This feeling – the disarmed fondness – that was where the danger lay.

"I'm gonna start a Spider-Man religion." Harley scoffed. "Peter, we all know if you were gonna start a religion, it'd be Iron-Man-themed." "I'd deny that, but it'd be a really obvious lie." - Tony has too many kids. - FOLLOW-UP TO "blackmail the hostage"

Oliver imagined she would always be there, and things would always sort of stay the same. Even if he wasn't quite sure how long that would be, and even if it was glaringly impractical. But then, impractical was surely a given when Felicity was involved. Still, she'd proven him wrong plenty. It shouldn't have come as such a shock when she did it again. And then a few more times.

He was a fussy sleeper, but she seemed to be able to fix what the fuss was about easily enough. He only really started to notice what was going on - and how much he was enjoying it - when it wasn't just about sleep anymore, and she was fixing more than just his nightmares.

Felicity suffered from selective obliviousness. Oliver had a short and sharply driven attention span. This wasn't going to end well.

He could hear, all these stretches of silence, imperceptible really, longer, shorter, lying, emotional, truthful and fake. All the things that made up people, all the things that hurt him because they were getting easier to recognize in others and harder to find in himself.

She didn't have one. Voldemort had a plan, her parents had a plan, Lord knew James had a plan, even Petunia did, but she'd always just made up her own path as she went along. She never did realize that everyone knew about it except her. Then James wanted face-to-face time with the Dark Lord, and he was dragging her along, but it was summer, only she never had a choice. And he knew.

There are four main paths, in his opinion. To each of them, Harry attributes a side of himself and his life - with or without Ginny.

"Power is the great aphrodisiac." - Henry A. Kissinger