of his cloak.
By the end of the main course, he had registered that he had eaten approximately three bites of his shepherd's pie and was not going to be eating more.
By the end of the pudding course, Hermione had begun to glance sideways at him with the small precise concerned-affectionate expression that meant Harry is having a small interior weather-event and we are all collectively pretending not to notice for his dignity.
It was at this exact point that Draco Malfoy, with the precise composed dignity of a Slytherin who had decided in the precise interior privacy of his own thinking some hours previously that the moment had arrived, set down his pudding spoon and stood up.
The table fell quiet.
Draco walked the precise three paces around to Astoria's side of the bench. He stopped beside her. He did not, in the precise modest dignity of his approach, drop to one knee, which would have been enormously excessive; he merely stood beside her in the precise polite formal attentive posture of a fourteen-year-old gentleman who had been raised to do this sort of thing properly.
He cleared his throat.
The table's attention, including Harry's, snapped to him.
"Miss Greengrass," Draco said, in the precise warm formal tone of a Malfoy doing the thing he had been raised for, "would you do me the very great honour of accompanying me to the Yule Ball on the twenty-fifth of December, as my date."
Astoria, on the bench, froze.
Her face went through a sequence of three small precise expressions in approximately one and a half seconds: registered, processed, decided. The decided expression, at the end of the sequence, settled into the precise small composed regal warmth of a thirteen-year-old Greengrass who had, in the precise small interior moment of having heard the question, also registered that her cheeks were doing a thing she could not, by any practical means, control.
"Mr Malfoy," she said, with the precise small composed dignity she had clearly rehearsed in her head for approximately the last six weeks against the eventuality of exactly this moment, "the honour would be entirely mine. I would be very pleased to accept."
A small precise three-second pause.
Then the table—which had been holding its breath in the precise small we are observing something happen of all such moments—erupted.
Ron whooped. Lavender clapped. Hermione made a small private genuinely delighted sound. Daphne, beside her sister, gave a small composed nod of approved. Luna, beside Harry, leaned slightly into his shoulder with a quiet pleased exhalation. Harry was grinning.
Draco, with the precise small dignity of his moment now publicly concluded, sat back down. His ears were the precise colour of his Slytherin pin.
Astoria, whose cheeks were now the precise high pink of a girl whose composure had survived the question but had not entirely survived its aftermath, reached out and took Draco's hand on the bench between them. She did not look at him. She held his hand.
Harry, watching this with quiet pleasure, registered that Luna, beside him, had also taken his hand under the table.
He did not say anything about it.
She did not say anything about it.
Both of them held on.
The next four weeks moved in the small accelerated rhythm of the December term. The First Task's residual celebrations had faded. The egg-clue had, by the small unspoken agreement of the group, been deferred to the New Year; there were three months yet until the Second Task, and the autumn term had earned a rest from puzzles. The Yule Ball preparations had taken over the conversational life of the castle in a way that no Hogwarts event in recent memory had managed.
Ron and Lavender, who had been officially together since November but had until this point been managing the public part of the relationship with relative discretion, came out into the corridors with cheerful enthusiastic publicity. Lavender, on the precise first Friday of December, was found by Harry to be wearing a small RW pin on her robe-collar, which she had, by her own cheerful account, hand-stitched in her dormitory the previous Sunday. Ron, registering this, had, in the precise small confused happy way of a fourteen-year-old boy who could not quite believe his girlfriend was wearing his initials, blushed for approximately the entire morning.
Viktor Krum had, on the precise small Tuesday of the second week of December, arrived at the small alcove table at the back of the library with a small folded note in his Bulgarian hand. He had set it before Hermione, with the precise small grave warmth that was his particular register, and had said simply: "Hermin-ee-nee. I have written this in English. I would like to read it to you, or you to read it. As you wish."
Hermione had taken the note. She had read it.
She had, in the precise small composed dignified way she had been managing the development for the entire term, set the note down, closed Inter-School Trials, and stood up.
She had taken Viktor's hand.
She had then, with the precise small smile of a Hermione who had been waiting some time for this exact moment, gathered up her books with her other hand, gathered Viktor with his hand still in hers, and announced—to the precise mild surprise of the library at large—that the two of them would, henceforth, be eating dinner together at the Gryffindor table whenever Viktor's school schedule permitted, and that Yule Ball pairings have been formally settled, thank you, and now we are going to eat shepherd's pie.
