"My point is..." he said, speaking more slowly than usual, "...he really is an annoying person. But what he said about the 'critical point of judgment'... it does seem to be true." He avoided Hermione's gaze. "I thought it over after I went back. When we actually faced that projection on the training ground, Snape's method worked best."
Harry drew his hand back from the edge of the table. Instinctively, he raised his right hand and pressed the pad of his thumb against his forehead—the spot where the old lightning-shaped scar lay. When his fingertip touched his skin, he felt no unusual pain, only a fluttering sensation that had become increasingly familiar to him, like some kind of omen.
Sunlight slanted in through the tall stained-glass windows, casting patches of different colors across the floor. The edges of those patches had been sliced into neat right angles by the newly installed Sentry Stones. The castle looked brighter than it had a year ago, sturdier, harder to breach.
The gray Surveillance Stones at the corridor corners turned by the slightest angle whenever someone passed, like a row of silent, unblinking backs of heads. Students slowed down a little when passing certain monitoring points—not as much as before. It was a sign that habit had formed. They already knew which places would be recorded and which would not; their bodies had learned to coexist with this new "security" before their minds had.
And in the places they could not see, in the gaps beyond the reach of those monitoring points, something new was quietly growing.
In the Headmaster's Office, Dumbledore stood by the window. A group of students saying goodbye had gathered on the lawn outside. By the time their laughter reached the eighth floor, it had become muffled and distant, like