HPSlashFics - 16 Part 2: Love is the Law

The first journey backward was cold. Ginny felt a moment of icy grayness and saw jagged, far-off lightning, as if she were passing through a storm cloud. Her stomach wrenched painfully. Then the clouds were gone and she was standing exactly where she had stood before, only Blaise was gone.

She turned around slowly. The library was the same shape, still, as it had been, but there were no stacks of books. There were long, rough wood tables, stacked with illuminated manuscripts, parchment and quills. There was a longer piece of parchment on which someone had been scrawling what looked like rough sketches. Thick tallow candles burned in silver holders on the walls and in a larger candelabra on the table. The room smelled of tallow, smoke and damp ink.

She approached the table slowly and examined the sketches. She recognized the outline of Hogwarts, though it looked slightly different than she remembered, as if it were missing a wing-- she leaned closer, taking hold of the page--

The door of the library burst open. It was Ben, just as she'd seen him the last time she'd journeyed into the past, though he wasn't shirtless this time. He was wearing a long night robe, and his black hair was wildly tangled, his dark eyes brilliant. He looked at her and gave a little whoop of surprise, the lit wand in his right hand dipping as he lowered it. "Ginny?"

"Oh--yes, it's me," she said, feeling awkward. "Sorry, did I catch you at a bad time?"

"Oh," she said. There was a short silence, then she smiled at him. "Well, it's a good thing, anyway, because I was looking for you. Gareth, too, actually."

"Gareth?" Ben perched himself on the edge of the desk. "I'm sure he'll be along. He takes longer to wake up than I do."

"Fine, thanks." He paused and blinked at her. "Did you say when am I? I'm in my own time, Ginny, surely you must have set your Time-Turner to a year?"

"I did," she mused, "but...I mean, you know me, so clearly we've already met and you've probably already been to the future and brought your army there and-- what happened to them, anyway?"

She squinted at him. "Have you already come forward in time to my house to see me? About five days after the new year, in 1996?"

"It sounds like a bit of a lark, going forward again," he said, raking a hand through the unruly hair so like Harry's. Then he smiled. "I hear Gareth."

Ginny, who hadn't heard anything, looked up in surprise. A moment later the door opened and the Heir of Slytherin came in, wrapped in a shockingly purple robe, his hair every which way. He took a look at her and groaned. "You again?"

Ginny frowned. "I don't suppose it would make any difference if I told you that in the future, you're very fond of me?"

"I wouldn't believe you." He sat down on the desk next to Ben and glared. "What do you need now? You can't have any more soldiers, we sent the ones you used off to--"

"Who says I need anything? Maybe I just stopped by to chat," said Ginny in an injured tone.

"The red band you wear around your wrist," she said. "At least--I've seen you wear it...do you have it on now?"

Gareth glanced at Ben, who shrugged. With a sigh, he rolled up the left sleeve of his purple robe. There on his wrist was the runic band, a red glasslike band that seemed to glow from within with a dull fire. "I always wear it," he said. "Every day since I was a child."

Ben choked back a laugh. "You need to borrow it? Ginny, it's an object of awesome protective power, forged by Slytherin himself, made to protect his son. I don't think Gareth's going to let you borrow it."

"It's important," said Ginny in a thin, determined voice. "It might save Draco's life."

"The Heir of Slytherin in her time," said Ben. "I'm afraid, Ginny, that you're going to have to explain a little better than that."

So Ginny explained. She told them about the runic band, its first appearance amid dire warnings, the gifting of it to Harry, and the later poisoning and decline of Draco. She told them how Harry had used the band to save himself, how Draco lay near death, how his father had told them that only the blood of silver dragons could save him. She began to tell them about the rune on the band that matched the rune for silver dragons, but Gareth cut her off.

"I see where this is going," he said, slight discomfort in his voice. "I can't give you the band, Ginny."

Why not? she wanted to demand, but she bit it back. "Then--then can you take me to a silver dragon? Lucius said they lived a thousand years ago--that's now, isn't it?"

Ben and Gareth exchanged a long and helpless look. "There are no silver dragons now," said Ben, at last. "Slytherin caused them all to be destroyed--after all, he made them. That was when I was a child. Helga's Time-Turner won't take you back that far. She made it after they were gone."

"Then I have to have the bracelet," Ginny said. "Please? I know it's important to you--that your father made it for you..."

She trailed off. She'd never felt so much like a stupid little girl, here begging these two powerful and ancient wizards (well, all right, they weren't that ancient at the moment) for a bracelet that might or might not save her boyfriend (not that he was actually her boyfriend, either.) They must think she was so stupid. She imagined Blaise's disappointed face when she returned with nothing...

"I can't give it to you," said Gareth, "because the band comes off me only when I die. It's enchanted. I'm awfully sorry."

"Does it have the blood of silver dragons in it?" Ginny asked in a small voice, hating herself for asking.

"Yes," said Gareth. "And if the cataplasm is anything like what I think it is..."

"The poison," said Gareth. "It sounds like one of my father's, though those were notoriously antidote-resistant." He shook his head. "There's no point talking about it. I'm sorry."

You said that already, Ginny thought. But, sunk in her own misery, she said nothing.

"I'm sorry, too, that you came all this way for no reward," said Ben, jumping down from the desk. "Should I get you a Strengthening Potion? You look very pale."

Ginny nodded blindly, not really seeing him as he shuffled out of the room, like a dark untidy shadow. She was seeing Draco in her head, lying on that bed in the infirmary, like a statue carved out of ivory and bones, no color in him at all as the life drained away...

"Ginny." It was Gareth, looking at her thoughtfully. He was very like Draco, which made it hard to look at him-- a grown-up Draco, which her Draco, now, would never be. "I have an idea. I have to tell it to you now--Ben won't like it much."

He leaned forward and spoke in a conspiratorial whisper. "You must have books in your time--histories of the past?"

She blinked at him. Of all the times to indulge in an ego trip..."Yes," she said shortly. "You all are."

"Everyone dies," he said, serenely. "When I was your age, I didn't expect to make it through the next ten years, much less the next twenty or fifty...you do see what I'm driving at, don't you?"

"I think so," said Ginny. "You want me to come back to the moment you die and-- take the runic band?"

"As long as I don't die being hacked into pieces or set on fire," said Gareth. "Then it might be difficult for you to locate the band, you know, among the remains."

"I'm sure," said Gareth. "It's as much a burden as it is anything else, the band. It was made with love, mind you, but my father's brand of love--the killing, clinging sort. I'd be glad not to have to leave it to an Heir of my own."

"Thank you, Gareth," said Ginny, and heard Gareth suck his breath in. She looked up, and saw Ben standing in the doorway, the wand in one hand and a stone mug of something in the other.

Gareth jumped lightly off the desk. "It won't make a difference, Benjamin," he said. "It won't make me die any sooner."

"I don't want to know when you are going to die," said Ben, looking distraught. He waved the lighted wand, so it made lacelike patterns of light on the opposite wall. "I don't want to be forewarned--about myself, either," he added, glaring at Ginny as if she were the Voice of Doom.

"You won't know," said Gareth, "not till the moment. Look, we can argue about it later."

He reached out as if he meant to pat her cheek, but seized the Time-Turner instead, and flipped it over. She heard him say, "Run along, then, there's a good girl," or something like it, just as the ground was yanked out from under her feet._

Draco put the book he was reading aside--Harry couldn't see the cover, only that it had a broad spine stamped in gold leaf--and regarded Harry with his head tilted to the side, like a quizzical magpie's. "I'm not sure, exactly," he said. "I only know that I have to go, and soon. It's a sort of drawing pull that gets stronger and stronger." He pointed towards the door of the library.

Draco laughed. "I think I'm supposed to leave the Manor," he said. "Have you been out the front doors?"

"No," Harry was forced to admit. He glanced at the window behind Draco--he could not tell if the gray flatness beyond it was merely winter sky, or some more empty and permanent grayness. "You know we're not really here, don't you?"

"I don't know," Draco said, with an uncharacteristically artless sort of smile. "But I'm going--and I don't think I'll be coming back. That's why I'm glad you're here. I wanted to say goodbye."

He leaned back. Harry was struck by how healthy and ordinary he looked--there was color in his face and he was no longer thin. He supposed everyone was healthy inside their own mind. Perhaps this was the way Draco saw himself.

