Hermione stood perfectly still before the silent door. The candle flame pulsed like a heart. A misty light began to take shape, assuming the outlines of a human form: Tall, lithe, with cascades of flaming hair and deep, haunted eyes the color of burnished mahogany.
"Ginny?"
The figure of Ginny Weasley was in no wise different from the girl who, in the flesh, had left Hermione at the entrance to the Corridor of Doubt. But -- how had it escaped Hermione before? The pain, the anguish; looking at Ginny now, Hermione felt her heart breaking.
"Do you love him, Hermione?" Ginny said as from far away. "Do you really, truly love him?"
"Yes, Ginny," Hermione said softly, but no less certain for that. "I love him."
"Is he your life?" Ginny pressed. "Is he the breath in your body? The sun in your sky? Is he a part of you? A part you know you can never do without?"
Ginny's eyes held Hermione's in a grip of steel, rendering her unable to speak.
"And what if he were suddenly taken away from you?" Ginny said abruptly. "What if you turned around one day and he was gone. Gone forever. If you could never again look into his eyes. Never hear his voice again. Never hear him say...I love you. Could you go on living? Could you?"
Hermione studied Ginny's face for long moments before answering. And the words which escaped her lips would have surprised none more than Hermione herself.
"Yes," she said. "I could. I love Harry. He is the missing piece that alone can fill the hole in my heart. But he is not me, nor I, him. Yes, I could go on without him, if only because I know he would want me to. Just as I would want him to go on without me. We share a wonderful love, Harry and I. But it's not a selfish love, nor a possessive one. It's a love that builds up, not one that tears down.
"If he were gone, part of me would go with him. If he...if he died...part of me would die. If I could, I would die for him."
"As would I," Ginny said, not boastfully, but with depth of sincerity.
"And Harry would die for either of us," Hermione said. "Yes, for you as well as for me. Or for Ron, or your mum. For anyone he loved. Perhaps even for someone he never even knew. Because that's the kind of man Harry is. Is it any wonder that we both love him so much?"
"If not for you," Ginny said, "Harry would have fallen in love with me. He would have married me." It was not an accusation. Hermione detected no slightest trace of malice in the red-head's even tone.
"I think he might well have," Hermione smiled tenderly. "And if I...if I should..." She swallowed painfully. "...I hope and pray he has someone like you to turn to. All Harry ever wanted in life was love...and he'd find no lack in you. You're the most loving girl I know."
Ginny stared probingly into Hermione's deep brown eyes.
"With all the girls in the wizarding world at his feet, Harry chose you. Why?"
"I don't know," Hermione said almost apologetically, lowering her face. "I'm hardly fodder for Witch Weekly's Witch of the Year, am I? A bossy know-it-all...no figure...hair like a dustmop...
"That never mattered to Harry," Ginny said with a sudden edge to her voice; not a dangerous edge, but one of certitude. "He saw past the superficial. He always did. He saw who you are underneath. You're no cardboard cut-out from a magazine, Hermione. You're real. Your love is real, and deep -- not just for Harry, but for everyone and everything. Whether it was helping Neville in Potions or lobbying for house-elf rights -- or getting on Ron's wick to pull it together and be a better person. It's all love.
"I don't blame Harry for loving you. I love you, too. You're the sister I always wished for on the first star every night, when living with six brothers came near to sending me 'round the bend. I don't know when it was that I stopped believing in wishing stars. But I realized at some point that, star or no, my wish came true. Long before I ever wished for Harry...I wished for you."
Hermione felt hot tears running down her cheeks. It was true, and she knew it. The real Ginny had never said it in words, but Hermione had read it in her eyes a thousand times.
"Yours is the love Harry's waited for all his life," Ginny said in a voice strangely distant. "Be good to him. Sister."
When Hermione succeeded in wiping the last tear from her eyes, she saw only an empty corridor stretching out before her, its terminus lost in darkness. The candle flame burned brightly, lighting the way.
"Ginny...I hope someday you let someone love you...the way Harry loves me. You deserve it. Sister."
And, wiping her eyes one last time with her pristine robes, Hermione hurried toward her rendezvous with Harry.
Harry jumped back well before he was in sight of the door. The candle had unexpectedly burst into a wash of bright orange that seemed to fill the corridor. Through the glare -- which was strangely familiar -- he glimpsed a shock of red hair surmounting a freckled face split in a reckless grin.
"Ron?" Harry said tentatively.
Suddenly the orange glow solidified. Harry was surrounded by walls the color of sunset, emblazoned with posters of like hue. From the corner of his eye he caught flashing, neon-like letters spelling out CHUDLEY CANNONS.
Ron's room was exactly as Harry remembered it. As was its owner. Ron was wearing his favorite Chudley Cannons sweatshirt, and he seemed possessed of an unearthly energy that would have shamed the leprechauns at the World Cup four years ago.