She had then, with the precise unhurried composure of a girl who had decided to enjoy the rest of December, dragged Viktor across the courtyard.
The Gryffindor table, when they arrived, had absorbed the pair with cheerful warmth. Viktor, who had been worried about precisely this moment for approximately a fortnight, found the cheerfulness better than he had hoped. He sat down beside Hermione. He ate the shepherd's pie. He registered, with quiet pleasure, that Hermione's smile had not gone off all evening.
Neville Longbottom had asked Ginny Weasley, on the precise Thursday of the second week of December, in the corridor outside Herbology, with the small careful courage of a boy who had been working up to it for a fortnight and had decided that being a friend of Adaeze Okonkwo and a recipient of Mad-Eye Moody's mediterranean-water-plants book gave him exactly the courage required. Ginny, who had, over the course of the previous month, processed her old small-crush on Harry into the precise modern friendship of a sister to a brother, had said yes immediately and with cheerful warmth, and the two of them had been seen, since, walking together in the corridors with the small contented private quiet of a pair of friends whose Ball-arrangement had freed them from anxiety.
Only Harry and Luna, by the second week of December, had remained un-paired.
This was not, by any reasonable reading of the group, a problem. It was, by every member of the group's quiet private reading, a certainty pending its own arrival. Ron had, on the precise small Saturday of the first week of December, said quietly to Hermione over their morning tea in the library, "Don't push him. He'll get there. He's just choosing the right moment."
Hermione, with the precise small affectionate composure of a girl who had decided to trust Ron's instinct on this particular subject, had said: "Alright."
The group had collectively, in its precise small unspoken agreement, let Harry alone on the matter.
19th December 1994, the small wooded outskirts of the Forbidden Forest, 3:47 PM
The snow had been falling, intermittently, for the last three days. By the precise small afternoon of the nineteenth, it had assembled itself into a thin clean white covering across the entirety of the Hogwarts grounds—four inches on the lawn, six inches in the precise small drifts against the castle's western walls, a fine soft powder along the upper branches of the trees at the forest's edge. The afternoon sky was the deep pale grey of winter at half past three, and the light from it had taken on the precise low golden quality that came, at this time of year, only between three and four o'clock and then was gone.
Hagrid's small hut, by the time Harry and Luna had finished their afternoon's work, had taken on the precise warm-smoke smell of a cottage at the end of a December day's tending. Hagrid had thanked them with the precise enormous unselfconscious affection of a half-giant who had been the official recipient of two pairs of helping hands for the last three hours.
The Jobberknolls had been the morning's project—a small flock of perhaps fifteen of the small pale blue birds, who had been found by Hagrid the previous week with small wing-injuries from a hawk's attack at the forest's edge, and had been recovering in his small enchanted aviary. They had, by the afternoon, been entirely healed. Harry and Luna had helped Hagrid release them, one by one, back into the cold forest air. The small pale blue birds had circled, very briefly, above the hut—each one releasing in their final moment of departure the small precise high singing note of every word that had ever been spoken in their hearing, rendered backwards, a small Jobberknoll farewell—and had vanished into the trees.
Hagrid had wept, very slightly. He had not bothered to hide it.
Now Harry and Luna walked together along the small path at the forest's outskirt. They had agreed, by the precise small wordless decision of two friends who had been working alongside each other in cold air all afternoon, that they were not yet ready to return to the castle.
The path was lined by tall snow-dusted pines. The light through them was the precise low gold of late afternoon. The snow underfoot crunched softly under their boots in the small precise rhythm of two pairs of feet walking unhurriedly.
They did not talk for some time.
Harry's gloved hand was wrapped, naturally and without comment, around Luna's. Luna's small dirty-blonde hair was tucked under a soft navy-blue knitted hat that Mrs Weasley had sent her at the start of December. Her breath came out in small white plumes against the cold afternoon. Her grey eyes were soft and inward, watching the snow on the path ahead.
Harry was, behind his own precise small composed face, almost there.
He had been almost there for approximately ten days. He had drafted, in his head, the precise small invitation for the Yule Ball at least four times.
Each of the four drafts had been, by Harry's own private assessment, not good enough. He had decided, on each occasion, that the precise small private moment had not yet arrived.
The precise small private moment, as it transpired, was about to arrive on its own.
"Look," Luna said softly.
She pointed.