"Goodbye?" Harry echoed, and when Draco said nothing, he asked, "How did you know I was coming?"

"I could hear you. Talking to me. Like a ghost at the window." He glanced towards the window, seeming not to see the emptiness outside.

"There are so many ghosts in this Manor," said Harry, remembering, "but I never thought you would be one of them."

"I'm not," said Draco, a little too quickly. "I heard Hermione and Ginny too, and Sirius. But your voice was the strongest."

Draco's light eyebrows raised. Harry thought of talking to that false Draco in the rain-soaked alley outside the Midnight Club, thought about how he had known then that there was something peculiar, something wrong about his friend, but not what it was. It was like that now, though he had no doubt that this was Draco. A Draco altered, changed in some microscopic, particulate way, but still Draco. "And you haven't? Not up for taking it in turns, Potter?"

The slight sarcastic accent on his last name comforted Harry with its familiarity. "I haven't left you," he said. "And I won't, until..."

Harry expelled a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. "Surely you must know," he said. "Where we are now, what's outside. There's death beyond that door, Malfoy. You'll die if you go outside."

Draco looked merely curious. "Will I?" he said, and, leaping from the desk, made his way towards the door with a determined stride.

The second journey, forward in time, seemed swifted than the first. She saw black clouds gather around her and heard a shrill, piercing sound, like the noise of nails on a chalkboard. Then the world came together again, and she was standing in the library, looking into Blaise's wide, frightened eyes.

"Crikey," said Blaise, recovering. "You just blipped right out and then back in again--you were only gone for a second! Does that mean you have to go back?"

Gasping a little, Ginny leaned on the table until her dizziness passed. "Yes," she said. "But first I need--"

Still, despite her sharp tone, once Ginny had made it clear what she needed, Blaise went to search the historical section for further books about the Founders. "Anything that contains an exact death date for Gareth Slytherin," said Ginny. "And I need to know if he had any children, and which of them became the next Heir of Slytherin."

Once Blaise had gone, Ginny sank down in a chair. She had forgotten how draining time travel could be. She lowered her head into her hands, letting her cold fingers cool her flushed face--then glanced up as the library door slammed.

It was Ron. He hurried over to her, blue eyes full of concern. "Are you all right?"

Blaise reappeared from between the stacks with a book in her hands, chuckling. "I thought Gryffindors didn't know those kinds of words!"

Ron narrowed his eyes at her. "Whatever's going on--did you put Ginny up to something?"

"What was your idea?" Ron demanded. He looked around, a muscle by his mouth twitching. "What are you doing in the library?"

The muscle by his mouth twitched more rapidly as Ginny explained. When she was done, he exploded, "Ginny, that's the stupidest--"

She smiled at him--one of Draco's bland, withering smiles. "You seem different these days," she remarked. "More like your brother."

"Oh, for goodness sake," said Ginny in frustration. "Ron, this is something I have to do. It's Draco's only chance. I know you don't like him, but he's a human being, he's got as much right to a chance at life as anyone else does. And think of Harry."

"I do think of Harry," said Ron, gratingly. "I think of him all the time." He knelt down then, and looked up at her. "Ginny," he said. "I went back in time with you once before. Bring me with you again. That way I can be with you if there's any danger."

Touched, Ginny squeezed his shoulder. "All right. But let me do the talking, all right?"

He nodded. Blaise cleared her throat. "Gareth Malfoy," she said, reading aloud from the book she held open in her arms. "Dead of a fever caused by wounds sustained in battle." She added the date, and Ginny frowned.

"But that's only about five years after the last time I was there!" she exclaimed.

"Not for Ben," said Ginny, and looped the chain of the Time-Turner over Ron's neck.

Draco looked at him coolly. There was only a little emotion on the finely honed face, a sort of distant curiosity. "I don't think you understand," he said. "This is something I have to do."

"Death comes for us all, Harry." Not Potter, not this time. Harry. "You can't battle it like you battled Voldemort."

"I know that." Harry thought of Cedric, dead between one instant and the next, and set his jaw stubbornly. "But it's not your time."

Draco laughed shortly. "Who are you to say when my time is? Who am I to say it? We don't get to choose, any of us. And what do you know of death anyway, Boy Who Lived?"

Harry looked away, fighting a despair that threatened to rip him out of this dream, return him to the grim reality of the infirmary, the smell of death and sickness and medicine, the white of ice and snow and sickbed linens, and everywhere hopelessness and pain. "Why are you angry at me?" he ground at last, between his teeth.

There was a silence, and then he felt a touch on his shoulder--looking, he saw Draco's hand laid there, thin and brown, scarred white along the palm and the curve of the thumb. "Maybe because it is easier to leave you angry," Draco said. "But--"

"I have no choice," Draco said, tightening his grip on Harry's shoulder. "How do you think that is for me, to have no choice? I am a Malfoy--I cannot bear being forced. Even my father--"

"Took his own life out of guilt," said Harry harshly. "You don't bear that sort of guilt. Maybe once, but not now."

"Not for you, perhaps." Draco sounded weary. Harry chanced a look at him. He could see the exhaustion in him, under the false glamor of wellness, the pallor that seemed to lurk under the brown skin, flushed with healthy blood along the cheekbones, the lips curved in a half-smile, no longer gray and bitten, the thin chest rising and falling rapidly with his breath... "I am not like you," Draco said. "And perhaps you think I am owed something for my redemption, but I never thought of it that way. I have always done just as I wanted. I wanted to fight with you and for you, and if I changed myself it was so I might have that--everything I have done has been for selfish reasons. Don't mourn me, Harry. I haven't changed as much as all that."

"Now you're lying," Harry said, stung into anger--but it was the wrong thing to say. Draco's mouth set.

"I don't lie," he said, coldly, and before Harry could move to stop him, pushed past him and out the door of the library.

The third trip, thanks to Ron's presence, was less cold than the previous two. His hands were comfortingly warm in her own as the freezing blackness ebbed and flowed around them, an inky tide of nothingness.

When it receded, they were standing again in the library. It was much as it had been the previous time Ginny had been there, only it was dark now, all the candles unlit, the torches guttered, and there were no parchments on the bare wooden tables.

She let go of Ron's hands. He looked around wonderingly. "This is the school? A thousand years ago?"

She nodded. "Last time I was here they were fixing the place back up after it was damaged in the last battle of the Founders. There weren't any students there then. I don't know if there are now. It hasn't been that long."

"I know. I wonder..." She sighed. "My guess is there probably aren't students here now. They'd never let it get so freezing if there were."

Without answering, Ron went to the library door and swung it open. He peered into the hallway beyond. "There aren't any torches lit out here either," he called back.

"Shhhh." Ginny took her wand out, lit it with a quick Lumos, and joined Ron at the door. The corridor beyond the library stretched away into darkness, all the torches unlit. "This can't be good. Oh, poor Ben. Poor Gareth."

"You said that already." Ron stepped out into the hall and gestured for her to follow. "Let's go this way."

"Well, you are the Diviner." She shrugged, falling into step beside him. They were taking a route that, in their own time, would have led them to Dumbledore's office. The corridors of the castle looked much the same now as they would in the future. Perhaps the floors were less scuffed and worn, she thought, though it was difficult to tell in the dimness.

"There," Ron said quietly. He pointed. At the very end of the corridor, Ginny could make out a flickering light, delicate as a will-o-the-wisp. She squinted, then hurried forward, Ron trailing behind her.

As they moved along the corridor, she glanced down, for some reason, at the scar on her right hand, where Tom had burned it in the Gryffindor common room fire. It stood out still against her brown and freckled skin, a veiling of irregular white lines, as if she wore a lace glove.

Nearing the light, she saw that it was the tip of a lit wand, held by someone who was sitting on the floor, his legs drawn up, his face buried on his crossed arms. Black robes puddled around him like spilled ink. He looked up as Ginny came to stand beside him, and slowly knelt to touch his arm. "Ben?" she said.

He did not smile. He looked not much older than he had the last time she'd seen him, though there were hard lines on his face that had not been there before, lines of grief marked close to his mouth and eyes. He smelled of liquor, medicine and metal. "You," he said, "like the Angel of Death, you come just as promised, just on time..."

He found him standing in the corridor, looking around with a bemused expression. "I thought you said there was death out here," he said. "All I see is some rather appalling Victorian-era wallpaper. Place needs brightening up a little, doesn't it?"

