Chapter 16 ~ PART ONE: The Whole of the Law  

Well, I used to have the notion I could swim the length of the ocean 

If I knew that you were waiting for me 

I used to have the notion I could swim the length of the ocean 

I'd plumb the depths of every sea for you 

I'd escape from my chains, and I'd reach out for you 

Maybe I'm in love with you 

Maybe, maybe I'm in love with you 

That's it, that's the law, that's the whole of the law 

-yo la tengo 

Freezing wind blew off the lake, stirring the dry, dead grass between the graves. There were patches of snow on the ground, still, and icicles hung like teardrops from the statues that decorated the rooflines of the mausoleums. The bare branches of trees were flung like openwork lace across the ice-blue sky. 

The words of the funeral oration rolled across Ginny like dark water. She felt as if she were drowning in them. 

For behold, I show you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. 

The dead raised up incorruptible. Ginny thought of Tom, and shivered again. Her companion turned to her and placed a thin, black-gloved hand on her shoulder. "Are you all right?" 

"I'm all right." Ginny nodded at Blaise, who tucked a wayward lock of poppy-red hair behind her ear, and frowned. Blaise, Ginny thought distantly, looked perfect as always in her black velvet scarf and matching gloves. A black fur muff dangled from one dainty hand and diamonds burned frostily in her earlobes. By contrast, Ginny thought, she herself must look like a scarecrow: she'd hardly had the energy to brush her hair that morning, and she'd lost so much weight that her black dress hung on her like a sack. "I'm just a little cold." 

For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. 

Victory, Ginny thought bitterly. Oh, they'd had victory all right; the wizarding world was still rejoicing at the death of Voldemort, still holding parades and parties and drowning Hogwarts in thank-you letters and grateful gifts, all for The Boy Who Lived. Not that Harry cared, or had even noticed. He hadn't been able to bring himself to come with the rest of them to the funeral. He hadn't even looked up when Hermione asked him. He hadn't moved in days from the same splintery old chair in the same corner of the infirmary. 

He was still splashed with blood. Not his own blood. Madam Pomfrey had declared him entirely unharmed. They had all been unharmed, a lucky miracle. 

All but one. 

O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? 

On Ginny's other side, Hermione made a little noise, something between a whimper and a gasp. Ron put an arm around her, rubbing her shoulder awkwardly with his scarred right hand. The tops of his fingers were red with cold; he must have forgotten his gloves. Ginny wanted to reach over, touch his arm, seek comfort, but his gaze was flat and distant as he stared at the neat black coffin with its wreath of dark blue flowers. She wondered what he was thinking. 

She looked around. Most of the funeral guests were strangers to her. Lupin was here, though not Sirius. Next to him was Snape, like a ragged old crow in his black robes, his narrow face white and severe. 

Recquisat in pace. Descensus. 

The coffin began to move slowly downward; a corner of the wreath caught on a protruding root; scattering leaves and dark pansy petals into the grave. Ginny's breath caught in her throat. Darkness seeped into the edges of her vision, like ink spilling into clear water. She imagined herself fainting forward onto the coffin and took a stumbling step away from the yawning gap in the earth. 

"Ginny," Blaise whispered, reaching a hand out to catch her sleeve. 

"No," Ginny said. She hurried away from the grave and the neat knot of black-clad figures standing around it. The square heels of her boots crunched on the frost-mantled snow. Narrow paths of packed, icy earth ran between neat rows of mausoleums. She passed a grave whose headstone was carved into a heart. Amor Vincit Omnia. 

"Bollocks," she said savagely, spinning away from the grave. She wanted to cry, but the icy cold had leached all moisture from the air, and the tears sat in her throat like a hard knot. She stalked along the path, rounded a corner, stopped at the ironwork fence that surrounded the graveyard. Leaning against it was a boy with fair hair. 

She knew who he was, but it didn't matter. She wondered if there would ever be a time when the sight of a slim boy with fair hair, wearing dark clothes, wouldn't make her feel as if she'd been hit across the chest with a Beater's bat. He looked up, hearing the sound of her boots on the snow. "So soon," he said. "Is it already over?" 

"No," she said, roughly. "I couldn't stay. I couldn't bear it." 

He came towards her, limping. His left arm was bandaged, and both blue eyes were circled in bruises. Draco had nearly cracked his skull apart with that knife. "Seamus," Ginny said, taking his hands--they were bare, and she wrapped her woolen fingers around them--"You shouldn't have come. You're not well enough." 

He was watching the crown of the hill with its sugaring of white gravestones. "I thought I could stand it, but I couldn't," he said. "So much death. I remember--" He broke off, looking past her. She turned to see Blaise on the path to the gate, tottering a little in her high heels, red hair snapping like a banner under her black fur hat. Seeing them, Blaise paused. Her eyes were fixed on Seamus with a look of horror.  

Seamus pulled his hands out of Ginny's and turned away, walking towards the gate that led out to the road. It clanged shut behind him. 

Blaise hurried towards Ginny. The cold air was whipping color into her cheeks, but she was still pale. "Are you all right? Did he--?" 

"It's not like that, Blaise," Ginny said. "Seamus and I, we're friends. He's..." 

