Thursday, April 16th, 1992.

The school was almost deserted now, nine-tenths of the students having gone home for the Easter holiday, just about everyone she knew missing. Susan had stayed behind, her grand-aunt being quite busy, as had Ron for reasons she didn't know - maybe the Weasley family was poor enough that feeding all the children for an extra week would've been a noticeable strain? It all worked out well enough, since Ron and Susan were just about the only ones left who'd still talk to her. (At least that she wanted to talk back to. Lavender was still nice to her, and Tracey was, um, Tracey, but neither of them were quite relaxing to spend a free hour around; and in any case, neither of those two had stayed over for the Easter hols.)

If she couldn't go home - and she wasn't allowed to go home, her parents had been lied-to and told she'd had Glowpox - then an almost-empty Hogwarts was the next best thing.

She could even visit the library without people staring at her, since there were no lessons and nobody was trying to do schoolwork.

It would be a mistake to think that Hermione drooped about the corridors weeping all day long. Oh, she'd cried a lot the first two days, of course, but two days had been enough. There were parts of Harry's borrowed books about that, how even people who were paralyzed in car accidents weren't nearly as unhappy as they'd expected to be, six months later, just like lottery winners weren't nearly as happy as they'd expected. People adjusted, their happiness levels went back to their happiness set point, life went on.

A shadow fell over where Hermione was reading her current book and she whirled around, the wand hidden on her lap coming up to point directly at the surprised face of -

"Sorry!" Harry Potter said, hastily holding up his palms to show his left hand empty, and his right hand holding a small red-velvet pouch. "Sorry. Didn't mean to startle you."

There was an awful silence, her heartbeat increasing and her palms starting to sweat as Harry Potter just looked at her. She'd almost talked to him, on the first morning of the rest of her life; but when she'd come down to breakfast Harry Potter had looked so awful - so she hadn't sat down beside him at the breakfast-table, just quietly eaten in her own little bubble of nobody else sitting next to her, and it had been horrible, but Harry hadn't come to her, and... she just hadn't

...

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