"It's a horrible old pile," Harry opined, slightly out of breath. "I've told you that before."

"Yes, but your taste is bad," Draco noted. "Mine, on the other hand..." He half-closed his eyes. "It's that tugging again," he added. "I have to get to the front door. There's something there--"

"No," Harry said sharply, and caught at Draco's sleeve, but the other boy was too quick for him. Eluding Harry's grasp, Draco strode, swiftly and purposefully, towards the stairs.

"I can't wait any longer." Draco was moving down the steps now, one hand on the banister, which had been polished to a dark glow. Torchlight flared at the bottom of the steps. Harry could see the immense double doors of the Manor, looming below them like enormous gates.

Draco had reached the foot of the stairs. He threw his head back, looking up at Harry, and his eyes were narrow slits of gray. "There's nothing else to say."

"But there is." Harry was on the step above Draco now, looking down at him from a height of several extra inches. Past Draco, he could see the narrow windows flanking the huge doors, and beyond the windows more of the same swirling, cloudy greyness. "Let me see your wrists."

"My wrists?" Draco looked at Harry as if he'd gone mad, then slowly extended his hands, palms down. Harry reached to take them and turned them over, so he could see the lightning scar along Draco's left palm, nearly blotted out by the double-cross scar he'd sliced over it. Along his wrists were other scars, thick and white as narrow snakes sliding under the skin, puckered at the edges as if long healed. Draco looked at them. "I gave all I had already," he said, thoughtfully. "I haven't got any more."

Draco pulled his wrists out of Harry's grasp. "If you're asking if I tried to top myself, no. Hardly a need, really."

"If you have to ask..." Draco shook his head, backed down the steps and turned. No! Harry thought, and suddenly he was in front of Draco, blocking his path to the front door. Beyond the walls of the Manor, he could hear the howling of wind.

Draco made a clucking noise of annoyance. "Potter, this game of human chess becomes wearisome."

"I know." Harry held his hand up, as if reaching to catch something. His empty fingers clenched and found they were gripping something: the sword of Gryffindor, red stones winking along the hilt. "But if you want to get past me, you'll have to fight me."

Draco's lips curled at the corners like burning paper. "Fight you? You must be joking."

Harry shook his head. He could taste salt in his mouth, and copper. "I've never been more serious."

Draco shook his head as if in disbelief. "Fine," he said, and raised his own hand, and the black-and-silver glimmer of Terminus Est was there, bright in his grasp. "But do not expect me to be merciful," he added, lowering the blade as he lunged at Harry.

He didn't answer, rising slowly to his feet, one hand braced against the stonewall. She saw that the robes he was wearing were stained with blood, still wet in some places, gleaming almost black in the torchlight.

"Ah, right." Ben said. "We've met before." His eyes glanced over Ron and returned to Ginny. "They're good things to have, brothers."

"There's nothing I need." There was venom in his tone. "Let's not play games. You're not here to see what I need, you're here for what you need. Aren't you?"

Ben raised an arm slowly and pointed at the doorway beside him. "In there," he said. Ginny had never heard two words spoken so bleakly before.

He stood back as she and Ron passed through the doorway and into a narrow room. The only light came from a slit window high overhead. It illuminated a small room with stone-bound walls, a low table covered in a spilled mess of potions, smashed glass from broken vials, and a sticky, thin, red substance still dripping from the corners onto the floor-- and a bed, made of carved wood and very old-fashioned, hung around with black draperies. In the bed, a man was lying. Fur coverlets were pulled up to his waist and he was naked above that, his face so ghastly pale that it took Ginny a moment to realize that it was Gareth.

"Is he dead?" asked Ron, his voice harsh in the sickroom stillness. A heavy scent lay on the air, like smoke and something else, something sweet and deathly.

Ginny couldn't reply. He lay so still, and in his stillness he reminded her more than he ever had before of Draco, lying in his own stillness in Madam Pomfrey's infirmary. There was the scar of a terrible wound across Gareth's chest, its edges raw and black looking, and his fair hair lay in sweat-straggled locks against his skin. Slowly, she reached out and touched his hand. It was icy cold. "I think so," she said, uncertainly.

This was not as she had imagined it; it was much worse. She had told herself she could endure Gareth's death because, of course, in her present he had already died, but she discovered that paradoxes of time were cold comfort in the face of real grief. She thought of Draco, painfully, and let out a small sigh, releasing Gareth's hand.

"Are you done yet?" It was Ben, tall and ragged in the doorway in his bloodstained black robes. "Have you gotten what you came for?"

Ron took her shoulder and pushed her back towards Gareth. "Ginny, take the band. Take it," he hissed in her ear.

Uncertainly, she reached for Gareth's cold hand again, aware of Ben, dark and rageful as a thundercloud, hovering at her back. Holding Gareth's hand was like gripping a statue; swallowing back her instinctive revulsion, she closed her fingers around the cool glassy band, and drew it over his wrist. It came off effortlessly, springing into her hand almost as if it wanted to.

She heard Ben's breath hiss out between his teeth. He was staring at her, at the runic band she held. "It's true, then," he said, in a very different voice now. "He really is dead."

Ron, alarmed by something he saw in Ben's face, moved to put himself between the Heir and his sister--but Ben had lost all interest in them. Pushing past Ginny like a blind man, he went down on his knees next to Gareth's bed, put his head on the coverlet, and whispered something she couldn't hear. She thought he was crying--certainly his shoulders were shaking, and harsh noises were coming from him, like the sounds of someone being tortured.

"Ron." She took her brother's wrist. Something told her that this sort of grief was private; it should not be approached. She tried to tug her brother away, but he was staring, his mouth slightly open.

"This is what I saw," he whispered, suddenly. "In my vision--Draco on the bed, and Harry next to him--it wasn't them I saw at all, it was this--"

"Ron!" She shoved him, hard. He moved slowly, turning to stare over his shoulder even as she pulled him towards her and flung the gold chain of the Time Turner around his throat.

Harry ducked the blow and parried, steel clashing on steel. Draco had been telling the truth; he wasn't holding back. He slashed at Harry even as Harry turned, and the tip of his blade tore across Harry's sleeve, opening a gash in the material.

"Oh, it's Malfoy again, is it?" Draco cut under Harry's guard, dexterously. Harry blocked him, but only just. Sparks flew where their blades crossed. "I told you I would not be merciful."

"Why not?" Draco cut at Harry again, high this time, and Harry ducked; the blade bit deep into the wood paneling above his head.

Draco paused to yank his sword out of the wall. "You would keep me from my death," he said. The blade flashed in his hand as he swung at Harry; Harry parried, keeping his feet planted, just as Draco had taught him. In fact, it seemed to him that Draco was using all the moves he'd used when training Harry in swordplay; surely if he really wanted to hurt Harry, he'd try something else, something Harry wasn't prepared for? Emboldened by this thought, he pressed forward, taking the offensive. Draco dropped back a step, his eyes narrowed to lazy silver crescents. "Nice move, Potter."

"It's not your time," Harry said, between gasps. He was sweating, salt stinging his eyes.

Draco sprang onto the lowest step of the stairs, striking at Harry's sword with enough force to bruise Harry's fingers where they gripped the hilt. "It is my life--my death."

"But why? Why not fight for it? Why not fight for every last minute, every second, every possibility of a chance that you might be cured? Why not?"

"Because I'm tired!" Draco shouted, with a sudden anger that struck at Harry more forcefully than the just-delivered blow. "Tired of fighting--and tired of struggling--and tired of this endless, arduous nothing--" His blade snapped up, level with Harry's eyes. "What's the reward, Potter?" he said, his voice half a whisper. "If I die now, then I die in glory, don't I? Fallen in the fight against Voldemort. Dulce et decorum est."

"Never learned your Latin, did you? Not past the spells you needed to know, anyway." Draco's voice was too weary for the scorn his words implied. "If I live," he said, enunciating clearly, as if Harry were a particularly slow child, "then all that glory fades into ordinariness, doesn't it? You--you'll always be special. The boy who killed Voldemort. I only ever had a purpose when you were my purpose. What do you expect me to do now, now that you no longer need me any more?"

This time, the cold darkness seemed to go on forever. Ginny could hear the howl of wind in her ears, feel the blood freezing inside her veins, stiffening her fingers into claws made out of ice. Even the chattering of her teeth made no sound in the empty void between then and now.