"Not a psychotic killer? I know." Blaise shoved her hands deep into her fur-lined pockets and shivered. "But I can't help it. I look at him and I see him with Pansy's blood on his hands." 

"Blaise--" 

"He tried to kill me, too." 

"It wasn't him," Ginny said, as strongly as she could, knowing it wasn't strongly enough. "Seamus and Tom are two totally different people." 

Blaise sighed. "I hope you're right." She tilted her head to the side, the long, silky strands of her dark red hair mixing with the silvery fur-lined collar of her cloak. "Does Seamus....remember any of it?" 

"He says he doesn't," Ginny said. "But sometimes he wakes up screaming." 

"Screaming what?" 

" 'No, no, no,' mostly," Ginny said bleakly. "People's names sometimes. He screams them to get away, to run. Sometimes he screams for me. Ginevra, Ginevra. He never used to call me that." 

Blaise looked appalled. "God, that's terrible." 

"I know." Ginny wrapped her arms around herself, and shivered. 

Blaise narrowed her eyes, her look oblique. "Can I ask you something?" 

"Go ahead." 

"Why are you here? You didn't even like Pansy." 

"Seamus wanted to come," Ginny said. "He feels...responsible." 

"Well, technically-" 

"He didn't do anything," Ginny said, more fiercely that she'd intended. Blaise flinched, her green eyes flashing. 

"I should have known it was just Gryffindor self-flagellation," she said sarcastically. "Well, don't do us any favors. Hermione, especially: Pansy hated her. She didn't like any of you, except Ron. I was actually her friend." 

"You didn't like her either," Ginny pointed out. 

"What's that got to do with anything?" Blaise said, and then laughed. She had a surprisingly sweet laugh, considering, Ginny thought, though the bell-sound seemed out of place in the graveyard. Blaise turned and looked behind her, following Ginny's glance. The knot of people by Pansy's grave had begun to move down the hill, a marching column of black ants. "I guess it's over," she said. "This is, like, the sixth funeral I've been to this week." 

"It won't be the last," Ginny said, pushing her hair back from her face. She could see Ron's bright red head against the white winter sky. Hermione walked beside him, her arms folded. 

"How is Draco?" Blaise said softly. 

Ginny glanced down at her feet. "He hasn't woken up. At all. Madam Pomfrey says he could wake up any time, but he could also...go any time. We've been taking turns sitting with him, except Harry--" 

Blaise looked surprised. "Harry hasn't been sitting with him?" 

"No, he has... I just mean he hasn't been taking it in turns--he's been there the whole time since Sirius and Professor Lupin brought us back from the castle. We've all been staying at school; Dumbledore thought he could be taken care of best there. Draco, I mean. Not Harry. Not that Harry doesn't need taking care of, too, but he won't even talk to anyone, he just ... sits there." The wind was kicking snow up in small sharp flurries; Ginny blinked flakes from her eyelashes. "I know Hermione's worried sick about him." 

"Why did she come to the funeral?" Blaise wondered. "She must have despised Pansy." 

"For Ron," Ginny said. "We all came for Ron. We thought it was important." 

Blaise blinked. "Surely he can't have been that fond of Pansy, really..." 

"No," Ginny said, "but sometimes you need to bury the past." 

"So to speak," said Blaise, and turned; Hermione and Ron were nearly upon them. Ron was white-faced and tired-looking; one of the scattered petals had fallen on his shoe, and stuck there. Hermione's red-mittened hand was firm on his arm. 

"Hello, Blaise," she said, inclining her head. 

Blaise muttered a reply, looking acutely uncomfortable. 

"I had meant to thank you." Hermione pushed her hood back so that her dark hair spilled out; something glittered among the curls. "For the loan of your barrettes. They turned out to be useful." 

"Glad to hear it," Blaise said, and added, looking almost nervous, "Would it be all right if I came along?" 

"Came where?" asked Hermione, pulling her hood back up. "To school?" 

"I want to see Draco, if I can," Blaise said. "I don't know if he can have visitors, but..." 

"Of course you can come," Ron said shortly, before anyone else had a chance to reply. "You can ride in the carriage with us." 

Blaise turned to Ginny. "Is that where you'll be?" 

"I'm riding separately, with Seamus. You can come with us instead, if you like..." 

Blaise backed away hastily, shaking her head. "Er, no, that's all right....I'll just see you there, shall I?" 

Ginny sighed. 

*** 

Seamus was waiting for her by a black carriage with the Malfoy coat of arms etched in silver on the door. Narcissa had lent it to them for the journey, as neither Ron nor Seamus was considered strong enough to travel by Portkey. 

Seamus was sketching something on a piece of paper, which he quickly stowed in a pocket as she approached. "Are we leaving?" 

Ginny nodded and swung herself up into the carriage; Seamus followed, pulling the door shut behind him. For several long minutes they sat in silence in the dark blue plush interior, the creak and rock as the carriage navigated the snowy road the only sound. Finally, Seamus said, "I'm sorry." 

Ginny looked at him. "What for?" 

"Frightening Blaise." He watched the countryside lurch by the windows in a monochromatic patchwork of black, white and gray. "I don't think I've ever frightened anyone before." 

