Time

"I don't know what to do, Luna."

Harry shifted on the stone fence, watching the lake flow drearily as he sat next to his girlfriend of two months (three weeks, four days, and two hours). Luna sat next to him, catching snowflakes on her tongue as she listened to him ramble.

"It's like there's never enough time."

"There never is," she said, admiring the sky as she watched the snow fall. "But we still make it, somehow."

Harry caught her mittened hand in his gloved one, playing with her thumb as he twitched his feet around. He liked these moments of peace, but they seemed to last forever.

Time was a paradox for Harry; when he and Luna were alone, the hours passed like sand through his fingers, but when he was fighting, it drudged on like frozen mud.

"What am I supposed to do?" he asked her. He was certain that if he tried hard enough, for long enough, he could find the answer in that peculiar brain of hers. She caught his fingers between hers, and swung their hands around.

"You do what you have to do, I suppose," she answered. "That's all anyone can do, really."

"But it's not enough," he said in frustration, yanking his hand away. "It's never enough."

Luna shrugged, and jumped off the fence. "You're going to have to let go one day, Harry," she sang, spinning in the snow. "It gets easier as time goes on."

"Let go of what?" he asked, puzzled.

"Of control," she replied, squatting and rolling snow in her hands. She took off her mittens and began to mound the snow together.

"Why should I?" he demanded, dropping onto the ground and sitting next to her. "I have to know!"

"No, you don't," she said firmly. "You don't have to know, and you don't need to know."

"But I do!" he insisted. "I have to know what to do in order to get to the end of the Prophecy!"

Luna looked up at him, snow freezing in her thin lashes as she considered him. She reached for his hands and took his gloves off, forcing his hands into the snow.

"What will the snowman look like when it's finished, Harry?" she asked.

"How the hell would I know?" he asked sarcastically.

"You don't, of course," she murmured, "but the only way to know is to make it, right? You'll know how the snowman came to be, but not until you've already made it."

"What's that got to do with anything?" he demanded. "What's it got to do with me? Or the whole situation?"

She looked him straight in the face, putting a hand on his cheek. "Everything, and nothing, dear. Defeating Voldemort is much more important than, say, making a snowman, but for each of these things, it is what we do that determines what will be. We don't know, because we have not yet made that decision."

He merely blinked, slightly confused. She smiled and reached up, planting a small kiss on the corner of his mouth.

"What happens, happens," said Luna softly, laying a small silver hand on Harry's shaking pink one. "And what comes, comes. But what happens afterwards is entirely up to you, Harry. You have a destiny, but the path to it is yours. That is yours, and yours alone. And what you do is your choice, because whatever happens, you must reach that point."

He opened his mouth, but Luna put her hand over his face. "You'll see, Harry," she said, grinning. "Whatever you do, you'll see what kind of person you've become. You simply have to give it time."

Bells rang in the air. "Oh!" she said airily, standing up. "It's time for lunch!" she yelped, and grabbed Harry's hand tighter. "Come on!"

As they ran back towards Hogwarts, Harry thought that perhaps Time was not as mysterious as he once thought it was.