At last she heard a noise--a sort of shattering, like breaking ice-- and she broke through the grayness into light and heat and noise. Her knees gave way and she fell to the floor, clutching the runic band tightly in her fingers.

Hands on her shoulders pulled her upright into a sitting position. It was Ron, very pale, his lower lip caught between his teeth. "Ginny?"

Blaise hurried towards them both across the library, her red hair like a stream of torchlight. "Ginny! Are you all right? You both appeared and then you just ... fell..."

"I'm all right," Ginny said, though she heard the strain in her voice and knew it wasn't true. She was glad of the pressure of Ron's hands, keeping her upright. She was still shivering so hard...

She glanced down at her hands. The bracelet was clasped between them. The edges of it were faintly frosted with ice.

"You got it!" Blaise exclaimed, dropping to her knees. Ron let go of Ginny's shoulders. Ginny's stomach lurched and a wave of blackness rose up inside her, threatening to swamp her vision. She fought it back through sheer will, clawing it down until the darkness receded and she could breathe again.

"We got it," she said. She felt as if the ground were rocking up and down under her. Glancing at the bracelet, she saw that a faint glow still clung to it, despite its traumatic voyage through time. "But I don't know what to do now-- it's a bracelet, right, not at antidote. Maybe we grind it down to powder or ..."

Ron stood up. "I'm heading to the infirmary," he said. "I need to tell Harry and Hermione what's going on."

Ginny squeezed his arm as she got to her feet. "Thanks, Ron. For coming with me."

Blaise, impatient, took hold of Ginny's sleeve and towed her out of the library and down the stairs to the dungeon. She kept a tight hold on Ginny's arm, and Ginny was grateful. She suspected that otherwise, she'd have fallen down the stairs and fetched up at Snape's feet, much to his astonishment.

He was, as always, in the Potions dungeon, standing at a long trestle table covered with jars and vials and philters spilling powders and sticky liquids and bits of dragon scale and newts' eyes and boggart toenails all over its surface. Snape hovered above a boiling cauldron, his greasy hair slicked with steam and sweat. His eyes were rimmed in bloody red. He looked up and scowled. "What the devil do you two want?"

Ginny opened her mouth, but could find no words. Exhaustion and dizziness had rendered her speechless. It was Blaise who plucked the bracelet out of her hand and held it out to the Potions professor.

"Ginny's found the missing part of the antidote, Professor Snape," she said imperiously.

Snape raised first one eyebrow, then another. "I see," he said. "Miss Weasley has had yet another fanciful notion regarding the antidote? Might I remind you, Miss Weasley, of the wholly useless flower that you sent me last week? I believe you thought that was the antidote, too."

Ginny felt herself flush. "It was a flora fortis," she said. "A willpower plant."

"It was a common sowthistle," said Snape crossly, and gestured towards the windowsill, where a small box contained dirt--and a sparse scattering of yellow flowers. "I planted it. It may eventually make a pleasant window box, but an antidote ingredient, it was not."

Blaise looked as if she were about to say something, but Ginny interrupted her. "This is different," she said. "It has the blood of silver dragons in it."

Ginny reached for the gold chain around her throat and held up the Time-Turner that dangled at the end of it. Even in the muddy gloom of the basement, it still caught the light. "Dumbledore gave me..." she began.

But Snape had already snatched the bracelet out of Blaise's grasp and was gripping it in shaking hands. "I saw Potter wearing this," he said. "Do you mean to tell me...?"

Ginny shook her head. "It's not the same bracelet Harry had. That one didn't have the dragon blood in it. It'd been taken out."

Slowly, Snape turned the dark, glassy red circlet over and over in his hands. He ran a long white finger over the runes that etched its surface: the one that looked like a wing and the one that looked like a rayed sun and the one that Ginny had thought looked like a heart.

"A broken heart spills all its secrets," he said, and pressed with the pad of his thumb against the heart rune.

There was a sound like a snapped bone. The bracelet came apart in two perfect half circles, and from the broken ends of it poured a thin silver liquid. It splashed down into the cauldron on the table in front of Snape. The bubbling mixture inside the cauldron stopped bubbling, and turned a singing gold color.

Blade clanged on blade. "I'll never not need you," said Harry, out of breath, his wrist aching.

"That's not true." Draco was making his way back down the stairs now, forcing Harry to retreat. "You needed me in the war, because I made you a better fighter. You needed me because you needed all the help you could get. But now's your chance to live a normal life, that's what you always wanted, isn't it? You want to tell me how a pureblooded, all-Slytherin, prone-to-assasination-attempts telepathically bonded stepbrother with a history of morally questionable behavior is going to help you do that?"

"It's really amazing," said Harry, "how much rot you can talk even when you're in the middle of doing something else."

Draco took a breath, a curt intake as sharp as the sound of breaking frost. "At least you're honest."

"But I don't see where it matters," said Harry. "Needing people because they can help you out in a war, well, help is a benefit of friendship, I suppose, but it isn't the reason for it. Need isn't the basis of friendship, or love, or--"

"Love," said Draco, almost contemptuously, "you do like to talk about it, don't you?"

Not really, Harry thought. "No," he said, "I just don't spend my life avoiding the topic, unlike some people."

Draco's sword made a sweeping sideways gesture that neatly cut away one of the buttons holding Harry's sweater cuffs closed. It clicked to the marble and rolled away underfoot. Cool air touched Harry's bare wrist. "That's what girls do," Draco said, "talk on endlessly about love, as if they could pin it like a butterfly to a board. In the end, it doesn't matter, does it? It's not what you say, it's what you do."

"Then you do love," said Harry. "I've seen it over and over in everything you do. It's not that you can't love, it's that you're afraid to admit that you do."

Draco made an exasperated noise. "Potter--" he began, but his hand trembled, and the tip of his sword dropped, slicing a clean cut along Harry's chest.

Ginny felt her heart soar--then drop. She exchanged a long glance of mutual understanding and regret with Snape--a first for the both of them, certainly.

"It's not the antidote," she said to Blaise, as gently as she could, as if the other girl's heartache was the greatest at stake here. "The antidote has to brew for a thousand years."

If she'd expected Blaise to cry, it didn't happen. She just went very red, as if flushed with rage, and swallowed hard once. "Then all this was for nothing?"

"Not nothing," Ginny said. "It can brew for a thousand years...if I take it back into the past and leave it somewhere. Somewhere where it'll still be undisturbed a thousand years in the future."

"But you can't go back in the past again--" Blaise started, alarmed, but Ginny shot her such a furious look that she quailed.

"I just need to find somewhere I can leave the antidote where no one will find it--" Ginny began.

Blaise looked as if she were about to start in on Ginny again, but at that moment Snape exclaimed loudly. The runic band--the two shattered halves of it, anyway--was jerking in his hands. He set the pieces carefully down on the table. No sooner had he taken his hand back then they slid towards each other and joined, like two drops of water flowing into one.

"That's Harry's band," said Ginny, with some certainty, and picked it up. It thrummed once under her fingers, as if alive, then went quiet.

She slipped it onto her wrist. "I need a vial of the antidote," she said to Snape.

He looked at her out of hooded dark eyes, and she suspected he knew exactly what it was that Blaise would have said if Ginny had allowed her to speak. But all he said was, "Indeed."

With a wave of his wand, he lowered the flame under the cauldron and went to fetch an empty vial. Ginny stared down at the pale gold liquid inside the cauldron. It was a almost exactly the color of the yellow cloak her mother had given her, that she'd worn that day Draco had almost kissed her by the lake. The backs of her eyes stung, and to her surprise, two tears slipped down her cheeks and spilled into the cauldron.

She jumped back, wiping hastily at her face. "Have I ruined it?" she demanded, staring at Snape in horror.

He merely looked at her, a peculiar expression on his face. "Not at all," he said, and handed her two vials. One was of red glass, stoppered with a yellowish stone, and the other was of clear glass, <AHREF="HTTP: images luciusvial.jpg? illo alison.wyvernweb.com>sealed with stones the color of wine. He measured the liquid out between them, sealed them, and handed them to Ginny with a brief set of instructions. She blinked and nodded, and then Blaise was tugging her arm again and they were back on the stairs, trudging upward and away from the dungeon with its steaming heat and smell of boiled leaves.

"I hate it down there," Blaise said. "It always reeks of cabbage. Where are we going, anyway?"