"Get used to it," Ginny said wearily, and was immediately sorry, for Seamus winced as if she'd punched him. She leaned forward. "I'm sorry, too. Look, just remember that it wasn't you. It was someone else wearing your face. You didn't do anything wrong." How many times have I said this over the past three days? she thought. And it never seems to make any difference. 

Seamus looked down at his hands. They were thin, flexible hands, tapering to square fingertips, freckled along the knuckles. "When the coffin was being lowered," he said, "I remembered her running through the house to get away from me. Falling down and getting up again. I remember laughing at her -" 

"Seamus," Ginny pressed the backs of her hands against her eyes. "It wasn't you." 

"But they're my memories," he said softly. She lowered her hands and looked at him; his eyes were dark in the dimness of the carriage, the color of forget-me-nots. "My dreams. How can I be sure he's left me entirely, Ginny? That there isn't some scrap of him left inside me, changing me, poisoning me?" His voice rose. "How can I be sure?" 

"He may never leave you, entirely, Seamus," she said as gently as she could. "But I trust the goodness in you to overcome that. You should, too." 

He took a long, shaky breath, then reached for her hand. He slipped her glove off, and wound their fingers together, her small fingers warming his cold ones. "I don't know what I'd do without you, Ginny," he said. "You're the only thing that still makes sense to me." 

*** 

They drew up to the school just as the sun was setting: the early, light-blue sunset of deep winter. Ginny drew her yellow cloak tightly closed as she went up the front steps, Seamus beside her. The lamps were off in the turret that housed the Headmaster's office; Dumbledore had left the premises precipitously moments after their arrival, saying that he was going to fetch Narcissa to her dying son's bedside. She had appeared hours later, but Dumbledore had yet to return. In her more irrational moments Ginny wondered if he was avoiding her, knowing what she wanted to ask him. 

Pleading exhaustion, Seamus kissed her goodbye in the entryway, and headed towards Gryffindor Tower. Ginny wasn't entirely sorry to see him go; being cheerful and optimistic for Seamus was something of a strain. 

She found Blaise waiting at the foot of the steps that led to the infirmary. She looked so woebegone that Ginny's heart skipped a beat. "Is everything all right?" she asked, thinking, Please let it not have happened while I was gone, when I wasn't here to sit with him, to tell him goodbye. 

"I feel so rude barging in." Blaise confessed. "I suppose I really hadn't thought about it, but his mum's there, and Harry, and Hermione, and what right have I got to be here? I wasn't anyone to him, really..." 

Her voice trailed off. She sat, a disconsolate figure in her neat black outfit, her hair spilling cherry-red out from under her hat. Ginny had always thought of Blaise as tall and imposing; now she realized the other girl was her own height. "Please come see him," Ginny said. "He cared for you, I know he did. He always said you were just like him." 

"Well, that's encouraging, since he loves himself more than anything else," Blaise said, looking as if she were only half joking. 

"It meant a lot to him that you understood him," Ginny said quietly. "God knows, I never have." 

Blaise looked up, startled. Her eyes were the same unnerving glass-green as Harry's, but fringed with long copper lashes, where his were black. Looking into them, Ginny thought, Draco must have felt he were staring into some strange combination of Harry's eyes and her own. "All right," Blaise said and, standing, took Ginny's wrist and held it tightly, which Ginny found startling though not unpleasant. They went up the stairs together and through the wide double doors into the infirmary. 

A profound hush lay over the room, as if all sounds were muffled in the shadow of Death's wings. Madam Pomfrey moved silently in the low light, stopping occasionally to speak to Narcissa Malfoy, who had insisted upon being helpful in any way she could: bandaging Harry and Ron's wounds as well as Draco's, carrying bowls of antidote and plumping pillows. She sat now in a large armchair pulled up to the window by Draco's bed, her eyes half closed, chin in hand. 

Hermione sat at the foot of the bed, a book open in her lap. Her hair was pulled up in a heavy silver clip, her still-damp blue winter cloak hung on a peg behind her. She had a shawl wrapped around her shoulders: Ginny recognized it as the one Draco had given her for Christmas. Hermione glanced up as the door shut behind Ginny and Blaise, and gestured them over with her quill, spilling a bit of ink on her sleeve. 

Blaise hung back. Ginny had to half-drag her to the side of the bed. The last splashes of dying sunlight lent a faint color to Draco's white hands, folded across the snowy-white sheets and blankets drawn up to his chest. He had been bathed and put into his own pajamas; clean, he looked deceptively healthier than when Ginny had seen him in Romania, a stark scarecrow latticed with cuts and filthy with blood and mud, his ragged clothes hanging on his bony frame. His hair was fresh now, curling in silver-white tendrils at his temples, his hands were wrapped in bandages, and his thin chest rose and fell, rose and fell, so slightly that the blankets barely moved. 

Blaise's eyes welled up with tears, which spilled down her cheeks, spoiling her eye makeup. "Bother," she said, dropping Ginny's wrist to scrub fiercely at her face. "Sorry," she said, addressing Draco, a soft catch to her voice. "I know how you hate it when I cry." 