A small flock of perhaps twenty Jobberknolls, of the precise small pale blue plumage of the morning's released flock, had assembled in the upper branches of a fir tree perhaps thirty feet ahead of them on the path. The birds were not the released flock; they were a wild group that had been drawn, by some Jobberknoll-instinct Harry did not entirely understand, to the precise vicinity of where their fellows had been released. Each small bird shone, against the precise low golden afternoon light, in the precise pale blue of stained glass.
They began, very softly, to sing.
The Jobberknoll-song was not, by any practical measurement, singing. It was the precise small high humming whirr of birds whose voice held everything they had ever heard, rendered slowly and backwards. The song had no melody; it had the precise small accumulated memory of every Highland morning, every fox's bark, every wind in the trees, every fragment of human speech that had ever passed near their nests.
Harry, registering the sound, registered—through the precise small private fact of his own held memory—that he had heard a kind of this sound, approximately five and a half years before, at London Zoo, on the precise small Tuesday in the summer of his tenth year when he had, for the precise small first time in his life, met a girl with silver-grey eyes and radish-earrings who had pressed her face to the glass before made it disappear with her Accidental magic, leading them to the aviary part of the Zoo.
He turned his head slightly.
Luna was watching the Jobberknolls with the precise small inward private smile of a girl who had recognised, also, the small precise memory.
"The aviary," she said softly.
"Yes."
"Five and a half years."
"Yes."
"You were very small."
"So were you."
"I had a different earring then. The red one."
"Yes. I remember."
A small precise pause.
Luna turned her head. Her grey eyes, in the precise low golden afternoon light, met his.
"Hah-ree," she said gently. "You have been almost-asking me a thing for approximately ten days. You should know that you do not have to ask me. You also do not have to pick me.The Yule Ball is... a Tournament tradition and you are a Champion and there will be many girls in the school who would be very pleased to be your date. Hermione has, I think, prepared a list of three options in case you needed it. You do not have to feel pressure to choose me. I would not mind. I would be very pleased to find another partner. Astoria has said she would not mind walking me in with her and Draco."
She paused. Her grey eyes were perfectly steady.
"I am only saying. So that you know."
A small precise silent moment.
Harry's Cogitation, in the precise small composed interior register he had been developing over the last six months, did not engage.
He did not need it.
His own voice, when he found it, came out in the precise small steady honest tone of a boy who had been preparing this answer for the last ten days and had, in the precise small moment of being given the chance, known exactly what to say.
"Luna."
"Hm..."
"I do not want to take anyone else. I have not wanted to take anyone else for a fortnight. I did not almost-ask because I was uncertain. I almost-asked because I have been trying to find a better way of asking than just asking you, and I have run out of better ways, and I am very sorry that I have made you wait."
A small precise pause.
"Luna Lovegood. Will you please come to the Yule Ball with me as my date."
Luna, in the precise small interior moment of having received the question, was dazed. The dazed quality lasted, by Harry's precise small later count, approximately two seconds, during which her grey eyes did the small precise private widening of a girl whose precise small interior plan had been to politely free Harry from any imagined pressure and had not entirely accounted for the precise small honest forcefulness with which Harry would refuse to be freed.
Then her face did the precise small smile.
The smile was not the contained pleased smile. It was not the serene smile. It was the precise small bright unhidden complete smile he had only seen on her face perhaps six times in their entire friendship, and each of those times had been a moment he had carried with him afterwards as a small private quiet luminous thing.
"Yes, Hah-ree."
"Yes?"
"Yes. Of course yes. I have wanted you to ask me since approximately the first day of term."
"Luna."
"I am only saying. I have been quite patient."
She laughed.
The laugh, in the precise low golden afternoon, against the snow-coated trees and the small wild flock of Jobberknolls singing softly above them, was a small precise bright thing.
Harry would remember, for the rest of his life, the precise composed image of the girl standing on the snow-coated path in the December afternoon with her dirty-blonde hair under the navy hat and the small radish-earrings at her ears and the precise small bright unhidden smile on her face that was, in that precise moment, entirely for him.
He stood there.
He looked at her.
Some precise interior small quiet thing in his chest registered, with the precise calm clarity of a boy who had been processing this fact for some considerable time and had only now found the precise interior phrase for it: yes. She is the one.
He did not say it aloud. He did not need to.
Luna, with the precise small affectionate practical composure she had inherited from someone who was almost certainly her mother, tilted her head.
"Hah-ree."
"Yes."
"We will need to learn how to dance."
"Right, right..."
A small precise pause.
Then they were both laughing.