Hermione looked up as the door of the infirmary swung open. It was Ron, looking more than a little dazed. He made his way across the room and sank heavily into the chair between her and Harry.

She set her book aside; it wasn't as if she'd been reading it, anyway. "Ron, are you all right?"

Hermione hesitated, then nodded. "In a manner of speaking." Harry was curled silently in the chair, one smudged, pale cheek resting on his arm. His eyes were shut but his eyelashes, fluttering fitfully, showed the restless movement underneath. Hermione wanted to reach out and squeeze his hand but restrained herself; she didn't want to do anything to jeopardize the delicate half-dream he was trapped in.

"That's probably good." Ron rubbed the back of his hand across tired eyes, then hunched forward to speak to Hermione under his breath. "Ginny used Helga's Time-Turner."

"I know. She told me she was going to." Hermione fought to keep the hope out of her voice. "Did she...find anything?"

"She brought the runic band back with her. She's with Snape now, figuring it out."

The book slipped from Hermione's hands; Ron caught it deftly before it hit the floor and set it down at the foot of the bed. "Ron, do you think--is it possible--"

He caught her hand and held it. She wondered if he could feel the pulse banging in her wrist. "Hermione, I don't know. But what I do know is this--remember when I told you that I saw Draco dead and Harry crying over him?"

"I was wrong. That wasn't what I saw at all. Hermione, I can't promise anything, but--"

Harry suddenly gasped, a sharp, stuttering gasp that cut Ron off in midsentence. They both looked over at him in astonishment, just in time to see a bright scarlet flower of blood bloom across his chest.

The fifth passage through time was even colder than she could have imagined. Ginny seemed to fall forever through Arctic space, her skin raked by icicles, her eyes, squeezed shut, burning and stinging against flung particles of glass-sharp ice.

The ground came up like an express train, slamming into her feet, and she swayed, falling forward with her arms curved protectively around the precious vials she carried. She lay still for a moment, weak as a kitten, too sick and dizzy even to open her eyes.

At last she sat up, gingerly, and opened her eyes. She was in the library, though the torches on the walls had burned out. It was nighttime, and the room was full of shadows. She got to her feet slowly, blinking to adjust her vision to the darkness. Her head felt as if someone were slicing at the inside of it with knives.

She heard a sound behind her and whirled. Light showed where the door of the library was swinging open. The tension went out of her shoulders. "Ben," she said.

He came closer to her and she stifled a sound of surprise. He was still Ben, still tall and with the same broad shoulders, but his hair was white now and his face lined. He said, "I knew it was you."

"After the last time I saw you, I put Time Distortion Wards up around the rooms in the castle. I thought it would alert me if you ever came back." His voice was different too, rougher, almost an old man's voice. "Did you succeed?"

"Yes," Ginny said, and held the two vials out to him. "These must rest undisturbed for a thousand years," she said. "You must take this one--" and she proffered the vial with the wine-colored stones-- "and give it to the heir of Slytherin, whoever has succeeded Gareth, and tell him it must be passed down through the generations of his family. And this one--" she held out the one with the golden stones--"has to be hidden in the walls of Hogwarts, somewhere where I can find it again in a thousand years."

Ben took the vials in gnarled hands, and set the golden one down on top of a library table. "You're sure about all this?"

"There's a stone Gareth and I used to hide notes behind-- let me see if it's still loose." He went over to the wall and began to work one of the stones free.

"All those years ago when you and Gareth came to see me at the Burrow," she said. "You gave me a yellow flower. A willpower flower. I was wondering..."

Ben was smiling. He stood up, and set the loose stone-- it was about the size of two fists, square and uneven at the edges-- on the sill of a window high in the wall. He said, "It was just a flower. It didn't make you strong, Ginny. That was all your own strength, all this time."

"Come back and see you at all? Let's just say a certain someone asked me to." He set the vial in the far recess of the hole in the wall, and picked the stone up again. The effort of bending and lifting was making him breathe heavily.

Ben chuckled, and stood back to admire his handiwork. The stone stuck a few inches out of the wall, so he tapped it with his right hand. The excess stone crumbled away into dust and it seemed to sit flush. "Five up from the floor, ten over from the wall," he said. "Can you remember that for the next thousand years?"

She nodded, and glanced around, steeling herself for the journey back to the present. "So there are students here now?"

He nodded. "I'm the Headmaster. It's good to be surrounded by people all the time. Less lonely."

"So you haven't..." she began, before she realized this was probably personal and none of her business, and shut her mouth.

He just looked at her-- not like a little boy, the way he'd been when she first met him, or a boy just a little older than her, but like a kindly uncle. "For some of us, there is only ever one person," he said, and touched her hair lightly with a gnarled hand. "I think you might be that way yourself."

"He is a lucky young man," said Ben, and took his hand back. "I won't see you again, will I?"

"I doubt it," Ginny said, thinking of the long cold journey between times that awaited her. "I wish I would-- I wish you could live another thousand years," she added, impulsively, and smiled at him.

He didn't smile back, just hunched his shoulders inside his robes as if he were cold. She knew he was thinking about Gareth. "But I do not," he said.

The sudden, startling pain made Harry stumble, and he half-fell down the last step to the marble floor of the Manor entryway. When he looked down, he saw the bright blossom of blood that colored his white shirt, spreading like a stain. He touched it, wonderingly, and the blood came off, slicking his fingertips with scarlet.

It was the first time he'd ever felt pain in a dream, and he realized, looking at his own blood, that this vision was more than a dream, and the consequences carried by his actions here were very real. He looked up from his bloody hand at Draco, who stood frozen on the steps, ashen-faced. His voice was thin with horror. "Harry--"

With his free hand, Harry pulled his shirt up and looked down at himself: he saw a shallow cut across the skin of his chest just above his heart, blood threading slowly from it. He let go of the shirt. "It's all right," he said. "You haven't killed me."

Draco put out a shaking hand and gripped the banister. The sword hung at his side, but he did not let go of it. His eyes were half-closed; Harry could see the shadow of his lashes cast down across his cheek like a fringe of silvery thread. There was color in his cheeks, a dark flush along the cheekbones: he looked like a marble statue that had been slapped with red paint.

Harry! It was a voice they both recognized, high and thin now with panic, rattling the windows like a heavy blast of wind. Harry, wake up!

"Hermione," Harry said, spinning, though she was nowhere to be seen. "She's calling me back--"

"Then go back," said Draco, with a harshness that, Harry suspected, was not intentional.

Draco shook his head, hard. "Don't you see you're torturing me?" he said, in the same harsh voice. "I can't go with you. I can't."

"There is no until. I'm dying--the poison's burned me up, I'm just bones and char, can't you see that?"

"I just see you," said Harry, simply. The blood running down his stomach felt sticky and strangely cold. The voice came again:

"I kissed her," Draco said, so abruptly that Harry stared at him, taken off-guard.

"Yes, well," said Harry, wondering where this was going, "if memory serves, you've kissed her multiple times in the past."

"This wasn't the past," said Draco, looking almost desperate. "This was last week, maybe a bit before, after you'd gone off and left us, right after I saw you in the Midnight Club. When you Portkeyed off. Remember that?"

"No--God, no," Draco said, even more ashen than before, though still with the same odd determination. "She was wearing that ring you gave her and I stopped when I saw it--we both did--but that doesn't matter, does it?" He gave a short laugh, almost like a curse, and glanced away. "There," he said. "I told you I hadn't changed as much as all that. Are you still so sure you want to stay?"

The sixth journey was not cold, but hot. Ginny fell down and down through rings of fire, each hotter than the last, and the stench of smoke stung her eyes and nose with acrid pain. Falling and burning like an angel cast down out of Heaven, Ginny thought of Tom as she fell, the cool blue of his eyes and the ice of his touch.

The ground struck her, not her feet but her side. She lay curled up on the ground, coughing, her lungs seared with pain.

"Ginny!" There were hands on her, turning her over. She saw Blaise's frightened face looming overhead like a white balloon. She was speaking, but Ginny couldn't make the words out over the roaring in her ears.

Blackness danced at the edges of her vision. She wanted nothing more than to shut her eyes and sink down into it, lose herself in oblivion and a quick end to pain. There was something, though. Something important. Something she needed to tell Blaise, to remember...

"The wall," she said, dragging the words up out of a throat raw from searing heat. With the words came a quantity of blood that spilled down her chin; she wiped it away with the back of her hand.

