This morning, neither Ron nor Hermione greeted him. Instead, he stumbled upon Ginny at the bottom of the stairs to the dormitory. Upon seeing her, he froze. She was so young. If it had been an option, he would have run away; she was possibly the person he had been most nervous about seeing. He and she had been so intrinsically linked to one another, first by marriage, then by children, and then by nearly twenty years of a life shared. She was his dearest friend and closest confident, and it was all gone now.