"Isn't it great, Harry?" Ron beamed. "No more school! We're official wizards now! You realize what this means? We can go anywhere, do anything! Now that we can Apparate, the whole world is ours! Blimey, we can even go to America! Bleedin' California, mate! It'll be a ruddy bash!
"But let's not get ahead of ourselves, eh? What say we start closer to home. The Quidditch World Cup is in Italy this year. Bet Dad can get us tickets through the Ministry! And after that, we head South to Egypt, see what Bill's up to. Might even get to watch him battle an undead Egyptian wizard in a tomb! Mate, that would totally fly!
"But, hey, why worry? We've got all the time in the world! What say, mate? First choice is yours! Just name the spot, and I'm there with a ruddy tea cozy on my head!"
Harry felt an undeniable stirring in his bosom at Ron's words. Following his unremembered first year with his parents, he had endured ten years of torment at the Dursleys; locked in a spider-infested broom cupboard, starved, tormented, mentally and emotionally abused -- Harry had always suspected that one reason he had what was considered an abnormal disregard for wizard Death Eaters was because he'd had a decade of inuring with the Muggle variety on Privet Drive.
His Hogwarts letter had liberated him from that particular prison (for ten months out of every year, at least); but school proved to be a sort of captivity in itself, if with a longer leash. Hogwarts castle and its surrounding grounds had seemed enormous to a naive eleven-year-old in First Year, but those seemingly infinite dimensions had closed in on him quickly. Even in later years, the occasional Hogsmeade weekend did little to alleviate a feeling of constriction bordering, ultimately, on strangulation.
And now, with graduation came -- FREEDOM! The whole bloody world was his playground, whether by Apparation, broomstick, or -- he barked a short laugh -- sodding Flying Car! The prospect was headier than mulled mead to Harry's nigh-strangulated soul. How many Summer nights had he lay awake in his bed at Number 4 Privet Drive and made mental lists of the marvelous things he would see and do after graduation. They were yet etched into his mind as if on parchment. He would stand atop the Eiffel Tower and look down upon the lights of Paris! He would fly his Firebolt over and into the Grand Canyon! He would erect a Bubble Charm around himself and walk on the bottom of the sea! He would do it all! He was a wizard! Barring the unforeseen, he could live for two centuries!
Yes, he thought now, looking at Ron's bright, expectant face as it bubbled with excitement like an overheated cauldron. Yes. He could realize it all. His every dream. His heart's desire.
But he paused now, his thoughts turning in on themselves, swirling like oil on the surface of a crystalline lake. And the question reverberated in his brain: What was his heart's desire?
What -- or who?
And the dream-bubble burst. Harry sighed softly, his mouth curling into the ghost of a smile. Visions danced across his mind's eye. Visions of the world, of its wonders, its promises of excitement and adventure. And in every one of those visions, Harry saw himself. But not alone. Never alone.
Harry could not deny that Ron's words had stirred him to his very core. But at that core was his heart. And lodged firmly, comfortingly, in his heart was a woman. The woman he loved more than the life in his body, and without whom the wonders of the universe itself were but ashes on his tongue.
He hoped someday she would want to share some of these dreams, that together they would release the child in each of them, if but for a day, an hour. Childhood dreams died not easily. But he was a man now, and any dream that did not include Hermione was less than the smoke from a guttering candle.
"I have to go," Harry said, his smile bright as a werewolf moon. "Hermione is waiting for me."
Harry watched as a change came over Ron. His freckle-splashed smile faded until only a shadow remained. His china-blue eyes grew deeper than a bottomless well.
"You know I love her...don't you, Harry?"
"Yes," Harry said. "I know. A blind man could see it. I know, too, because I've thought how many chances I muffed before I finally came to my senses. How close I came, time after time, to losing her forever -- if not to you, then to anyone with the sense to recognize how...how...special she is. And I thank God on bended knee that I saw the truth before it was too late. But I...I always took comfort in the fact that if I'd never come 'round, you'd...you'd be there for her. That means the world to me -- more than any world we might see from the end of a broomstick handle."
"You know I'd die for her," Ron said quietly.
"I'd rather you live for her," Harry said with a slight choke in his voice. "For her...and for us. All of us. We're a team, mate. I want you with me on this. But if you can't...I'll understand...but I have to tell you...I will go it alone, if need be. I'm entering into a sacred trust. If I let anything get in the way -- even our friendship -- then I don't deserve her, do I?"
"No," Ron said firmly. "You don't. But you do. I'd do the same thing in your place. But you won't have to do it alone. I'm with you. All the way."
Ron extended his hand. Harry clasped it firmly.
In the time it took Harry to blink, his hand was grasping only empty air. The orange walls were once again colorless stone. Ron was gone.
But the smile on Harry's face told a different story.
"See you outside, mate. We both will."
And Harry plunged into the Corridor, ready to face his next challenge, secure in the knowledge that, whatever it was,
he would not face it alone.