Too Late

"Tous les événements sont enchaînés dans le meilleur des mondes possibles: car enfin, si vous n'aviez pas été chassé d'un beau château à grands coups de pied dans le derrière pour l'amour de mademoiselle Cunégonde, si vous n'aviez pas été mis à l'Inquisition, si vous n'aviez pas couru l'Amérique à pied, si vous n'aviez pas donné un bon coup d'épée au baron, si vous n'aviez pas perdu tous vos moutons du bon pays d'Eldorado, vous ne mangeriez pas ici des cédrats confits et des pistaches. - Cela est bien dit, répondit Candide, mais il frdin."

"All events are bound in the best of possible worlds, for look, if you hadn't been chased from the chateau by kicks in the rear for the love of Miss Cunégonde, if you hadn't been subjected to the Inquisition, if you hadn't fled to America on foot, if you hadn't given a good stab to the Baron, if you hadn't lost your golden sheep from Eldorado, you wouldn't be here eating candied citron and pistachio nuts. -Well said, responded Candide, but we must cultivate our garden."

-Voltaire, Candide

It's fluttering down, a little slip of folded paper that he can easily distinguish from the mass of robed legs, its white rebelliously standing out. Like the memos at the Ministry of Magic, only his is just a simple bit of folded notepaper, bereft of enchantment, or as far as Harry can tell, message. It's moments away from his tattered sneaker, then out of sight, crushed beneath it. A flip of red hair turns the passage in front of him, one of the Weasleys, clearly. Let's get this over with, he thought as he trudged to the library.

The candle in the Gryffindor common room was starting to drip wax onto the table, evoking sleepy protests from those of the paintings on the walls kept awake by Harry's quill scratching. He measured the parchment for what must have been the fiftieth time and sighed. Two more inches and then Snape could go do something that was probably physically impossible for all Harry cared, he'd have the foot-and-a-half on the uses and theory of the juice from Neville's damned plant. Two more inches...He found himself drifting, a more frequent occurrence, nowadays. A hauntingly familiar scent played in his brain, a memory of pale skin, too pale, and eyes. I remember tracing the veins on the eyelids as they lay firmly shut and I could have sworn they'd stay that way forever.

A drop of candle wax onto the edge of the parchment startled him back into reality. He had been alone for at least an hour. Neville had taken off to bed early, having given Harry all the help he could, and leaving him alone with the dusty tomes from the library. Harry's stomach growled, finishing off the remnants of the hearty beef stew of several hours gone. "Stinksap has shown some promise as an experimental treatment for some of the rarer magical skin diseases, but until thorough testing has been completed by Ministry researchers, our uses for this versatile plant will have to remain in the world of potions." There. Almost done. The quill seemed harder and harder to hold, but the end was in sight and some fire borne probably out of his hatred for Snape kept him awake until the last period dried, at which point he collapsed on the desk into a peaceful sleep.

--you remember--

--how could I not?--

--it felt right for you to hold me--

--it was right--

"Harry!" Hermione shook him frantically and picked his head and shoulders off the table, bringing the parchment up with him for a half foot or so, until it detached from the side of his face and floated back to the table. She shot an amused look at no one in particular and muttered a few words to clear the drool stain off the finished essay.

"Harry, it's time for breakfast!"

"Oh, no. I must have fallen asleep after writing this damned thing! What...what do we have first?"

"History of Magic," Hermione quickly replied.

"Good. I'll be able to be a bit late without Binns noticing. Give me a sec?"

Harry trudged up the stairs, bleary-eyed, to his room, essay in hand. He felt filthy and not properly rested, a revolting taste lingering in his mouth. A quick change of clothes, a brushing of the teeth, hum-de-hum, wow-this-place-is-a-mess, and he was back down the stairs.

The paper, of course, lies on the floor of his room. It doesn't remember, or know, but its owner does. And worries.

She remembers.

