It is strange, to realise that she truly does not know what he is talking about. Strange, and decidedly pleasant, for a boy who has spent all his life in his brother's shadow. (And the truth is, even in a different House, he is in his brother's shadow: it is not only that Boromir is popular among Gryffindors, but he is popular with the professors, too, and with younger schoolmates, and certainly with girls; he is Head Boy, and Quidditch Captain, and altogether the image of a successful young wizard. Faramir has never particularly tried to compete with that, only accepted it as the natural way of things, and been glad for his brother's success. But it is still pleasant, to find that he has something that appeals to her where Boromir, apparently, does not.)

He looks down at their linked hands, and then up at her, and he laughs, too. "Perhaps not that high. I was thinking more of Gryffindor Tower than of the Headmaster's." And he means to say no more of it. It is enough that, apparently, this is not some strange error on her part, or some scheme to get to Boromir through him - that it is, in fact, he that she was waiting to ask. "And I would have asked sooner, myself; but if you were not interested, then I was afraid to embarrass us both."