“Do you think he killed that poor owl in such a horrible way on purpose?”, Lyra brought them all fresh cocoa to calm them down before sleep, and looked at her husband.

He gave it a thought. “No, I don’t think so. It’s just that he had a habit of locking Pig up in the closet to get him out of the way, because he hated having to take care of either animals or people, and he did it on the day when we had to escape, forgot about it completely, and never remembered it because he didn’t actually care about him so he missed nothing”, Harry looked into his wife’s eyes. “I don’t know if it makes it any better”.

“Hardly”, Hermione was furious. “The only reason he would remember his parents was if the dinner didn’t come on time. I could have been absent for days and he wouldn’t remember me if he didn’t need something from me. If I had been crying, Harry would look at me once and immediately understand that something is wrong, we would exchange looks and he would already have a pretty good idea what it could be. Ron would either never notice, or he’d see that my eyes are puffy and ask what’s wrong with them. Had he killed Pig with Avada Kedavra, that would be better because it would at least show that he cared enough about him to kill him on purpose. But no, he killed him by pure neglect, by not caring whether he lived or died. That’s how he made me feel – he didn’t care whether I lived or died, as long as he didn’t miss something he needed from me. I hate him”, she fumed. “You know what else I hate? How he read that book with advice on how to talk to women, how to pay attention and compliment them and so on, and he learned how to fake attentiveness and I was enough of a fool to think that he had changed, that he finally started caring, while he was just running it by a playbook”.

“I’m trying to remember all the situations where I forgot about someone, and hurt their feelings, or even exposed them to danger that way. That happened. I am not without blame. I would have something ‘important’ on my mind, and forget about someone completely. It would hurt them, and I would feel miserable about it later”, Harry reminisced.

“It happens to everyone”, Lyra rubbed his shoulder. “We are all human. We make mistakes, we hurt people either by stupidity or by omission or because we are being obstinate while being in the wrong. But feeling horrible about it later, I think, is what makes a difference between making a mistake and being a psychopath”.

“Ron never felt bad about anything he did. He would feel bad if he felt something affected him adversely, but if he hurt my feelings, he would find it funny, until it started affecting him”, Hermione was still tense and furious.

“Am I a bad person because I’m glad he was such a pig?”, Viktor started sheepishly. “I mean, if he were a slightly better person, Hermione might have gone through with marrying him. I’m very glad she broke up with him, and conditio sine qua non of that is that he was a pig”.

Lyra nodded approvingly and smiled at his Latin.

“You’re a great person and I love you”, Hermione was already in a better mood. “Yes, it helped that he was a dragon-sized pig. That name suits him, and not the poor fluffy owl”.

“Are we still going through some phase of grief?”, Harry scratched his neck.

“Probably, but I don’t know what it’s called. Probably being angry because we are actually starting to accept reality of what he was and we’re annoyed at ourselves for not seeing it sooner”, Hermione smiled at him.

“I’ll tell you what it’s called”, Lyra smiled at them. “It’s called ‘good night everybody’ phase because my brain died half an hour ago and I’m going to crawl into bed and sleep for twelve hours, or until babies start crying, whichever comes first”.

“You’re wise and great and you know what’s good for us”, Hermione laughed. “Lead the way, because we’re done here”.