The corridor was drafty, and Harry stood near a stone pillar to avoid the direct pull of the wind. He watched her pace the length of the hallway with an aggressive, rhythmic stride. Hermione was not supposed to be on this part of the patrol, but the Prefect duties had been restructured for the final term, and he had found himself walking the perimeter with her. They moved through the castle in a strange, lopsed synchronicity. Every few minutes, she would pause to inspect a tapestry or a suit of armour, her eyes bright with a restless, frantic energy.
"You are walking too fast," Harry said. He kept his hands deep in the pockets of his robes, trying to maintain a sense of detached calm. He did not want to admit that he had been thinking about her for the last three hours. He had been thinking about the way she had broken the charm on the astronomy tower door with such effortless, insulting precision.
"It is a patrol, Harry, not a stroll through a garden," she replied. She did not look back at him. Her voice was sharp, cutting through the stillness of the stone walls. "If we walk slower, we will miss the entire eastern staircase. Filch will notice the gap in the log."
"Filch notices everything, so the gap is hardly a concern," he countered. He stepped around a bend in the corridor, his boots clicking against the floor. "He is more concerned with the smudge on the banister than the actual timing of the rounds."
"He is a man of habit, and habits are easy to track," she said. She turned a corner, her robes swirling around her ankles. "If we are late, we are unreliable. If we are unreliable, the house points suffer."
"The house points are a farce," Harry muttered. He felt the familiar heat of an argument rising in his chest. It was a comfortable heat, one that had become a permanent fixture of their interactions over the last few months. "We are nearly finished with this term. Surely a little bit of tardiness will not collapse the entire social hierarchy of the school."
"It is not about the hierarchy," she said, finally stopping to face him. She stood in the centre of the wide, empty hall. "It is about the discipline. Everything has a place, and everything has a time."
"You are exhausting," he told her. He walked toward her, closing the distance until he could see the way her breath caught in the cool air. "You treat every rule like it is a sacred text. A rule is just a suggestion with a bit of weight attached to it."
"That is a terrible way to live," she snapped. She tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear, her fingers trembling just slightly. "If you do not respect the boundaries, you have nothing left to hold you in place."
"I find that boundaries are often just things people put in the way of what they want," she said. She began to walk again, her pace slightly slower now. "You, for instance. You act as if you hate every rule, yet you follow them with such desperate precision."
"I do not follow them," Harry said. He felt the need to defend himself, though he wasn't entirely sure what he was defending. "I simply exist within them. There is a difference."
"There is a massive difference," she insisted. "You follow the spirit of the law while breaking the letter of it. It is a very annoying way to be."
"Is it?" He asked. He watched the way her eyes moved as she scanned the dark corners of the corridor. "I think it is quite efficient. It allows for a bit of flavour in an otherwise grey existence."
"Grey is stable," she said. She stopped at the top of a small flight of stairs. "Grey is predictable. You are a chaos agent, Harry. You move through the castle like a storm that is trying to pretend it is a breeze."
"And you are a storm that is trying to pretend it is a calm sea," he retorted. He reached out, his hand hovering near her shoulder before he pulled it back. He did not want to touch her, not here in the open, even if the hallway was empty. "You are so busy keeping everything in order that you miss the point of the movement."
"The point of the movement is to arrive where you are supposed to be," she said. She looked up at him, her expression softening for a fraction of a second before the mask of the Prefect returned. "If you do not arrive, you are lost."
"I am never lost," he said. "I always know exactly where the exits are."
"You do not," she laughed, a short, dry sound. "You often end up in rooms that are not supposed to be open to you. You spend far too much time looking for doors that do not want to be opened."
"Perhaps the doors are the problem," he said. He felt a sudden, sharp urge to grab her wrist and pull her into one of the alcoves. The tension between them was a physical thing, a cord stretched tight by weeks of unspoken words and stolen glances. "Perhaps they are just stubborn. Some things are meant to be difficult."
"Not everything is a challenge to be won," she said. Her voice dropped an octave, losing its sharp edge. "Some things are just meant to be left alone. Some doors are locked for a reason."
"Are they?" He stepped closer, forcing her to look up at him. "Or is it just because people are afraid of what is on the other side?"
"You are being dramatic," she whispered. She did not move away. "We have a round to finish. We are already three minutes behind the scheduled time for the second landing."
"Let the time pass," he said. He wanted to be in a room with her, a room with a heavy door and no one else to hear. "The time is going to pass whether we are standing here or running. Why does it matter so much?"
"Because it matters to the person in charge," she said. She reached out and grabbed the sleeve of his robes, a gesture that was meant to be grounding but felt like a tether. "And I am in charge of this rotation."
"You are so bossy," he said, but there was no bite in it. He was smiling now, a lopsalled, tired expression. "You have been bossy since the moment we started walking."
"Someone has to be," she said. "Otherwise, you would just stand in the middle of a hallway and stare at the ceiling for an hour."
"I would not do that," he said. "I would stare at the wall. The ceiling is too much work."
"See?" She shook her head, her eyes dancing. "This is why we need the structure. Without the structure, you would simply drift away."
"I am not drifting," he said. He felt the weight of his wand in his pocket, a heavy, familiar presence. "I am exactly where I want to be."
"That is a very vague statement," she noted. She began to walk again, and this to her credit, she actually sped up to match his stride. "You are never as precise as you pretend to be."
"Precision is overrated," he said. They reached the end of the corridor where the stairs turned toward the Great Hall. The light from the torches flickered against the stone, casting long, distorted shapes across the floor.
"I think you just like the feeling of being slightly off-balance," she said. She turned to him, her face illuminated by a passing torch. "It makes you feel more alive than being perfectly upright."
"You have a very high opinion of my complexity," he said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, crumpled piece of parchment and a quill. He had been carrying the log since they left the dungeons. "It is a compliment, really."
"It is an observation," she corrected him.