After searching the castle most of the morning, Felicity had given up on finding Harry and gone to visit her mum by herself. The woman seemed rather lonely and pretty tired, but she was still happy to see her daughter, and they talked about the different things that were going on in Felicity’s life. She didn’t tell her mum about the spell and the map, since Harry wasn’t with her. She wanted him to explain a lot of that, since she still didn’t fully understand it. Plus, she wanted him to be there when her mum revealed just how close she and Sirius had been.

Felicity had also left out what had happened in the Astronomy tower. She didn’t want her mum worrying about her, and she certainly didn’t want to admit that the older woman might have failed her in some ways. Perhaps if Jenna had actually talked to her daughter about sex and things, Felicity wouldn’t have been in the situation in the first place. As it was, she told her mum about how embarrassing it had been to ask Harry to the ball and have him turn her down. How she thought she was falling rather hard for the boy. Her mum just told her to follow her heart and not be afraid to get hurt, but come back stronger. It was what she’d always done.

Upon returning to the castle, Felicity cast her mum’s charm over herself and started searching for the Gryffindor again. This way he couldn’t hide from her using that silly map. She needed to know just what he meant by standing her up. If he didn’t want anything more to do with her, that was just fine, but he could at least let her know!

The Hufflepuff didn’t have far to go to find the raven-haired boy. She wasn’t even half way across the expansive lawns of Hogwarts when she noticed him seemingly in la-la-land. Whatever he was thinking about must have been pretty interesting, since he didn’t even notice her til she strode right up to him and poked him in the chest.

”Where were you earlier, hmm?” she demanded, a hurt glare in her eyes. ”It’s a good thing I hadn’t warned mum ahead of time that we’d be showing up to see her, cause she would have been truly hurt by you standing both of us up. Luckily she only expected me, so she was none the wiser.” It was very clear that Felicity was still rather hurt by his actions though. Why couldn’t he have at least told her he wouldn’t be going with her? Obviously he hadn’t intended to if he was just wandering around all happy-go-lucky. She felt ultimately rejected, and it really, really stung.

Harry’s day might not have been what he expected, but it might have been the best day of his life at the same time. Winning at quidditch and saving the Sorcerer’s Stone and the day he got together with Sky. That was the list in some order or other.

That said, it didn’t exactly make his life any simpler. Since they got back from London he had been standing out on the lawns, a million questions chasing each other through his mind as all the other older students slowly trickled back in from the village. Did he need to do anything about Draco? Should they keep things quiet or announce it loudly to everyone? Did this change the strategy with Dumbledore or Voldemort? What would his friends think? The problem with these questions was that he had no idea how to answer any of them. He was no closer to figuring anything out when his upset godsister broke into his reverie.

His frown shifted from thoughtful to apologetic and his eyes grew soft as he looked at her. While she talked, he fidgeted uncomfortably with a string on his hoodie. When she finally stopped, he cleared his throat slowly, though he seriously doubted there was anything he could say to make this better.

“Flit, I’m so, so sorry. Something came up that was super important, and I forgot to tell you that I couldn’t meet you. I didn’t get to go to the village at all, actually.” Something told Harry that mentioning that the something important was another witch needing an escort for the day would not impress the Hufflepuff. If she asked, he wouldn’t lie about it, but he wasn’t going to bring it up, especially after the older girl had basically asked him out the last time they were together.

He would be better off shifting the conversation back to her. “Let me make it up to you,” he said, finally giving her a smile as a plan clicked into place. “I have something in mind that will let me meet your mom and show you another one of your dad’s secrets.” This was probably a really terrible idea, but he wanted to make sure the older girl didn’t stay mad at him. “As long as you don’t mind breaking a few more school rules with me.”

His apologies weren’t exactly making her feel that much better. He had something really important come up? He wasn’t even telling her what it was! Wasn’t her mum important? She had thought that the meeting they planned was very important, but it seemed like it didn’t even rank for Harry. She looked at him with sadness in her eyes, feeling utterly let down. ”I thought meeting my mum was important, Harry. I thought it at least would rank high enough for you to jot a quick note and send an owl. I mean, I know you aren’t interested in the ball but I didn’t think you’d lost interest in me.”

