Despite Flora’s request and Harry’s promise, they did not meet again for weeks. They both knew what had happened and neither of them wanted things to be this way. Harry loved Ginny, Flora loved Felipe, and even so, Harry and Flora fell in love. Therefore, they did not exchange a word; neither through owls, nor through e-mails. They fell silenced before the inevitable reality of their last kiss.

Harry tried not to think of her, but to no avail. He was angry; how could she assume he would be able to kill her? Why did she assume he loved her less than Felipe? Harry snorted through the corridors of the Ministry. He needed to talk to someone, but it could not be to his best friend Ron who eventually would beat up Harry for his sister’s betrayal. But it surely had not been intentional.

Harry took a huge pile of papers that needed to be organized, signed, and shipped; among them raid reports that had to be written. He smiled when he realized that all that bureaucracy would be useful for something noble: to hide him. He went to his desk and sorted out tons of papers by making four high towers with them according to the type of service each one required.
Afterwards he hid himself behind them. Doing this was very unusual for him, since he hated bureaucratic work (that was why there was so much accumulated work in his office). Normally he would be directing the other Aurors on raids or patrols, or when all was quiet, he would be in the other departments giving them a hand. Even Draco had noticed that something was wrong with him. Harry was strange, angry, and very, very quiet.

Guilt was consuming his bowels and it was as intense as his anger, or as the kiss Flora had given him. If all she wanted was that he eventually kill her (she should know he had not killed Voldemort, but rather only made things easier for this to happen), then she would not have kissed him. “That's it”. He concluded pleased. Flora was manipulating him again. Convinced that, in reality the woman who was now assumed as being Slytherin’s heir, had kissed him deliberately, he got a little peace along his working day.

Filled with guilt, Harry brought a bouquet of flowers for Ginny when he got home (a baffling cliché) and invited her to go to Ron’s place.

“You have been so strange, love.”

“I’ve had a lot of problems at work, so I haven’t been able to concentrate. I think I need holidays. Let's see if a little chat helps it.”

They came to the Ron’s and found Hermione, Angelina and George also there.
Actually their in-laws light chitchat and good humour helped Harry forget Flora for a moment. It was all right till Hermione told them that Flora had helped Hannah, who had now reached final stages of her pregnancy.

“She is amazing. She finds time for everything! And see, she doesn’t even have a time-turner. When I told her about them, she was delighted, and said it’d be the perfect solution for the hyperactive ones like her former patients. She also said that she preferred to stretch time her own way, by enjoying every minute, or by savouring it like it was a delicious dessert ... Speaking of it, she has sent a delicious blueberry pie, would anybody care for it?”

“I don’t know, she is Voldemort’s daughter... How we’ll know it’s not poisoned?”

“Ron Weasley! I can’t believe you’ve said that! You know-all, I’ve seen her baking it and I assure you there’s nothing wrong with it.”

“So, you can cut three large pieces for me. I'm growing sideways, you know. If I neglect it, I lose weight, and then you get a smaller husband per square yards to grab.” Ron replied, smiling and chiding Hermione a little.

Hermione served the pie for everyone. Harry relished it and could not stop thinking about Flora. He even smiled when he remembered how much she was loved and dotted on Hannah (and on everyone else around her). Hermione was right: she was amazing! What a monster he was to judge her so badly. He shook his head; he needed to go back to the conversation. Now everyone was laughing, but he had completely missed the joke, yet he grinned.
Ginny and Harry got home late. They fell asleep in bed hugging each other in the blue sheets like the blueberries in the pie.

Harry dreamed of Flora; of her beauty and hair in the wind as well as of her usual pink lips, and pale skin, skipping lightly on the roofs of houses, and making her look like a cat. He woke up happy with that picture in his head and looked at his wife who was sleeping peacefully by his side. He felt a terrible guilt, so he silently wept as Truth hurt. He loved two women, but he had no choice: he had taken his decision 15 years before when he got married.

*

Things were not much different in Hogsmeade either. Flora's heart was bleeding too. So as to not think about Harry, she tried to keep herself as busy as she could. She was feeling vulnerable and abandoned for not having received any news from him. She did not ask anything to Hermione in their almost daily meetings which had started almost two months before.

She was sad, especially so, because, since the news that Voldemort was her father had spread, some people were treating Felipe and her differently, no matter how much they tried to prove that they were quite unlike her father. Customers went away from Felipe’s shop and training school.

She went to bed exhausted. She had spent the day with Hannah, and helped her out with the household chores. Flora had also massaged her to help blood circulation, since Hannah was having cramps more and more frequently in her late stages of pregnancy.

The dream was vivid. It seemed that she was there. She walked among the trees, no one could see her. She reached a clearing, there were people there. Hagrid was bound to a tree. He shouted when her invisibility cloak fell to the floor. Her father was in front of her. He was saying something regarding the delay and other things that she did not quite understand, as it was not her, Flora, who was there in front of him. He pointed his wand at her and a jet of green light erupted from it. And then, everything was very white.

Flora woke up, with light beads of sweat on her forehead. Felipe was snoring loudly beside her. He had not witnessed anything. He was protected. She did not understand the dream, it seemed to be about another person’s life; but whose? It was not clear at all. What she had seen could not be the memory of anyone alive. After all, she had already heard of the green spell; the spell of death. But no one could escape it, no one unarmed...She struggled a bit more to remember where she had seen those memories before. The light breeze that escaped through the cracks of the window flapped the curtain. That looked kind of spooky. She smiled. She was not afraid of ghosts. In fact, she did not fear anything else but death of her loved ones.

The moonlight shone outside. The tree was almost bare. Nevertheless, a single leaf that was still green while all the others were already red-yellowish or had fallen, remained. Her eyes were fixed on that single green leaf. It reminded her of an eye ... Of course! They belonged to the only one who had survived the death curse: Harry Potter. She surely had seen his recollection, and very likely of that moment when she asked for the most difficult thing in her life: her own death. So that was it, he had asked to die too. Or had surrendered exactly how she would surrender to him when she could no longer bear her darker impulses, that everything which was freezing her soul.

Flora got up from bed to admire the green leaf. She smiled. He had kissed her. It was good. But Felipe was her safe haven; she could never betray him no matter how much that pair of green eyes called for her. She went back to bed and found the warmth in her husband’s arms. Before falling asleep, she decided that she would treat herself to a "Muggle’s day” next morning, and would find a beauty salon in the nearest town. It would be nice to ease the pressure of being herself.