The first time without the caveat of an "I think" tacked on to it. He had returned from his mother's, wrung out, control hanging by a frayed thread, to find Karkaroff's people in his cellar. And he'd nearly lost it on Lupin and Hermione had taken him up to her room for the first time, and he'd followed her like a lost child, anger and grief all balanced on a knife's edge. She had slipped her arms around him and told him that she'd loved him, and it was then that it had come shuddering out of him for the first time.