2 | CONFESSIONS° HARRY POTTER

24 | SHELL COTTAGE

ACT FIVE, love
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR, shell cottage

        Bill and Fleur's cottage stood alone on a cliff overlooking the sea, its walls embedded with shells and whitewashed. It was a lonely and beautiful place. Wherever Iris went inside the tiny cottage or its garden, she could hear the constant ebb and flow of the sea, like the breathing of some great, slumbering creature. The sound of the sea and the smell of the air calmed Iris. She spent much of the next few days making excuses to escape the crowded cottage, craving the cliff-top view of open sky and wide, empty sea, and the feel of cold, salty wind on her face. Most of the time Harry would follow her and they would sit there for a while, taking it all in. A lot of the time they didn't speak to one another but they didn't need to; the silence was a nice change of pace.

Iris would rest her head on his shoulder sometimes and he would voice his concerns about choosing not to race Voldemort to the wand. He'd confide in her how scared he was of choosing not to act.

"Sometimes, not doing something is the best thing to do," Iris would tell him as they looked out on the sea. "It can also be the hardest thing to do, but no one ever said this would be easy."

To which Harry would respond: "It's no wonder you were put in Slytherin instead of Gryffindor."

They'd chuckle at that because it was one of the things that separated them from each other. Iris had no problem waiting for the perfect moment to act whereas Harry always wanted to run right into the action immediately.

And where he doubted himself, Iris didn't. She never wasted time thinking that things wouldn't turn out okay for them in the end, even if it didn't go exactly as planned. She couldn't anymore. 

Harry would keep most of his doubts to himself, but Ron had no problem voicing them.

"What if Dumbledore wanted us to work out the symbol in time to get the wand?" "What if working out what the symbol meant made you 'worthy' to get the Hallows?" "Harry, if that really is the Elder Wand, how the hell are we supposed to finish off You-Know-Who?"

There were no answers to these questions and Hermione had a different view on the subject altogether.

Now forced to accept that the ElderWand was real, she maintained that it was an evil object, and that the way Voldemort had taken possession of it was repellent, not to be considered. 

"You could never have done that, Harry," she said again and again. "You couldn't have broken into Dumbledore's grave."  

Iris wished Dumbledore would have explained more before he had died. She didn't understand why he hadn't.

"But is he dead?" said Ron, three days after they had arrived at the cottage. Harry and Iris had been staring out over the wall that separated the cottage garden from the cliff when Ron and Hermione had found them; Harry heaved out a small sigh that Iris heard when the pair started arguing, not wanting to get involved.

"Yes, he is, Ron, please don't start that again!" 

"Look at the facts, Hermione," said Ron, speaking across Harry, who continued to gaze at the horizon. "The silver doe. The sword. The eye Harry saw in the mirror —" 

"Harry admits he could have imagined the eye! Don't you, Harry?" 

"I could have," said Harry without looking at her. 

"But you don't think you did, do you?" asked Ron. 

"No, I don't," said Harry. 

"There you go!" said Ron quickly, before Hermione could carry on. "If it wasn't Dumbledore, explain how Dobby knew we were in the cellar, Hermione?"