"The antidote," Ginny said. "It's in the wall." She raised her hand to point, and saw that it was covered in blood. She stared for a moment, uncomprehendingly. Is that my blood?

The darkness was reaching for her again, with long, curved claws, sinking its talons in, dragging her down. There's something important I have to do, she told it, pleadingly, but it came on with the inevitability of nightfall, drawing a curtain of blackness across her eyes.

"Harry!" Hermione had slipped to her knees and was gripping his hands; she looked ghastly, Ron thought, as if she were imagining that this was somehow all her fault. "Harry, that's enough, wake up, please wake up!"

Harry didn't move. Blood seeped slowly, evenly, across his chest. Sirius and Charlie were looking over now from across the room, as if noticing that something was wrong. On her cot, Narcissa stirred restlessly. "Hermione," Ron said softly. "Move aside."

She didn't move. She was still clutching Harry's hand, whispering rapidly under her breath as if he could hear her. Ron knelt down next to her. "It could be an old wound," he said, "something he got in Romania, opening up again--"

"It isn't," Hermione said, her voice breaking on a sob. "it's my fault-- I sent him into Draco's mind and now they're dying together, he's being dragged down into it--"

"Don't talk like that," Ron said sharply, wondering if she'd gone mad. With a quick movement, he pulled up the side of Harry's shirt. Blood seeped from the edges of a thin gash along his chest, but to Ron's relief, it looked neither deep nor serious. "Look, it's just a shallow cut, nothing to be--"

"What's going on?" It was Sirius, looming over them, Charlie beside him. In the corner of the room, Lupin and Madam Pomfrey were in whispered conference. "Is Draco all right?"

A shrill, horrific noise split the air. It sounded like the shrieking of damned souls in Hell. Narcissa sat up on her cot with a start, gasping, and Hermione's head flew up. Her face was wet with tears.

Ron sprang to his feet and dashed towards the door of the infirmary, Charlie hot on his heels.

Blaise looked up as the door to the library opened and Ron and Charlie Weasley burst in, both out of breath. She was standing amid an enormous pile of flung books-- she'd yanked down almost every volume in the Restricted Section, and they were howling and shrieking around her feet in a massive pile of indignant, enspelled pages. She reached for another one to throw, half-hysterical, even as Ron came towards her and grabbed her arm. He was shouting something, but she couldn't hear him over the din and only shook her head at him, her red hair flying wildly around her face.

He grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. This time she could see the words his mouth was shaping: Where is Ginny? Before she could get her hands free to point, Charlie drew his wand from his sleeve and waved it, shouting a frantic spell.

The noise subsided. "Thank God I'm a professor here," said Charlie, sliding the wand back. "Blaise, what's going on?"

Her voice caught at she replied, wrenching herself out of Ron's grip to point. "Ginny. She's over there--"

Ron and Charlie turned. One of the long study tables nearly blocked their view of her, but the edge of an outstretched hand was just visible there on the floor, the flutter of a sleeve--

Charlie reached his sister's side first, Ron and Blaise just behind them. Ginny lay where she'd slumped, her hair straggling raggedly out of its braid, a pool of blood spreading across the floor beneath her head. More blood leaked from her ears, eyes and mouth.

The Time-Turner, resting against her chest, was pulsing feverishly, like a separate, living heart.

Charlie made a terrible gasping sound and went down on his knees to lift his sister up in his arms; her eyes were shut, blue veins visible through the etiolated lids. Her chest rose and fell with shallow breaths. "What happened?" Charlie asked tightly.

"Tell me later. We have to get her to the infirmary." He turned to go, but Ginny had moved, reaching out her hand to catch at the front of Ron's shirt. Her fingers left bloody marks.

"Ron," she whispered, beckoning him, her eyes shut. Very pale, he leaned down over his sister, listening as she whispered in his ear. When he drew back, there was a scarlet mark on his cheeks where her lips had touched, like a macabre lipstick stain.

"Five up from the floor, ten over from the wall," said Ron, looking bewilderedly at Blaise. "What does that mean?"

Blaise sucked in a breath. "She pointed at that wall earlier," she said, indicating the west wall of the library. "I think she's trying to tell us where the antidote is."

Charlie's voice was terse. "You look for it. Meet us in the infirmary," he said, but as soon as he made as if to leave, Ginny began to struggle. The struggling brought on a fit of coughing; blood splashed up and onto Charlie's shirt, wetting it with scarlet. He blanched.

Blaise whirled and ran to the wall, scrabbling feverishly at the stones - five up from the floor, ten over from the wall, five up from the floor, ten over from the wall, she repeated to herself--until she seized on the correct one. Indeed, it felt as if it sat almost loosely in its mortared space. One of her fingernails broke off as she pried it out; another time she might have mourned, but not now. She dropped the stone, which might have crushed her foot if Ron, silently on hand, had not caught it, and felt around in the dark space it left behind.

The walls of the space were cool and rough. In a moment, her hand closed on something: something cylindrical and smooth. She drew it out, and recognized instantly the vial with its golden stopper that Snape had given to Ginny in the Potions dungeon. Suddenly terrified that she might mishandle it, she thrust it at Ron in a blind panic. "It's the antidote," she said, in a shaking voice. "To Draco's poison."

Ron backed away. "Great Wizards," he whispered. "No--don't hand it to me, are you mad? I might drop it."

"Ron!" barked Charlie. "Blaise!" He sounded as if his temper hung on a frayed thread; the antidote recovered, Ginny lay limp in his grasp, her face turned into his shoulder. "To the infirmary. NOW." He spun on his heel and stalked towards the door.

Blaise scuttled to obey, the precious vial cradled like a baby against her chest, her heart pounding in rhythm with her steps. After a moment, Ron followed them, pausing only to use the sleeve of his jumper to wipe his sister's blood from his cheek.

"I wanted you to know." Draco's voice cracked slightly on the last word, like a delicate fissure in glass. "What you're fighting so hard for."

"Malfoy..." Harry took a step back. He was intensely conscious suddenly of everything around him: the gray of the Manor, translucent as a shell through which winter light shines; the gray of Draco's eyes, the color not of water but of the memory of water, not of tears, but of the sorrow that brings them forth. "God, Malfoy. What did you think I would say to that?"

Draco's hand, where it held the banister, was vibrating like the plucked string of a violin. "I thought--you being you--that you might forgive me."

Gently, Sirius moved Hermione aside and bent to examine Harry. She drew a sobbing breath. "Sirius...it's...it's my fault..."

"No, it isn't," he said, absently. "He's just fallen asleep; passed out, more like. It's not as if he's slept in days." He brushed a stray lock of hair off Harry's forehead. "In fact, it's probably a good thing."

Sirius was about to reply when the loud shrieking noise that had been echoing through the castle stopped abruptly. "Thank God," he said, looking up. "Now, what was that about Ginny? Is she in some sort of trouble?"

Hermione just stared at him, paralyzed. For the first time in her life, she thought, she felt actually stupid, as if her mind had been numbed by all the trauma she'd endured. Should she lie to Sirius, could she lie to Sirius? "She went," she said, finally, in a whisper, "to get the antidote..."

"Antidote?" Sirius stood up, his voice sharp. "What antidote? What are you talking about?"

"You mean the antidote for Draco?" It was Narcissa, wan and pale but with an eager lift to her voice,pushing past Sirius to stand between Harry's chair and Draco's bedside. She sank slowly down on the bed beside her son, her eyes wide. "Has Severus had a breakthrough? Finally?"

"There was a breakthrough," Hermione admitted, "but the ingredient that was needed--it wasn't easy to get. So Ginny went to Dumbledore and he--"

Narcissa, who had been listening, suddenly screamed once, piercingly, and bent over her son. Draco, white and waxen, did not move. "Poppy!" Narcissa shrieked. Madam Pomfrey whirled and stared. "Poppy! Come quickly! Draco isn't breathing!"

"I see." Draco's eyes shone, reflecting the dull light outside the windows, the swirling, uncolored light of nothingness. "I suppose it was foolish of me to--"

"I don't forgive you," said Harry, enunciating very clearly, "because you do not require my forgiveness. After what I did--to both of you--I'm the one that should be forgiven. What you did--I understand it."

Draco looked at him, a strange light dawning on his face. His eyes said, You tore out our hearts, and we comforted each other. His voice said, "If I said I never meant to hurt you with it, that would be a lie."

