The witch did not even try to mask the surprise on her face. Given the silence between them in the past months, Ginny would have expected instead for him to evade her company, not seek it out. Could that mean…

No, she chided herself silently. She had already made a fool of herself once before, attaching meaning to words and deeds that had no business having meaning attached to them, and where had that gotten her? Alone, uncomfortable, and down one friend.

“If she’s so bad as you say,” Ginny pointed out sagely, feeling in spite of her self-insistences that she was a bit out of breath, “you should save yourself and not give her undue cause to pry.”