He finished the album on the thirtieth of July.
It had been in progress since the third week of June — the systematic work of going through every photograph he had taken since August of the previous year, developing the ones he had kept in negatives, selecting the ones that belonged and the ones that didn't, writing the captions in his handwriting in the margins with the specific true thing about each photograph rather than the descriptive version.
The album covered August the previous year to July this year. Eighty-one photographs.
He did not show it until the birthday dinner — not because he had been waiting for the occasion specifically, but because the occasion was the first one that gathered enough of the people in the photographs to make the showing right.
After the pudding, when the table had the quality of people who were glad and full and had nowhere to be, he brought it out.
He set it on the table without announcement and let it be found.
His mother found it first, as he had expected. She opened it turning the pages slowly.
Sirius took it next and found the World Cup photograph — himself and Harry on the seats, the photograph from the angle that had caught Sirius mid-sentence and Harry mid-laugh, a real ones. He looked at it for a long time. Then he passed it to Harry without saying anything.
Harry found one — the birthday dinner at the Wulfhall, Ron in the frame for the first time. He looked at it and then looked at Ron across the table.
'You're in it,' he said.
'First time,' Ron confirmed.
Harry looked at the photograph again. His expression gave — not the managed version, the real one. 'Good,' he said.
Hermione, sitting beside Ron, turned to the photograph he had taken of her on the Skyride at Alton Towers — her back to the camera, looking at the February landscape, the specific quality of someone not performing anything. She held the album for a moment with the quality she had at the birthday when she had given him the green book — the expression of someone who had been seen accurately and was reckoning with what that meant.
'You've been photographing me since second year,' she said.
'Yes,' he said.
She looked at the photograph. Then at him. 'The Skyride one,' she said. 'I didn't know you were taking it.'
'You were looking at the view,' he said. 'That was the moment.'
She looked at it once more. Then she turned the page and let the album continue its work around the table, and he felt her hand find his under the table in the specific way she had since February, and he held it and let the room be what it was — full and warm and entirely worth the two years it had taken to build.