A Fragment

They stood in a corner of the park, between roses and jasmine, the warm wind gently swaying the thin curtain of twigs of the young willow beside them, the sky a deep blue with a light blue and yellow streak where the sun had just set. It was a scene almost too romantic to be actually happening, and the world seemed to be holding its breath, trying not to destroy the perfect moment.

The young couple were kissing tenderly, breathing in the scent of each other, drugged by the heavy perfume of the flowers around them, oblivious to anything else. The girl had lost herself completely in his arms, her eyes were closed, for her there were only his lips, his fingers, caressing her tenderly, and she responded in kind. She didn't want this moment to end, wanted to stay with him forever...

Suddenly he spoke, his lips brushing against hers, his voice barely audible, softer than a whisper.

"Would you still love me if I didn't have that scar?"

She frowned, eyes closed, and leant in to kiss him again. He met her lips for a second, then pulled away gently, but firmly. Her eyes snapped open and she looked at Harry piercingly. His green eyes were fixed on hers, looking anxious, expectant, almost scared.

"What?" she asked, her voice both annoyed and mildly puzzled.

"Please, I have to know the truth. Would you love me if I weren't the Boy Who Lived?"

She sighed, exasperated. "Do you realise you just destroyed the moment for a silly question like that?"

Now it was Harry's turn to frown. "Silly?" he asked. "It's a very important question to me, I don't think it's silly at all."

"It's the silliest thing I've ever heard. Do you really want an answer?"

Harry stepped back a pace, his hands still loosely around her waist, but their bodies not touching anymore. His emerald green eyes stared at her intently.

"Yes," he said.

She sighed and ran her left hand through her hair, her right sliding from his neck down to his chest, coming to rest just above his heart, the overall effect being almost like a witness in a trial swearing on the bible to tell the truth and nothing but the truth. Her eyes met his gaze and she seemed to be looking into his very soul. Harry held his breath, waiting for the answer he needed to hear.

"No," she said finally, in a very final tone of voice.

His eyes widened in shock. He wanted to pull away but didn't seem to be able to move. "No?" he mouthed, as if he needed to ask for the meaning of that word.

The girl sighed softly, her gaze moving from his eyes to his lips and back again, taking in his incredibly hurt expression. She sighed again when she noticed the tears glistening between his eyelashes, but the sigh sounded almost impatient, as if her partner had failed to spot something obvious that she didn't want to have to explain.

"Tell me," she said after a moment of silence, in that voice she knew he'd answer in spite of himself, "Did you ask Ginny this?" He nodded. "What did she say?"

He drew a shuddering breath that told her he was already crying but was determined not to show it. It hurt her to see him like this, and she hoped like hell she was doing the right thing in being so blunt. Then she mentally shook herself. Nobody was going to make her lie, not even if it meant she'd lose him.

When she had almost given up on hearing an answer, he said in a soft voice, "She told me she would have loved me anyway."

She looked at him thoughtfully. "And yet she left you," she said in the most neutral voice she could manage.

Harry's lips thinned, she could feel his hands drawing away and his expression closing. She caught his hand with her own, the other still resting above his heart.

"Harry, listen to me," she said imperatively. He stopped moving, his eyes hanging on her lips like a drowning man clutching at a floating log. She tightened her grip on his hand and stared fiercely at his face.

"Don't you dare walk away before I've finished talking with you," she warned. "I said it was a silly question, and you proved me right, because you don't even know what it means yourself. I appreciate the fact that you're a romantic person and that you need to hear clichés from time to time, but you shouldn't believe in your fantasies. I despise questions like 'Would you have done this or that if things had been different', because you can never know things like that. How can you just presume that you would have been the same person if Voldemort hadn't tried to kill you?

Maybe you would have grown up with your parents and led a happy life, but in your first year, the Dark Lord would have stolen the Philosopher's stone because you wouldn't have been able to stop him, and without your ability to speak parseltongue you could have died in your second year, nobody would have found the Chamber of secrets and the school would have been closed.