Of course, he had some other offer, but she was still so frustrated. She hardly even heard his offer as she kept staring at him with that pained expression. Couldn’t he see that she was hurt? ”Harry, I don’t even know if I can trust you anymore! What if you make this offer and ‘something important’ comes up again? How do I know you won’t just leave me breaking rules alone and getting into trouble without you?”

It hurt to even have to say those words. It absolutely killed her to lose her trust for the younger boy who had told her so much about her dad so far, but she just couldn’t deal with not being able to trust him. She had to know what was going on with him, what was so distracting, and just where she and her mother stood in his eyes.

”Harry, you can’t just fix this with a quick reschedule and an apology. It requires more than that. Don’t you understand? You hurt me, Harry. You did a lot more than just forget to tell me you couldn’t meet me. You just told me I’m not important! Don’t you see how much that stings? Jeez, Harry, you are so clueless!” She couldn’t hold back the tears anymore. Felicity stared at him, overcome with sadness, frustration, and anger. He really had no idea how badly he’d upset her. That was even worse than him not caring would have been. How could anyone not realize that telling someone they weren’t important would sting?

So, his plan hadn’t exactly worked. She didn’t forgive him, and as a matter of fact he had made things worse and insulted both Felicity and her mother at some point in the process. Add that to the list of things he had to worry about today. At least this one was entirely his own fault and he knew what was going on. If only that helped him understand how to fix it so that he didn’t lose his friend.

Then it all clicked into place. He wanted to keep his friend, and he had spent the entire year treating her like she was just Sirius’s daughter and nothing more to him. That was why he hadn’t remembered to let her know what was going on, and why he had acted like she was an appointment that could be rescheduled, not a person who needed to be talked to and treated properly. It wasn’t fair to her, it wasn’t fair to him, and it wasn’t fair to the memory of the great man that they shared.

“Shit,” he mumbled. Harry didn’t swear often, but then he liked to think that he didn’t screw up this bad very often either. “Felicity, I screwed up really badly here. I was entirely a jackass and an idiot, and if you never want to speak to me again, I guess I would understand that. Let me explain what’s going on first, though.” At her confused nod, Harry basically collapsed to the ground, landing on his hands and then settling onto his elbows to tell the story, as it might be a long one depending on how well he stayed on target.

“I don’t know if you heard about the feud that was going on between Riddle and Parkinson, but it’s been brewing all year, and a lot of us have been involved in it at different points, and it’s gotten pretty nasty. This week it spilled over, and Parkinson and her goon squad attacked her with a dagger or something and just about killed her, not to mention the fact that they entirely broke her psyche. In the process they managed to snap her wand. She’s very important to me, but we’ll get to that later, probably. I spent the rest of this week not sleeping, trying to get everything set to escort her to London to get a new wand, and worrying about whether she would even be okay in the bloody snakepit with all of her enemies and without a wand. In the mess of all of that it never occurred to me that I needed to track you down and tell you what was going on and why I was nowhere to be found. To be honest, you never crossed my mind, which is really terrible of me and I am very sorry for it now.”

He finally paused to take a breath and then continued. “So, that’s where I was today. In London, getting her a wand so that she would be able to protect herself again and I could worry less. Except, I can’t worry any less, because somehow in the process we got distracted and ended up coming back here and doing stuff and now I’m pretty sure we’re dating now, which means I have to worry about her even more than I did before. So again I wasn’t thinking of you or the fact that I should have run to the village to see if you were still there when I got back from London so that I could still meet your mother, because she seems like the kind of person who I need to meet, if she could raise someone as nice as you by herself. And now you’re here, and it took that for me to realize just how stupid I was being to you.”

That summed everything up nicely. Harry had no idea how quickly he had been speaking until he realized that the one pause for breath was the only time he had actually breathed during that entire story. “So I guess what I’m trying to say in all of this, is that I’m sorry, and it really won’t happen again. Not now that I actually realize how special you are. Please forgive me.”

Felicity was utterly speechless as Harry spoke. She hadn’t expected him to actually admit that he was being an idiot. She really didn’t think he’d bring up some other girl and actually admit that he had put said girl before Felicity and then admit that that was wrong of him. She was so taken aback for a moment that she couldn’t even wrap her head around all the words he’d managed to say.

Yes, she did know about this whole feud thing that was going on in the snake pit. She knew that it had to do with the Riddle girl and the one who looked like some kind of dog, but she wasn’t really sure what all it involved. Apparently it was getting bad though, if Parkinson had managed to snap the Riddle’s wand. The bit about a dagger had the Hufflepuff wondering if she should be offering her medical help, but she was soon distracted by the rest of what Harry was saying.