"It's all right," said Harry. "He won't notice. He doesn't notice anything." 

Blaise jumped and turned, startled. Ginny followed her gaze to where Harry huddled in an armchair at the head of the bed, so still that he might have been invisible. Ginny wondered if she would have noticed him if she hadn't already known he'd be there. He'd been there for three days, and looked it: his green eyes smeared with lampblack stains of weariness, his hair hanging in matted tangles. Madam Pomfrey and Narcissa had done what they could to patch him up - he hadn't objected as long as he hadn't been asked to move from the chair - and swathes of clean white bandage showed beneath the ragged tears in his filthy black clothes. His sword, the hilt still stained with blood, leaned against the back of his chair; Ginny didn't know where Terminus Est was, and hadn't dared ask. 

"You don't know that, Harry," said Hermione, looking up from her book. "They say people in a coma can hear when they're spoken to, sometimes, even if they don't show it." 

"I know it," said Harry, with finality. His voice was gritty with exhaustion. He raised himself up a little, and looked around the infirmary. "Where's Ron?" 

"He said he had to talk to Remus about something, remember? He's probably with him in his office." 

"And Sirius?" 

"He's down in the Potions office with Snape," Hermione said. "I told you that before." 

"Have they had any luck finding anything?" Blaise asked. She had taken Draco's hand, lacing her fingers through his. Ginny felt a burst of resentment, which she tamped down fiercely. Real love is generous, she told herself, it is not jealous, it is not destructive, it is not-- 

Oh, bugger it, she thought, and turned away from the bed, from the sight of the redheaded girl who was not herself holding Draco's hand while his life inched away. She found herself staring down at Hermione, and at her open book. Across the top of the page was a woodcut drawing of a winged serpent; below it a symbol like a sharply rayed star, oddly familiar. 

"I've seen that symbol before," Ginny said, trying to remember exactly where. "What does it mean?" 

Hermione, who had been replying to Blaise, stopped and sighed. "It's the rune for silver dragons. I've been reading up on them as much as I can, hoping to find something..." 

"It was on Harry's runic band," Ginny said, suddenly, glancing towards him, though he didn't seem to be listening. "I remember, because..." 

Hermione slammed her book shut, drowning out the rest of Ginny's words. Her face was white. "Harry, do you mind if Ginny and I go talk in the corridor?" 

Harry shook his head, barely looking at them. "Do what you like." 

Ginny found herself hustled unceremoniously out of the infirmary, glancing back over her shoulder as she went to cast an apologetic look at Blaise. Out on the landing, Hermione checked to make sure that the door was firmly shut before she spoke. "Now finish what you were saying," she said, peremptorily. "The symbol was on Harry's runic band?" 

"Well, I never looked that closely at the band when Harry had it," Ginny admitted. "But I saw it when Gareth was wearing it. I looked at it because I was surprised he had one just like Harry's." 

Hermione looked as if she were about to clutch at her head. "Gareth? You mean back-in-the-past Gareth?" 

"Yes, but he wasn't in the past, he was in my bedroom." Seeing Hermione's expression, Ginny hastened to reassure the other girl that she hadn't been seeking illicit time-traveling booty. "With Ben. They came forward in time to give me something. You see..."  

Hermione was blessedly quiet during Ginny's explanation, only nodding on occasion. When Ginny was done, she said, "I've never heard of anything called a flora fortis, myself." 

"Well, maybe you don't know everything," Ginny said, vexed. 

"It's been suggested." Hermione's tone was acerbic; Ginny sometimes forgot just how dry and almost emotionless Hermione got when she was very, very upset. "Anyway, it sounds as if they didn't have much to say to you that was all that helpful. Just a lot of muttering and a bouquet of dubious usefulness. But you saw the silver dragon rune? You're sure?" 

Ginny nodded. 

Hermione bit her lip. "I don't want you saying anything to Harry. Do you understand?" 

"Why not?" 

"Because," Hermione said slowly, "if he finds out that he's been wearing the means to save Draco all these months, and now he's destroyed it, then..." She shook her head. "No. He can never, ever know." 

"He'll have to know eventually, Hermione," Ginny said. 

"Not if I have anything to do with it," Hermione said, her dark eyes flashing, and Ginny remembered something that Draco had said once, that Hermione had taught him what it meant to be utterly ruthless in love. "It's a moot point, anyway. That bracelet's gone. It no longer exists." 

"Yes, it does." 

"No," said Hermione with conscious patience. "Harry destroyed it. You know that." 

"It exists. It exists in the past." 

"GINNY." Hermione dropped her book seized the other girl's wrists. "You can't change the past, do you understand that? Look what happened last time you messed around with time travel."  

Ginny tried to draw back, but Hermione's grip was like iron. "You don't think I've thought about that? But this is different, Hermione. This could work. This could save him." 

"No," Hermione said again, but Ginny saw the flicker in her eyes. "It's destined, Ginny. I talked to Ron about the visions he had, back at the fortress, how he saw the Dark Mark and the Ministry on fire, and how all of them came true. You know what else he saw? He saw Draco lying dead in a bed, and Harry crying over him. That's the future, Ginny. That's what's going to happen. We can't change it." 