"I won't say it doesn't hurt," Harry said, measuredly. "It does. Hurt. But you can hurt me, and I'll still stay. I've hurt you, after all."

"That's different," said Draco. "You're a hero. You have to choose the world, sometimes."

"Bollocks," said Harry. "Why are you so desperate to damn yourself, Malfoy? Why do you want me to despise you?"

"Is it so I'll let you go? I'll tell you right now," Harry said, raising the sword in his hand again, "I never will. Do you see that now?"

Draco looked as if he were about to reply, but at that moment the huge double doors of the Manor blew open, and a tearing, icy wind ripped through the room.

Madam Pomfrey reached Draco's side at a run, wand in hand, and seized an open vial off the bedside table. She tipped the contents into Draco's mouth. He made a choking noise, breathed once, choked again-- and gasped for another breath, and then another, as if he were breathing through sand or tar. "He's going," said Madam Pomfrey, setting the vial down, her face crumpling. "It's moments now."

"Cissy--" Sirius turned to hold Narcissa, as if he were afraid she might collapse, but she sat very straight beside Draco, and took his hand, and held it tightly. She reminded Hermione of the statue of a Greek goddess: Niobe, perhaps, weeping over her lost children.

"My son, my son," she whispered. "Go, if you must. Go, with ease and grace and dignity, where your ancestors have gone before you. I never meant for you to pass to the land beyond the river before I did, but I know you will wait for me there."

Hermione, on her knees on the floor, felt the tears like a flood behind her eyes. She knew when they came, she would break all over, like a dam smashing before the force of pent-up waters. She reached blindly for Harry, clasped one of his cold, unmoving hands in her own--she saw Remus clasp Sirius' shoulder; Sirius was bent over, his face in his hands--

The door of the infirmary burst open. Charlie erupted into the room, carrying Ginny in his arms and followed by Ron and a white-faced, starkly hysterical-looking Blaise, who clutched something to her chest as if it were the most precious cargo in the world.

Charlie bent to lay his sister on an empty bed, calling hoarsely for Madam Pomfrey. Madam Pomfrey looked up, her crumpled face smoothing with utter surprise--she had been prepared for Draco's sudden turn for the worse, but not for this. She took an uncertain step back--

And Draco stopped breathing. Hermione couldn't help herself; she gave a little cry, a sound like a wail, and Blaise, who had been staring uncertainly from the doorway, broke into a run, tearing across the room with her red hair flying like a banner. As she neared, Hermione saw that what she clutched in her hand was a vial of something that shone like melted Galleons.

Blaise nodded, too out of breath to speak, and thrust the vial at Hermione. Hermione could see all the white faces in the room turned towards her, like pale sunflowers following an erratic solar progress, but they meant nothing to her; they might as well have been in a dream. In the same dream, she took the vial from Blaise and unstoppered it: a strong scent, like herbs and copper and clean spring wind, rose from the vial. Still in the dream, she moved to the bed and leaned over Draco, and tipped the contents of the vial into his mouth through his slightly parted lips.

Draco looked at Harry. The icy hair lifted his hair and whipped it into his eyes; despite the wind's fierceness, it was strangely silent where they stood. Harry could hear muted voices crying out in the distance, the sounds of grief and agony, but they were muffled as if they traveled a great distance. "Potter..."

Harry took a step forward. "You're worried I won't need you after all this is over. Well, I say it doesn't matter. I don't have to need you, I just have to want to be around you, and I already do. Need isn't friendship. You know that as well as I do. All your life, Malfoy, you've given all you had to other people because you hoped they'd need you. Your father. Then me. You can't live for me--you were right, what you said before. You've given all you have. You haven't got any more."

He took another step forward, and now he was standing just in front of Draco, tipping back his head a little to look up at him. "You have to live for yourself, Malfoy. Your life has to be about you now. Not about anyone else. Love where you want to and do what you want to, and live for your own life, and be a whole person and you still won't ever lose me. I promise you that."

Draco was silent, but he took his hand off the banister and stepped down, and now they were face to face, exactly eye level since they were the same height. And Draco said, "And it came to pass that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul. And Jonathan and David made a covenant, because he loved him as his own soul."

Draco's mouth twitched, and then he laughed, a clear, unhurried, and honest laugh. "Potter," he said, "you're so astoundingly literal," and he knelt down, and laid Terminus Est down flat at Harry's feet. Harry did the same, laying down the sword of Gyffindor across the other sword so that they formed a makeshift X, and when he stood up Draco was smiling at him. He reached to put a hand on the other boy's shoulder just as the Manor collapsed all around them.

Hermione had expected something to happen suddenly, but nothing sudden did. The liquid from the vial trickled into Draco's mouth, and he seemed, reflexively, to swallow--which relieved her, as she had been afraid he would choke. She laid the vial down and took a step back, her breath held.

For a moment, and then another long and terrible moment, nothing happened at all. Then Draco's eyelids twitched, and he took a breath, long and slow and easy, and the color rushed back into his face in a flood. His hands moved, restlessly and gently, on the coverlet, and then his eyes opened, bright and luminously silver.

Narcissa made a little sound in her throat and threw her arms around him, hugging him tightly.

Sniffling and laughing a little, Narcissa drew back; Draco sat up; he was pale, but moved with his old grace, and clearly without pain. He looked around at the faces crowded around his bed: Remus, Sirius, Narcissa, Blaise, Hermione, and his eyes lingered on each. Then he said, "Where's Harry?"

"I'm here." Harry stood up from the chair he'd been sitting in, grinning all over his face. "Right here."

"Then I did you a favor. It's a hideous shirt anyway. Why must you wear polos? They made your head look like a postbox." Draco drew himself up, looking around, bright-eyed. "So," he said. "I take it you found the antidote."

Draco waved a breezy hand. "I always knew you would," he said. "No worries here."

Only Harry laughed, and Draco glanced around, his eyes suddenly narrowing. "Where's Ginny, then?" he asked.

A sudden and terrible silence fell. Only Harry looked honestly bewildered; seeing where everyone was staring, he slewed around and Hermione heard him suck in a breath. "What happened?" he said. "Is she hurt?"

In answer, Sirius and Narcissa moved aside so that Draco had a clear view across the room to where Ginny lay on her narrow white infirmary bed, Madam Pomfrey bending over her. Ron and Charlie hovered beside her, and even from this distance, the blood on Charlie's shirt was clearly visible.

It was Blaise who answered. "Your antidote," she said. "It turned out it only existed in the past. So she went back to get it--and then forward again, and back again, and forward again, all in a short period of time, and I guess it was too much for her, too hard on her system. The last time she came back, she collapsed."

Draco stared at Blaise, his lips parted, then shoved his coverlet back and tried to stand, but he was too weak. Sirius moved to take his arm. "Sit back down, Draco. You're not well enough to walk--"

"I can walk," Draco said, in a flat, steely voice. "Let me go. I have to see her."

Harry stepped forward. "It's fine," he said, locking eyes with Sirius. "He can lean on us."

Sirius looked at Harry for a moment, then nodded, and together they helped Draco to his feet. Each with a hand under his arm, they moved slowly towards Ginny's bed. Blaise and Ginny followed them; Narcissa stayed behind, biting her lip as she watched her son make his slow progress across the room. Remus stood beside her, his arms folded and his face impassive.

Hermione had heard of time sickness before; she'd been warned about it by McGonagall third year, though the trips she'd taken through time had always been such short distances that it had never posed much of a risk. She knew that it got worse the greater the chronological distance you traveled, and even worse when you carried objects back and forth with you. But she was still unprepared for the sight of Ginny, deathly white except for the crusted, dried blood around her mouth and under her eyes, her breath rasping in and out of her throat. Her chest rose and fell rapidly, the Hufflepuff Time-Turner pulsing at her throat.

"My God." It was Sirius who spoke first, his voice tense with distress. "What's gone wrong? What's being done for her?"

Madam Pomfrey lifted a haggard face. "Everything's gone wrong," she said. "Time sickness is very difficult to treat--it can cause a total collapse of all the systems. Even as I repair one, another fails. Please stand back," she added, fixing Blaise, who had stepped forward, biting her fist, with a steely gaze. "She's very delicate right now."

"Could she die?" Harry, horrified, was looking at Ron, but Ron was staring at the floor, his hands in fists at his sides.