He’d just admitted that he was dating the Riddle girl now. Well, that at least explained why he declined her invitation to the ball. He was interested in another girl. If he’d just told her that, maybe it wouldn’t have stung so much. She might not have felt like he was saying he’d never consider spending a whole night in public with her. That didn’t matter now though. It was done and over with and she knew his reasoning now, so all she had to do was keep listening and try not to argue.

The end of his little speech was what had her convinced that she could stop being so hard on the boy and start listening to what issues he was dealing with. All she had to hear from him was that he found her to be special. That he knew he did something wrong and that he was sorry because she deserved better. She smiled at him and stepped close to him, leaning in and placing a gentle kiss on his cheek.

”Thank you, Harry. That’s all I needed to hear. I just had to know that I mean something more than just some random annoying girl who wants you to entertain her mum. And you just said so. So…” She bounced back and grinned at him. ”I would love to break the rules with you and go surprise my mum. Now tell me more about what happened to your girlfriend. Did she get her wand at least? I never liked that Parkinson girl. She’s a very amoral sort.”

Harry was in something of a state of shock when she kissed his cheeks. He wasn’t exactly used to people really listening to him when he tried to explain things. He was even less used to the explanation he gave being the right thing to make things better instead of worse. Either Felicity was easier to deal with than Hermione and Mrs. Weasley, or he was actually getting better at this and putting himself in the right situations for once.

He grinned at her, amazed at what a quick change had come over her. “She got the wand and lunch to go with it all.” He sighed and smiled for the first time since he got back to the school. “It was a really lovely day, even if the week leading up to it was completely terrible.” The smile faded just as quickly as it came. “Now if I could just convince myself that it could stay lovely and not turn from a dream to a nightmare when I wake up.”

He sighed. “I’m not sure why that would be your problem, anyway. It’s not like it matters to you who I’m dating or what problems it causes for me.” He wasn’t exactly sure why he considered that to be true. All of his other friends had seemed more than a little concerned about who he was dating in the past, and he was certain they would have even more to say this time, his girlfriend being Voldemort’s niece and all. Maybe he needed to reconsider and try again.

“Well, maybe it matters to you, but I’m not sure if you will have any better solution than I do. You seem to be just as inexperienced at dating and stuff.” Still, it couldn’t hurt to try. It wasn’t like Harry had any better ideas. “Do you? Have any solution, I mean. I’m really at a loss.”

Felicity tilted her head as she listened to Harry. She was pretty inexperience in the whole dating thing, just as he had pointed out, and she was especially lacking in advice dealing with things like house rivalry and friends not getting along and stuff like that, which was what she figured was going on based on who Harry was seeing and the bits of information he was telling her.

She sighed and shrugged, looking at him a bit sadly. ”Oh, Harry. I definitely do care. I mean, I’d love to be able to help you somehow. I just… I don’t really know what kind of advice to give. I suppose if my friends were not accepting of who I loved I would probably not consider them true friends, but that would be very difficult if I was close with them, I think.” She looked at him with concern dancing clearly in her gaze. ”I’m pretty sure you are very close with your friends, so I’m sure this is a difficult situation…”

Tilting her head, Felicity thought for a minute, then smiled at Harry. ”I’m not sure what other problems dating her might cause for you, but I’m sure you can deal with whatever they are. You’re the hero after all. You’re Harry Potter! And you know, I’ll always be here for you, Harry. I think… I think we should be like siblings, you know? I mean, we are technically godsiblings, right? So why not? We could both use one after all. I’ll look out for you, you look out for me?”

She flashed him a giant grin and jumped at him, wrapping her arms around him in a huge hug then kissing his cheek lightly and starting back for the castle. ”Just send me an owl when you need a friend, Harry. Oh, and when you want to make that little trip!” She winked at him and walked back to the castle with a small spring in her step. She felt better now that she knew where she stood with Harry. They were brother and sister. He was going through some hard stuff, and she would help him deal with it. That was what a good sister would do, after all.

Somehow she just knew everything would be okay now. She started humming to herself as she wandered back toward her common room, hoping she might even find a familiar face in the warm badger burrow and have a bit of good conversation before slipping back into her medical studies.