"I don't believe it," Ginny said stubbornly. "The future isn't made until it happens. Do you want to let him die and know you didn't do everything you possibly could to save him?" 

"Do you want to bring another Tom-sized disaster down on all of us? How many people have to die before you stop being so reckless?" 

This time Ginny pulled her wrist back. "When I freed Rhysenn," she said, her voice tight with the effort not to cry, "she told me I was the only one who could save him. The only one. And I thought about it - I wondered what I could do that no one else could. I thought maybe that she meant because I love him so much - but I'm not the only one who loves him, I don't even know if I love him more than anyone else does. What I can do that no one else can do is go back a thousand years into the past. That's all I've got." 

"But you don't even have the Time-Turner," Hermione said. "Dumbledore took it away from you." 

"And I'm going to get it back," Ginny pivoted and marched off down the hallway. 

"Ginny!" Hermione called. "Ginny, wait!" 

"She won't, you know," said a voice behind her. "She never does when she's like that." 

Blaise had come noiselessly out of the infirmary and was looking at Hermione with open curiosity, as if she were a peculiar bug. Her eyes were red, but her expression dared Hermione to remark on the fact. 

Hermione had no intention of remarking on it. Blaise could cry buckets over Draco for all she cared; she had more important things to worry about. "We've got to stop her," she said. 

"I don't see why," Blaise retorted. "Stop her doing what?" 

With a sharp hiss of exasperation, Hermione whirled on her heel and stalked after Ginny, who was already out of sight. Not that Hermione didn't know her way to the Headmaster's office. "She's got some harebrained idea about going back in time again, trying to find the antidote there." 

"There? 'In the past' there?" 

They had reached the stairs. Hermione nodded grimly. 

"Well, could she?" 

Hermione paused with her foot hovering over the first step. "That is not the point!" 

"Seems like the point to me," said Blaise reasonably. 

Hermione set her foot down on the step with a thump, and glared at Blaise. "After what happened the last time she decided to mess around with time magic?" 

"Granted, that went poorly," Blaise acknowledged. "Although I do believe everything happens for a reason." She touched the barrette that held back a lock of her hair. "But the time before that, didn't she use her time magic to bring forward an army that defeated Slytherin and saved all your lives?" 

Hermione gaped. "How did you know that?' 

"From Draco," said Blaise. "He told me about it. Many times. About how she flew that dragon and saved him, too. I used to think he was just making it up to annoy me, or worse, that it was some perverse sexual fantasy of his. He could be very strange. Did you know -" 

"No," Hermione interrupted hastily, "and I don't want to, either. It is true. I mean, of course it is. It was very brave and clever of her, and if anyone could do this..." 

Her voice trailed off. 

Blaise looked at her expectantly. "Draco used to say," she said, "that there were the kind of people who would fight for you until all hope was gone. And then there were the kind of people who would fight for you even beyond that. I know he thought Ginny was one of that kind." 

Hermione burst into tears and sat down on the stairs with a thump. 

Blaise looked horrified. She glanced down at herself, but her sleek outfit didn't include any pockets, much less one big enough to hide a handkerchief in. At last she slipped a glove off her hand and held it out reluctantly to Hermione. 

"What am I supposed to do with that?" Hermione demanded wetly, choking back sniffles. 

"I don't know," Blaise admitted. "Look, I didn't mean to set you off crying. Whatever I said, I take it back." 

Hermione snatched the glove out of Blaise's hand and wiped her face with it, though she stopped short of blowing her nose. The suede absorbed her tears nicely. Blaise tried not to look distressed about the glove, which was good of her, Hermione thought. "It's not you," Hermione said. "I just realized something, is all." 

Blaise lifted an eyebrow. "What?" 

"That he deserves better than me giving up on him," Hermione said in a squashed voice. "All the time I was holding him, when I thought he was dying - when he was dying - I kept telling him to hold on and to fight and not to give up. And then when he shut his eyes and stopped...stopped breathing..." She blew her nose into the glove. "I'm sorry. I'll buy you another pair." 

"I doubt you could afford them," said Blaise. 

Hermione ignored this. She was on a roll, choking out words through her tears. "Then Harry showed up, and then Sirius and Remus--and Remus got him to breathe again-- but I think I knew in that moment that he was dead anyway, that I'd lost him. But he isn't ...that is, maybe there is hope...and I'm just afraid, I'm so afraid to let myself hope in case it all goes wrong. I can't lose him twice. I just can't." 

Blaise narrowed her eyes. "I didn't think you were in love with him." 

Hermione went red. "I -" 

"What are you two doing?" 

They both jumped and looked up. Ginny stood at the top of the stairs. She came down a step or two, holding something that caught the light, glinting. Hermione gasped. 

"The Time-Turner! Dumbledore gave it to you?" 

Ginny hesitated just the barest fraction of a second. "Yes," she said. "And I know what you're going to say -" 

"No," Hermione interrupted, scrambling to her feet. "You don't. Ginny, listen -" 

"Stop!" Ginny flung out a hand, as if to ward the older girl off. "I can't listen to you, Hermione, I just can't. I know you're right, and if I listen to you, you'll just wind up convincing me, because you are...so always...right." She looped the chain of the Time-Turner over her head, dropping the small hourglass into the neck of her robes. "And I'm all wrong, I know it, I always have known it. I think that's why Tom wanted me, because he knew it, too." 