Maybe Voldemort would have killed your parents when you were four, or maybe seven, you would have gone to live with Sirius because he wouldn't have been in Azkaban, and you would have been terribly unhappy because remembering your parents would have been worse than not knowing anything about your past. Maybe you would have been in Slytherin because you would have been able to brood on revenge for years before being Sorted.

Maybe nothing bad would have happened to you at all and you would have grown up a spoiled brat. Maybe, even if you had fallen in love with me then, I would have despised you. But perhaps I would have loved you and you wouldn't have looked twice at me.

Do you really think that Ginny loved you because of who you are? She may have thought so herself, because you are sweet, and funny, and thoughtful, and wonderful in every way," she paused for a second to catch her breath, and noticed that Harry was looking at her with a confused expression, hurt mingled with admiration and uncertainty. She wanted to kiss him so much, but she could see he hadn't understood yet.

Shaking her head impatiently she continued, "Ginny fell in love with you when she was ten, because you were her hero. Your personality might have helped later on, and your looks aren't too bad either, but that was just the icing on the cake. Maybe she didn't realise it herself, but underneath it all was a schoolgirl crush for a celebrity. I hadn't even heard about you when I first met you. If you hadn't been the way you were, I wouldn't have cared about what you were.

But I'm not trying to compare myself to Ginny, I know you really loved her. I just don't want you to compare her with me either. I'm not like her. That's why I said I wouldn't love you if things were different - but why do you care anyway? Things just are the way that they are, they won't change. You're not going to pop off into an alternate universe which is exactly the same apart from your scar and your fame to prove me wrong. This is here and now, this is real, we are real, you can't build your happiness on fantasies.

There's a Buddhist theory that in every instant there are exactly three thousand possibilities, three thousand choices you have. Once you've chosen one path, though, you can't go back and choose another. It's also quite impossible to explore all the other possibilities, because each of the 2999 paths you didn't choose will lead to another three thousand. I don't want to think about all that might have happened, because it's already difficult to focus on the present and the future.

If you're disappointed when I say that I probably wouldn't love you if you didn't have your scar, your money and your fame, I'm sorry. I'm sorry if I hurt you by saying this, but also if you think like that. Because right now, in this reality, I love you. With all the faults you know or don't know that you have, I love you. If you give all your money away the minute I've stopped talking, I'll still love you, because the situation won't have changed. I don't want to think about all the remote possibilities in the future, though, because the future is more uncertain than the hypothetical past.

I know we haven't talked about our relationship yet," she went on, her voice betraying her uncertainty for the first time since she'd started talking, "But if we want to make it work, we have to focus on this reality. If it's just romance, then at some point jealousy or some other twisted emotion will kick in and ruin everything. People can change, I know that, but if you have a love based on truth and friendship, it will last. Perhaps by saying all this I ruined everything," she finished, her courage slowly ebbing away, her long speech having drained her of her energy, "but I hate uncertainty. If my telling the truth was the end of whatever we had, I'm sorry, but then there was nothing that could have lasted."

She lifted her hand from his chest to wipe away the tears that had welled up in her eyes at the thought of losing him and stepped back, releasing him. She was afraid of what his reaction would be, although she felt proud at having been able to speak her mind. She turned her face away from him and glared at the rosebush, trying to regain control of herself. She felt oddly naked, having bared her thoughts like this.

Harry was standing as though petrified. He stared at her as if he'd just seen her for the first time. Then he cleared his throat nervously and lifted his hand, his fingers brushing lightly against her bare shoulder before gently touching her cheek. He turned her face towards him and studied her anxious expression. Then he smiled uncertainly.

"You know, I think you could have been in Gryffindor," he said, his voice almost trembling. Then he drew her close to him again, hugging her tightly and burying his face in her hair. She hugged him back, feeling as if a great weight had been lifted from her heart.

"I don't deserve someone as great as you," Harry mumbled next to her ear. She couldn't help grinning before she said, "What should I say, then?"

They both drew back a bit, to look at each other's faces again. Then Harry kissed her softly on the lips, barely touching them. "I think we should say we're lucky to have one another," he finally stated, sounding genuinely happy. She wanted to kiss him back when he drew back once more. "D'you... do you think we could make it work?"

She felt as though her heart would start dancing in a moment. "Do you want to?"

"Yes."