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The fire was burning low.
Most of Gryffindor had gone to bed an hour ago, maybe two — Harry had stopped tracking time somewhere between Ginny finishing her Charms essay and tucking her feet underneath her on the opposite end of the sofa. She'd stolen the good cushion without asking. He hadn't said anything.
She was reading now. Something that wasn't homework, held at an angle that caught the firelight, and she had a habit when she read of pressing her lips together slightly when something interested her, then releasing them when it didn't. He'd noticed that three weeks ago. He hadn't meant to.
He was supposed to be reviewing his Potions notes.
He wasn't.
The shape of her nose. That was what he was looking at now — the way it caught the light from the left, the faint scattering of freckles across the bridge that he'd never been close enough to count before and now could, if he wanted to, if he let himself, which he was apparently letting himself. Seven. He thought seven. Possibly eight, near the left side.
He filed it away without meaning to. Like his brain had started doing this on its own, building something — an archive, a collection — without asking his permission.
The way she laughs before she laughs. There's a half-second before it happens where something changes in her face, a kind of brightness that arrives early, like the laugh is already there and just waiting for the rest of her to catch up. He'd catalogued that one on a Tuesday.
He didn't know why he was doing it.
He knew why he was doing it.
"You're staring."
He blinked. Ginny hadn't looked up from her book.
"I'm not," he said.
"You are." She turned a page. "You've been staring for about ten minutes. I could feel it."
"I was thinking."
"About?"
The freckle behind your ear. The prophecy. The freckle behind your ear.
"Potions," he said.
She looked up then, and there it was — that early brightness, the laugh arriving before the sound did. "You're a terrible liar, Potter."
"I'm an excellent liar."
"Not at me, you're not."
She said it easily, like it was nothing, and went back to her book, and Harry felt something move through him that he didn't have a name for. Something adjacent to fear. She was right — he wasn't, couldn't, wouldn't lie well to her face — and that was both the thing he loved most and the thing that scared him down to the bone, because there was one lie he was going to have to tell eventually and mean, and it wasn't I was thinking about Potions.
It was I don't.
It was this was a mistake.
It was whatever he'd have to say at the end of this — end of sixth year, or seventh, or whenever it became undeniable that having her anywhere near him was the same as painting a target on her — to make her believe it well enough to keep her safe.
He looked at her.
The way she reads with her whole body, slightly turned, like she's leaning into the story. Filed. Kept.
"Harry."
"What?"
"Stop thinking so loud." She didn't look up. "Come here."
He moved without deciding to, closed the distance between them on the sofa, and she shifted automatically to make room, her shoulder fitting against his arm like it had always been there. He looked down at the top of her head. The fire crackled. Somewhere in the castle, something settled in the walls.
She thought he'd been staring because he was gone on her. She wasn't wrong. She just didn't know that gone on her and terrified of losing her had the same face, apparently, and he wasn't going to be the one to explain the difference.
The weight of her, leaning. Kept.
The way the fire makes her hair look like it's burning. Kept.
He closed his eyes.
Kept. Kept. Kept.