"Ginny," Hermione said, appalled, but Ginny went on speaking, white-faced but steady. "I want your blessing for this, Hermione, but if I don't get it, I'm going to do it anyway. I know you'll remind me of what happened last time I did something like this-and I know you think reasons aren't important, only actions are, but I think reasons mean something, I think they matter. And when I went back in time to get the Diary, I did it for all the wrong reasons. I did it because I wanted to be respected, I wanted all your approval, I wanted Draco to-to admire me, thank me, even. But this is different." 

"Of course it's different-" 

"Dumbledore let you go back in the past, in third year," Ginny said urgently, "to save a life, and that's what this is for-to save a life. If he were already dead, it would be different, but he's still alive, and he's dying because of all of us, you know that? He told Harry to choose the world or choose him and Harry chose him, but Draco wouldn't let him. He made him choose the world, and now it's time for someone to choose him, to choose to save him. I don't care if he ever knows it was me, I don't want anything for it, I just want him alive. And you and Harry have kept him alive so far, and now it's my turn, this is the one thing I can do, the one thing I can give that no one else can give. And I'm telling you this because I want you to know it, but not because I want your permission. I'll do it anyway, whether you like it or not, and there's nothing you can do to stop me." 

"All right," Hermione said. 

"I knew you-" Ginny stopped, almost falling down a stair. "What?" 

"I said all right," Hermione said, eager in her turn. "I wasn't going to forbid you in the first place. I was only going to tell you to go to the library first. It might help you to aim for some specific dates--the children of the Founders weren't always in the castle, right? So you might want to find a time when you know they'll be here. I suggest the updated Lives of the Founders; it has an appendix that follows the activities of their immediate heirs. If not that, then A History of the House of Gryffindor might help, but skip right to volume three; volumes one and two cover the period before your Time-Turner was even created." 

"The library would be a good point of departure, too," Blaise added thoughtfully. "It's one of the oldest parts of the castle, and hasn't been changed or added to over the years." 

Hermione looked at her in surprise, while Ginny, her knees suddenly weak, sat down quickly on the stairs. "Don't tell me you've read Hogwarts: A History." 

"Of course," Blaise said mildly. "Who hasn't?" 

*** 

It had begun to snow outside the castle, a thick blanket of white settling like a sinking curtain over the fields. Seamus, sitting in the window embrasure of the Gryffindor boys' dormitory, pressed the back of his hand to the cold glass. He liked the touch of cold things now; they soothed him, quieted the burning in his blood. 

His parents had wanted him to come home, but he'd insisted that he was fine, and wasn't dating Dean Thomas either. (He wondered vaguely where they'd come up with that one.) It wasn't that he didn't want to see them, though he had found it hard at first to conjure up an exact memory of their faces and in the end had had to refer to a book of photographs. He wanted to be around Ginny. 

In a world of flickering haze and unexpected, sudden mists, where familiar faces seemed strange and ordinary English phrases dropped suddenly into gibberish, Ginny was the only constant, the only element that remained unchanged from his life before. She did not flinch from the sometimes bleak expression in his eyes, which he could not yet hide; she did not turn away in disgust when he told her his dreams of washing and washing his hands, unable to remove the sticky film of blood. She understood <AHREF="HTTP: images fandom ohshush.com alessandra_tomginny.jpg?>. Tom had been inside her, too, had made her a part of him; she knew what it was like. What it was like to be forced to commit unspeakable acts you could never have imagined, much less imagined yourself performing. What it was like to feel that hate always inside you, hate for the world, burning away at your heart like an acid. What it was like to feel that pride, that unstinting arrogance. The lightness that came with loss of conscience. 

That clean sense of superiority. 

He remembered the prostitute who had looked like Ginny, with her long red hair in braids, the short mock-schoolgirl outfit, the same brown eyes. When he had kissed her, at first she had kissed him back, more expertly than Ginny and with a simulated passion that-no, he thought, she hadn't kissed him, she had kissed Tom, and she'd been paid to do it, or thought she would be paid before Tom broke her neck the way a small child might snap a stick of rock candy in half. He remembered how Tom had stroked his fingers through the long red hair as she died. Ginny, he'd said. Ginny. 

The roll of parchment on Seamus' lap fluttered to the floor as he put his hands up to cover his face. He wanted her here; she would steady him, make him whole again the way he'd been before. Together, they would heal. Without her, he would always be broken. His fingers pressed painfully into his eyes, trying to erase the memory of the dead girl with Ginny's face, the sound of Tom's voice, reverent and desolate. 

Ginny. Ginny. Ginny. 

The sound of the door opening brought him out of his reverie. He looked up, half-guiltily, though he had done nothing wrong. It was only Ron, wearing a dark red cloak over his robes that clashed with his hair. "Oh, sorry," he said, seeing Seamus. "I didn't mean--" 

"It's all right." Seamus hopped down off the windowsill. "It's your room, too." 

