But I can´t do that.

The cold air hit him like a Bludger as soon as he stepped outside. He pulled his cloak tightly around him, but it still stung his eyes, his mouth.

He went down the stairs and his boots crunched on the snow that had piled there. He had no idea where he was going. The world was beautiful and cold and glittering silver and black, the sky a flawed diamond chased with iron. The edge of the Forbidden Forest loomed dark and jagged in the distance. Harry wanted to disappear into it, into the cold and the darkness. He wanted to be alone and not to have to think or talk to anyone.

He had never felt this way before. There had never been a problem that had not been eased by the presence of Hermione or Ron. He did not know when the subtle shift had taken place inside him, but it had, and while he could bear Ronś company, for Ron did not ask him questions, being with Hermione filled him with guilt and shame and pain.

He set off across the snow. More snow had fallen after dinner and the ground was white and trackless and empty, marked only by shadows. He might have been the only person left alive, making his way in solitude across the skin of a deserted world.

He reached the edge of the Forest, and remembered having been here as a first year, terrified, trailing an angry Draco Malfoy in his wake. They had been eleven. It seemed a hundred years ago. He raised his hand to push back a tree branch, and the moonlight caught and glimmered on the watch that banded his wrist.