Madam Pomfrey looked as if she were weighing her words. Finally, she said, "It's quite possible, yes."

Blaise burst into tears. This was so unexpected that everyone stared at her for a moment, and she turned away, her hands over her face as if she were horribly embarrassed by her own reaction. Hermione wondered where her own tears were; they felt scalded away by horror. She kept seeing Ginny, a small, brave little figure in her braids and sweater, the Time-Turner gripped in her hand, begging for the chance to risk her own life to save Draco's. And I let her, Hermione thought, appalled. Please, she prayed, please let her be all right, and I promise I'll never treat her like she's a little kid again. Let her be all right and I'll even be happy for her and Draco if that happens, I promise, if she'll just be all right.

Charlie, swearing under his breath, turned away to stare at the wall. Hermione chanced a glance sideways at Draco: his healthy color had fled and his lips were a bloodless line. "Let me go," he said, his voice as colorless as his face, and shrugged off Sirius and Harry's grips on his arms.

He took a step forward, and Madam Pomfrey looked up sternly. But the warning died on her lips as Ron cut her off gruffly. "Let him," he said.

Draco moved slowly forward, not quite with his old grace yet, but not limping either, and leaned down over Ginny. Gently he touched her bloodied face, and bent to whisper in her ear; his hair fell forward, hiding them both, and Hermione did not hear what he said, though she might have guessed at it, if she'd been so inclined.

Draco drew back. Ginny's head moved a little on the pillow, but she didn't open her eyes. Her breathing was rougher now, and more blood leaked from the corner of her mouth. The hourglass at her throat pulsed and pulsed like a heart. "I must tend to her," Madam Pomfrey asserted, gesturing firmly but kindly for Draco to move back. "Or she'll drown in her own blood."

Draco made a noise in the back of his throat, and moved back, almost stumbling into Harry, who caught at his shoulders to steady him. As Madam Pomfrey bent to tend to Ginny, her wand already out, the infirmary door opened again, and Seamus walked into the room.

Hermione stared at him, astonished. She had almost forgotten his existence. He was neatly dressed, in a black shirt and trousers, clothes she didn't remember him owning before. They showed up the pallor of his hair and the newly dark blue of his eyes. He strode forward with such confidence that Ron stepped aside, and even Madam Pomfrey straightened up, staring, as he moved to stand next to Ginny. "She's dying," he said.

"Seamus Finnegan," said Madam Pomfrey, finding her voice, "I understand that you're upset about your girlfriend, but would you stand back immediately please--"

Seamus ignored her. Instead, he reached out, and closed his hand over the hourglass at Ginny's throat. Draco made a low growling noise and began to move forward; Harry held him back, staring, as Seamus, with a sudden, jerky movement tore the ancient Time-Turner of Hufflepuff from Ginny's throat. The chain sundered with an audible snap, and Seamus hurled the Time-Turner to the ground--still pulsing with its odd light--and trod on it. It held for a moment, then shattered.

Draco pulled away from Harry. "You idiot," he shouted at Seamus. "What have you done?"

They turned to stare; Hermione heard herself gasp. The color had returned to Ginny's face and she was breathing steadily and evenly. Madam Pomfrey snatched the wand from her pocket and touched it to Ginny's chest, whispering a word under her breath; when she removed it, the tip of the wand was glowing a healthy and reassuring pink. Madam Pomfrey looked around helplessly. "She's all right," she said. "She's going to be fine."

Charlie let out what must have been the longest-held breath in the world; Ron stared in blank amazement, and Draco, still wordless, slumped against the wall. He was nearly expressionless, but Hermione saw that the hands at his sides were fists, and he was staring at Seamus across the room.

Seamus barely seemed to notice. "That's all right, then," he said, and walked out of the infirmary, letting the door swing shut behind him.

Madam Pomfrey looked after him distractedly. "What...an...odd...boy," she said, slowly. "I don't recall him being quite so odd."

Sirius looked at him. "You should be pleased," he said. "He saved Ginny's life." He took a step forward, put a hand under Draco's arm. "You look like you're going to drop where you stand," he said. "Let's get you back to bed."

Draco looked hesitant, but Blaise moved to take his other arm, and he let them lead him back to his cot. It seemed an oddly docile move for him, but Hermione saw his face as he passed, and there was no docility in it, only a sharp light behind his eyes as if he'd realized something not entirely pleasant.

Something touched Hermione's arm. It was Harry, looking at her with a somber gaze--but despite the seriousness in his eyes, she saw, he was Harry again, not the empty specter he'd been for these past few days, but her Harry, alive and warm and real.

She squeezed his hand and let it drop. She saw the flicker of uncertainty in his eyes as she knelt, and began to gather up the shattered bits of the Time-Turner. They lay like scattered diamonds among the grains of white hourglass sand and bent bits of gold chain. Hermione picked up the clasp, warped out of shape by the heel of Seamus' boot. It blurred as, finally, the tears came, slow and hot and delayed.

"It's broken," she said, showing him the destroyed bits of the once-powerful Time-Turner, the Hufflepuff Founder's gift to her Heir. "It'll never work again."

"That's all right," Harry said gently, drawing her towards him."We don't need it anymore, Hermione. We'll never need it again," he said, and she laid her head down on his shoulder and let the tears come.

Ginny woke slowly, released reluctantly by the soft darkness that held her. She opened her eyes on more darkness, pierced here and there by shafts of pallid light. Slowly she realized where she was--the smell of soap and medicine, the hard cot under her, the starched sheets. She was in the infirmary, and night had fallen. Her mouth felt dry as burnt toast. Draco, she thought, in a sudden panic. She remembered collapsing in the library, desperately trying to tell Blaise where the antidote was--had they found it?

Suddenly, something cool was against her dry mouth, and smooth, cold liquid trickled in between her cracked lips. Water. She swallowed gratefully. "Not too fast," said a familiar voice, "or you'll choke."

Ginny choked. The glass was withdrawn and she struggled to sit up. "Draco?" she demanded, or tried to--her voice came on as a rasping whisper.

"Shh," he said, unnecessarily. "You'll wake your brother, and I don't much fancy being pulled back from the brink of death just to be slaughtered by a Weasley for lurking at your bedside."

Ginny stared at him, though all she could see in the darkness was a vague shadow, and turned to look at where Charlie slept, looking worn-out, in an armchair pulled up to the bed. "The others?" she rasped. "Ron–"

"Everyone's fine," said Draco. "Including yours truly, in a remarkable change of pace." He moved to set the water glass on the window sill, and Ginny could see him clearly: the bright hair, the flushed cheeks, the black sweater pulled on over pajamas, the incongruously vulnerable bare feet. "The one we were all worried about was you."

"Yes, you are." Draco looked at her, uncharacteristically somber. "If you ever," he said, "almost get yourself killed like that again on my behalf, I'll murder you. Do you understand?"

"Not really." Ginny put her hand up to her aching head and felt her hair matted with dried blood. "Did I very nearly die?"

"I don't know," Ginny said, honestly. Was he? She supposed he was. Certainly they'd both been behaving as if he was. And she owed it to him, didn't she? "My head," she whispered. "It aches so."

Draco nodded. "I'll get Madam Pomfrey to give you something." He stood up. "It's amazing what a chap misses while he's in a brink-of-death coma," he added, half to himself.

"Remember when I fell off my broom in that Quidditch match?" He nodded. "Later, when I was in the infirmary, someone came in and kissed me. Was that you?"

There was a long pause, during which Draco made some minute and unnecessary adjustments to his cuffs. Finally he said, "Yes, it was."

"Why?" Ginny said, with all the pent-up emotion she could muster, in her exhausted, filthy, worn-out state. "What were you doing?"

"Draco..." She wanted to say more, but her eyes were fluttering shut with exhaustion. Dizzy images passed before her eyelids--Ben kneeling down beside Gareth and weeping, the antidote sparking as her tears touched it, her own blood pooled on the library floor. "Will you really be all right?" she whispered.

The last thing she heard before sleep took her was his voice. "All right is relative," he said, "but I'll still be here in the morning, thanks to you." She felt his hand against her forehead then as he brushed her hair back with gentle fingers, light as a butterfly's touch. "In the meantime, close your eyes, Ginny Weasley. You've done enough and it's time to rest now. Close your eyes, pretty girl. Close your eyes..."

Chapter Sixteen ~ PART TWO: Love is the Law