"That's true." Ron didn't move, and for a long moment the boys just stared at each other, both equally uncomfortable though for different reasons. Seamus wondered drearily if anyone would ever treat him normally again. 

"I was just going anyway," he said, finally. "I thought I'd see if I could find Ginny before dinner--" 

"Actually," Ron said, stepping to block Seamus' path to the door, "if you wouldn't mind, there's something rather important that I needed to talk to you about..." 

*** 

Sirius and Narcissa were standing together outside the infirmary doors. Sirius, like the rest of them, looked hollow-eyed with tiredness, but he managed to smile at Hermione. Narcissa couldn't quite manage it - the strain of the past few weeks had left her looking terribly frail, her skin like parchment. Hermione could see the veins at her temples. 

She thought how differently they all reacted to their grief: Sirius, short-tempered, strangely ineffective, Narcissa gone frail as a flower, Remus sharp, determined and distant, Ginny wound tight as a coiled spring, and Harry, vanished beyond recollecting. 

Stifling a sigh, she greeted them with a wave and made to go around them, but Sirius stopped her. "Wait." 

A sharp pang of fear assailed her. "Has something--?" 

"Nothing has happened," Narcissa hastened to assure her. "We wanted to talk to you. Well - Sirius did. I..." 

Her voice trailed off. Hermione wanted to say something to her, reassuring or kind, but she'd had a surfeit of grief already, her own and other people's. "What is it?" 

"It's Harry," Sirius said. "If you could..." 

"If I could what?" 

"It's getting close to the time," Sirius said. "If you could get him out of the infirmary, persuade him there's something needs doing elsewhere, persuade him he needs a bath, anything -" 

"He does need a bath," said Hermione, bleakly. "But he's needed one all week and that hasn't budged him. I don't know what you think I can do that you can't." 

"He shouldn't be here when Draco dies," said Sirius flatly, and Narcissa looked away. "They're tied together and I'm afraid that when Draco fails at last, his death will pull Harry down after him." 

Hermione stared for a moment. A clear picture rose up in her head: a huge ship going down in the limitless emptiness of the ocean and the splashing survivors, fallen from its rails, sucked under the surface in its wake, cold green seawater closing over their heads. She looked at Sirius with something like hate, and pushed past him through the doors of the infirmary. 

Harry was where she had left him, in the chair by the bed. His head rested on one hand and he looked so tired, so tired and so young, that even as she approached him her impotent anger faded to sorrow and she longed to put her arms around him and comfort him. But he had shunned her touch since Romania - had shunned all human contact. He flinched away from Sirius's outstretched hands and even Ron's awkward shoulder pats, as if their touch burned him. 

So she sat down in the chair next to his and only said quietly, "Harry?" 

He turned his head. Black curls framed a face that was all angles and blue hollows, and the traced shadow of stubble along his chin and jaw which should have made him look older, but didn't. His lips were cracked; a thin line of blood ran along his lower lip where he had bitten it. "Yes?" 

She lowered her half-raised hand. Something about him, the way he was now-- not a new quality in him, but an old quality, lacking-- held her back. "Sirius wanted me to see how you were," she said, hating the lie. "If you need anything - anything to eat, maybe? Or if you wanted to go and take - take a bath or something, I can sit with Draco." 

"No." His voice was perfectly polite and perfectly dead. "No, thank you, Hermione." 

It was, she thought, like trying to climb a glass wall in greased slippers. There was nothing there, within those lightless, bottle green eyes: no life, no Harry. She looked past him to Draco. The rosy afternoon light had moved away, and he lay white as a wax figure, hands crossed over his chest, the way he always slept. She remembered his hand slipping out of hers in the corridor, the limp curl of his fingers. Some people, Blaise had said, would fight till all hope was gone. And some would fight even past that. 

"Have you tried, Harry?" she said, the words escaping before she could hold them back. 

He only blinked. "Tried what?" 

"Talking to him," she said, glancing from Harry to the boy on the bed. "Talking to Draco." 

"I believe you were there," Harry said, his voice as dry as winter air, "when Madam Pomfrey told me he was past hearing anything." 

Hermione flinched. Harry had talked to Draco, of course. In that corridor in Romania he had said quite a lot of things, talking and talking, and sometimes hunching silently at Draco's side, until Sirius and Remus arrived and pulled him away. And she had watched, and Harry had watched, as Remus bent over Draco, then took hold of him and nearly threw him down on the corridor floor, Harry shouting out in anger and Hermione pulling him back, and the way Remus had pushed down on Draco's chest with a savage force, muttering spells under his breath, till Draco had coughed up silvery-black blood all over his robes and started breathing again. 

But he hadn't opened his eyes again, then or since. 

Madam Pomfrey's later comment that Draco was past hearing anything hadn't been directed at Harry, but Harry had reacted as if it had been, and clammed up almost entirely. 

"I know what she said." Her tone was careful. "But she didn't mean you. You can talk to Draco without him having to hear you, not properly. Mind to mind." 

Harry said listlessly, "He's gone. There's nothing there for me to talk to. It would be like - talking to a wall." 

"If you really think that," Hermione said, sharp as glass, "why are you here?" 