The tired feeling he always got after pulling an all-nighter stayed with Harry even through Charms, where they'd been practicing Energizing Enchantments, which usually left his hair on end and adrenaline coursing through his veins. The fact that Snape had them preparing sleep draughts in double potions didn't help him keep his head up, and before he knew it, the fumes left his eyelids drooping and sure enough, he forgot to lower the flame at a crucial moment and was left with a musky smelling resin collecting at the bottom of his cauldron.

"Potter, Potter, Potter. As much as we all know you're not cut out for this subject, I'd appreciate it if you at least paid basic attention to the task at hand instead of daydreaming about Miss Granger or your latest conquest."

Harry burned with resentment, but the feeling was so familiar in Snape's classroom that it didn't particularly bother him. As long as he made it through this class without falling asleep, he'd be set for the day. After he finally scraped through, with strategic jostles from Ron every time he started to drift off, the three of them made their way back to Gryffindor common room. As Ron and Hermione started to bicker over something or other, Harry excused himself to catch a quick nap before dinner.

It's at moments like these when what you think you know is superseded by what you wish you'd done.

Lying spread-eagle on his back, Harry couldn't seem to get to sleep, despite his body's desire to shut down his brain. What I need right now is a Pensieve, he thought moodily. Left to its own devices, his brain tended to review the past, review everything he'd experienced in the last four-and-a-bit years of his life. After five minutes of restless half-doze, he hauled himself out of bed to grab a drink of water.

It catches his eye.

The paper unfolds willingly, disclosing its secret. The ridges from his sneaker leave the message clear, the bubbly handwriting unmistakably familiar; he'd seen it before he destroyed the diary, plunging the basilisk fang into it and watching it gush forth torrents of ink, torrents of its blood.

Do you remember?

With a jolt, he remembered. That night at the Burrow, that first night two summers ago. The smell of everything, of life, of the Mrs. Weasley's cooking, such a contrast to the stale antiseptic smell of the Dursley household. The joy of seeing them all, of seeing his friends finally after a too-long summer pent up in that disgusting room. Even of seeing the little sister, the pixie of a girl who still fluttered a bit whenever Harry entered the room. He remembered the summer before at the World Cup, trudging through the field in the pre-dawn light next to her to catch the Portkey, some vague thought twitching through his mind about how she's finally growing up. He remembered this summer just past, at 12 Grimmauld Place. Remembered the warm comforting scent of her as their faces grew oddly near, remembered Cho slipping rapidly from the back of his mind, remembered hearing her breathe quickly before the sound of footsteps pulled them away from

"G'night, Harry."

"G'night, Ginny. Sleep well."

And that was it. They'd both pretended it had never happened.

You owe me one.

Yes, he supposed he did. His heart started to speed up merely remembering the simple, pure sensuality of the moment. There must, however, be more than meets the eye about this simple Weasley girl who he thought had long since forgotten her girlish fascination with him. She had to have outgrown the foolish singing Valentine, the furtive glances snuck when she thought he wasn't looking--this wasn't the action of a giggling pre-teen. Yet it seemed strangely un-Ginny, yet, after all, how would you know? You haven't exactly been paying her much attention recently, have you, and people do change...

Almost before he realized, it was time to head down for dinner. He hastily gobbled some poached fish and, before Ron and Hermione could even start bickering, muttered something about the library and shot off, leaving confused glances in his wake. All the while, he felt as if something about the handwriting had written itself on the inside of his eyelids and across the walls of his skull, as if the message had permeated his thoughts like ink in water. He, of course, had work to do, it being the fifth year, but truthfully Harry's main purpose in going to the library was not entirely academic. The library was, after all, one of Ginny's favorite haunts, as he recalled...

The musty smell of old books enhanced the atmosphere of being in some sort of sanctum, an attitude thoroughly encouraged by Madame Pince, who seemed to subscribe to the theory that books were much too precious to be, Heaven forbid, read, especially by grubby students. Despite this resistance on her part, Harry managed to locate and remove from the shelving a particularly weighty tome on a difficult charm that Flitwick had been teaching as of late. He managed to halfway lose himself in the theory of the charm, attempting to properly understand the effect the gestures of the wand had on the gathering magic, when the sound of familiar footfalls broke his concentration, which was exactly what he'd been hoping for.

