All of This

It all started at the end of Harry's 6^th year. No, wait. Let me start over.

It all started at the end of Harry's 5^th year. After Sirius died, Harry felt different. Who can blame him, though? Orphaned, raised by the one of the strangest Muggle families I've ever heard of, you know the story. Then losing Sirius. That entire day really, it was enough to change anyone.

Ever since my first year at Hogwarts, I knew You Know Who was real, a threat. I knew it before, but it didn't really hit home until he possessed me. That would be enough to wake anyone up. But that night in the Department of Mysteries ... that entire day leading up to that night. That made it seem more real than ever before, and it was the first time I realized nothing would ever be quite the same again.

After that day, Harry changed. There isn't a sane person who could watch a family member, or someone as good as, die and not be a bit different afterwards. This eerie sort of calm settled over Harry. Calm at the surface, but underneath ... what was happening underneath would be anyone's guess. Like a comfortable sort of melancholy, making you want to reach out to that person and help them forget why they're so sad.

I had had a crush on Harry from the moment I saw him. Maybe even before that. What little girl can grow up hearing stories of a real, live hero, a boy her age that most people revered as a kind of prince, and not wonder if she might, one day, be a princess?

But as I got older, the crush drifted away. I gave it up as hopeless, really. Not that I didn't still like Harry at that point. I had given up on being the princess and would settle instead for being the prince's friend.

As soon as that clicked in my mind, all awkwardness around Harry was lost. I could finally, at long last, speak in front of my brother's best friend and not feel flushed with embarrassment for days afterwards.

But at the end of my fourth year, some of those old feelings came flooding back. As Harry mourned the loss of his godfather and drew further into himself than ever before, I wanted more than anything to be the one that brought him back out.

All through my fifth year, his sixth, I moved closer to Harry than I had ever before dared. As we sat in the common room at night doing our homework or just relaxing, I found myself thinking of things to say that would make Harry laugh, or grin at the very least. Mom always said laughter is one of the best medicines.

Since he kept the D.A. going, I worked as hard in that as I did in my classes, and tried to help out the other students around me when they had trouble with their jinxes. I knew that Harry felt proud of our accomplishment in his class, and I wanted to give him more reasons than ever to be happy.

We laughed together, studied together, ate together, played Quidditch together ... nearly everything one can do at Hogwarts. In a way, I felt like I was making up for lost time. The first years I had spent wrapped in my little schoolgirl crush felt a million years gone, and I felt like I was truly Harry's friend. Someone he considered an equal.

Then the night came when he told us about the prophecy. Ron and Hermione were there, of course, as were Luna and Neville. The six of us stayed behind at Harry's request at the end of our last D.A. meeting before Christmas break.

He said since all of us had risked our lives that night in the Department of Mysteries, he felt that we deserved to know what we had almost died for.

We all stared helplessly at him as he repeated the contents of the prophecy and explained what Dumbledore had told him about it. In the deafening silence that ensued, Harry walked to the other side of the room, stared at the wall for a bit until a roaring fireplace appeared. He sat down and stared into the flames while the rest of us tried to comprehend what we had just heard.

Hermione cried quietly into Ron's shoulder while Ron kept his eyes squeezed tightly shut. Luna glared at the stone floor, any trace of a dreamy expression gone. Neville drew his knees up to his chest and hid his face in his folded arms. I gazed past Harry into the leaping flames and sighed every few minutes.

I had hoped before that it would be someone other than him. Of course, since he somehow did it the first time, I had a sneaking suspicion that Harry just might be able to defeat Voldemort again, but I had hoped it would be someone else. Dumbledore, Snape, someone else from the Order, anyone really, except for Harry.