The corner of Harry's eye twitched, but he said nothing. He was still looking down at his hands. The curl of the scar across his right palm was as darkly visible as if he had drawn it in ink. 

"You could try," she said. 

Harry said something so quietly that she had to lean close, and even then she wasn't sure she'd heard. Still, she knew what he had said. What if I try, and it doesn't work? 

She looked at Draco, still as a knight carved on a tomb, those closed unsleeping eyes fringed with silver-wire lashes. She wondered if he dreamed, and if so, what he saw. Or was it only darkness? I can see you, in your white dress with snow in your hair.  

"It will work," she said, putting all the confidence she didn't have into those three short words, bartering honesty for love. "I'm sure of it." What does it matter now? What's one more well meant lie? 

He raised his eyes to hers, and the trust she saw in them broke her heart. "All right," he said, "I'll try." 

*** 

Blaise looked up from the book, her nose wrinkled. "Well, I've checked in three places now. I think we have it right." 

"Do we?" Ginny said tiredly. "I've never looked up dates before. I've always just...felt it." She put her hand to the tiny gold hourglass at her throat, feeling the power that pulsed through it. "Can I go now?" 

Blaise pushed the book away. The torches along the library wall were dimmed, the shadows gathered thickly among the stacks of books. "However much time you spend in the past," she said, "it doesn't matter, right? You could spend a lifetime there and come right back to this exact moment." 

"I could," Ginny admitted, "but every moment we lose now, in present time, is lost forever. And it's this time that matters--to Draco, I mean." 

"I know what you mean." Blaise stood up. Her eyes were very green; she was beautiful in the way that Ginny associated with Draco: that special beauty that was a kind of armor against the world. Nothing could pierce it or extinguish it, but it held its possessor remote from the world. Ginny had always envied that detachment. She had never been able to protect herself like that. 

"Ginny," Blaise said, "how can you be sure?" 

Ginny blinked. "So sure of what?" 

"That if you do this, if you save him, he'll love you." 

Ginny stood. The Time-Turner beat in her hand like a heart. "That's not why I'm doing this," she said. 

Blaise said something else, but it was lost in Ginny's memory of other words, words she had been trying to forget--if you are to do this, you must understand, you have one chance and one alone--to travel such vast distances through time requires a great expenditure of energy, and should you make more than one trip, I cannot speak to your safety, or your survival--and she turned the Time-Turner over, hastily, as the world and all its words rushed away like a tide going out. 

*** 

Draco's hand was icy. Harry let his own rest beside it, his fingers looking oddly brown and healthy next to Draco's pallid ones. He knew he ought to touch his hand to Draco's, but the idea filled him with revulsion. It would be like touching a doll or a wax mannequin, not a person at all. 

His hands tightened on the bedsheet, the heavy material crumpling under his fingers. Narcissa had brought Draco's own 600-thread-count percale sheets from the Mansion and they felt slippery. He closed his eyes, his thoughts thick and confused, as if he were fumbling his way through fog. Malfoy? 

No answer, only an echoing blankness, as if he had shouted down into an empty cavern. He tried again, and the echo was painfully sharp; he put his hands up to cover his eyes and felt Hermione tentatively touch his shoulder. He had heard despair in her voice and knew, with a pang, how she felt: how she simultaneously envied him his gift, this chance, and dreaded it. 

He let his mind relax, let himself remember what it was like to talk to Draco without speaking: like walking into a crowded room full of strangers and seeing, at last, a familiar face. He reached now for that familiarity, sensing that he had been searching too far away, that what he was looking for was as close as his own thoughts and his own mind. 

The weight of Hermione's hand on his arm slipped away, the seat of the chair, the chill of the air inching under the window, all vanished. He was in a place like the garden maze of the Triwizard Tournament, but the narrow, confining walls seemed to be a hard, dark, shiny stuff, and he could see lights flickering inside them. He heard a laugh and turned, half-running, to follow the sound: the path curved up and up, and now under his hastening feet were polished stone stairs. Dark wood paneling rose on either side of him, lit at intervals by glass lamps blown in the shapes of poisonous flowers: lilies, belladonna, nightshade, poppies, sweet pea, foxglove. 

He recognized them and knew where he was before he reached the top and saw the familiar hallway stretching before him, gleaming with the labor of a dozen house-elves. There were the torches in their serpent-shaped brackets. He knew he wasn't here, not really, that this was a dream he had wandered into, and not even his own dream, but someone else's. That Draco, dying, would dream of home was perhaps not surprising: certainly the place felt familiar to Harry, as recognizable as a memory. He knew the place and knew that it was waiting, as Draco was waiting, for him. 

He stood before the library door. He could not remember if this was where the door had always been, but it didn't matter: he pushed it open and stepped inside. There was a fire burning in the grate, sending great, heatless licks of golden flame hurtling up the chimney. The thick velvet curtains were roped back from the high stained-glass windows bordered in gold and blue and green. The big mahogany desk had been pushed back against one wall and Draco was sitting cross-legged on top of it, a pile of books at his elbow and another book open on his lap. He looked up when Harry came in and smiled the smile of someone who has entered a crowded room full of strangers and at last sees a familiar face. 

Chapter 16_2