"Ummmm..."

"So I take it you got it, then."

"Got what?"

"The note, Harry. What did you think I meant? Actually, I know you got it. I put a Homing Charm on it locked to you."

"Oh. That. Yeah...I did."

She brusquely pulled up a chair next to him.

"Why so...business-like?"

"Got to keep up appearances, don't we? Jeez, Harry, for someone who's supposed to be so amazing, sometimes I wonder about you...Our lives are watched very closely by any number of people, most of whom wish good for us. Even so, I'd rather keep my private life...well, private. Anyway, listen. We should probably have a talk about this."

"This is not the best place, I don't think."

"The common room should be empty about now, while everyone's at dinner..."

"Sounds good to me."

The walk to the Gryffindor common room wasn't quite as awkward as Harry had been expecting. For some reason his brain didn't seem to be functioning properly; perhaps that was the reason for his fatigue of the last day or so, the reason his thoughts seemed muddied. Ginny trilled the password to the Fat Lady and sidled into the common room, where a roaring fire dominated the atmosphere. The cool autumn winds whispered against the closed windows as they found two overstuffed armchairs to sit in next to the fire. This was finally the scenario that he'd been running thorough his mind for most of the day; ironic that it should come to be exactly as he'd expected...

For a moment he was back at Grimmauld Place, back in the moment that had been taken from them.

"Harry...listen."

"No."

He reached over and took her hand. She looked surprised, but he'd been expecting that.

"Harry, I..."

He shushed her and opened his mouth, ready to finally voice his thoughts.

"I do owe you one. I've been thinking...this has a real possibility. I never really thought about you, and..."

A high pitch entered her voice, a pitch that made Harry feel vaguely uncomfortable.

"You've been thinking. Well, I've been thinking too, Harry. And after dropping that note, I had something of a...well, let's call it a change of heart. You've always known how I felt about you. Well, I've been painfully aware of the way you felt too. The way you ignored me, until that night. Maybe I should have listened to what my mother said about boys...although I'm sure she never meant it about perfect Harry."

"Ginny, I..."

"Don't. Let me finish. Maybe I'm weird, maybe I'm not acting like I'm supposed to. Maybe that has something to do with having been possessed by You-Know-Who. But then again, maybe I'm just acting the way I think I should. You ignored me after that night, just like you always do. Why wouldn't you, after all...you've always had what you wanted. Point is, Harry, I probably shouldn't have dropped the note, but I still wanted you. Only, now that it seems like I might have you, I don't want you, because I don't want to be second prize to Cho or Hermione or whoever. I don't want to be your ego booster, and even if I wouldn't be I couldn't help but think that I was.

"Come on, Harry. There's no way it could have worked. Look at my family. Look at Ron. Do you really think they'd be alright with it? 'Cause I know them, and I know they wouldn't be."

Crestfallen was the only real way to describe the look on Harry's face, but the inside of his mind wasn't thinking about words like that. He felt like a small child denied an ice cream cone promised to him. Which, he supposed, was Ginny's exact reason for acting as she did...

"Don't look so sad, Harry, please...this was the way I was afraid it was to turn out."

The accusation aggravated him even more. He already felt embarrassed and frustrated at being denied something to which he'd been looking forward and let some of his feelings leak out in his voice:

"I'm not sad, just confused. Why do girls say things they don't mean? Why pull this, Ginny?"

She'd lost her righteousness; his anger had knocked her off her high-horse. In the face of his frustration she was reduced in some extent to the little sister with a crush on her brother's friend, reduced to what she'd been trying to flee for the last two years.

So it was not fate that led her, then, to lean over and gently kiss him, to feel his surprised lips and his hand against the side of her face. And it was not fate that led her to grab a scrap of paper and get up slowly, not without a sense of regret, and write something. Or mutter a word over the paper and let it drop to the ground. Or walk away, back to dinner, leaving a confused Harry to unfold the paper.

Now, we're even.