EPILOGUE ~ Part One: The Rag-and-Bone Shop of the Heart  

I thought my dear must her own soul destroy -Yeats 

Slowly, Ginny closed her copy of Trousers, Arise! and set it down on the windowsill beside her bed. It was the last of the three books in the Trousers series that Draco had given her for Christmas. She'd stretched out reading them as long as she could, but it was May now and she'd just turned the last page of the last book. That's all there is, she thought, bringing her knees up to her chest and hugging them with her arms. She felt indistinctly morose, unsettled even, as she often did when she'd finished a favorite novel. Even when the ending was happy, it was like a death or at least a going-away for a long time, this having to say goodbye to characters she'd come to know and love. 

In fact, she wasn't sure if the happy ending didn't simply make her feel worse. It was the sort of happy ending that tied up everything neatly and never actually turned up in real life, where endings, if they happened at all, were messy, and love wasn't always rewarded or punished: sometimes it just faded away into the background, part of the great clamoring mass of unanswered questions that eventually you just had to learn to live with if you wanted to grow up. 

Feeling sad and perhaps a trifle wise, Ginny leaned a little way out the window: it was a gorgeous early summer day, cool and breezy, the sky like a hollowed bowl of blue porcelain. Students were out on the lawns, lying on blankets spread out over the grass, savoring the first warm days of the year. She could see figures down by the lake, the black-clad silhouettes of strolling students, mostly boys and girls walking together, hand in hand. She hadn't been down to the lake herself since the winter; it brought up too many memories that were better avoided. 

A knock on the door brought her out of her reverie, and she hopped off the sill, catching a brief glimpse of herself in the mirror hanging next to her bed. Her hair had grown since the winter - she hadn't had it cut at all - and now hung to her waist, curling red tendrils escaping from unruly plaits. "Yes?" 

"You decent?" A head popped around the door; it was her roommate, Elizabeth. "Someone's waiting to see you down at the portrait hole." 

"Oh? Who?" 

Elizabeth grinned. "A certain Slytherin," she said. 

"Must you grin like that?" Ginny pulled on a cardigan and buttoned it up. She'd gained back some of the weight she'd lost over the winter, she was pleased to note, and the cardigan strained a bit across the chest. "All right, I'm coming." 

The windows of the common room were thrown open, and breezy May air spilled in, carrying with it the smells of new grass, upturned earth, and budding flowers. Neville Longbottom sat ensconced in one of the plush armchairs, engaged in a game of Floating Scrabble with his toad, Trevor the Second. He waved as Ginny crossed the room and ducked out through the portrait, ignoring the Fat Lady's desultory mutterings about the shortness of her skirt and the tightness of her sweater. "Oh, hello," she said, straightening up as the portrait shut behind her with a bang. "I rather hoped it would be you." 

"Of course you did," said Blaise. Ginny wondered if the Fat Lady had had a go at her - her pleated skirt was shorter than Snape's temper, and the V of her sweater showed the lace edgings on her bra cups. She'd cut off most of her hair at some point in April, and the soft waves of it cupped her chin and curled at her temples in fiery strands. "Look, do you want to walk down to the lake with me? I need to talk." 

"Not the lake," Ginny said quickly. 

Blaise raised an eyebrow. "The rose garden then?" 

"No! Not that either." Seeing Blaise's surprised expression, Ginny cast about for an alternative. "The Quidditch pitch? I doubt anyone will be there now." 

Blaise shrugged gracefully. "Wherever you like." 

*** 

"I thought you said nobody was likely to be here now," Draco complained, rolling over in the grass and propping his chin on his hands. He squinted. "That looks like somebody to me." 

"Ignore them." Harry, sitting cross-legged in the grass, was doing his best to follow his own advice where Draco was concerned, but it was difficult. Draco was not someone you could tell to shut up and be quiet because you were trying to think; Draco was someone who felt that his brilliant discourse could only serve to enhance your thinking process, no matter how badly you needed to concentrate on something else. "And shut up." 

"You know," Draco said, "I don't really see why you brought me out here, if all you wanted me to do was sit here and look pretty. Not," he added, "that that isn't one of my particular talents, of course." 

"It's not a talent, it's an annoying habit, and I brought you out here for silent moral support. How do you spell everlasting? One word or two?" 

"One, and that doesn't sound very promising. Tell me you aren't going to natter on about everlasting love, I couldn't take it." 

Harry threw his quill down. "It's a wedding. Aren't I supposed to natter on about everlasting love? What do you expect me to talk about in my toast, then?" He squinted. "Also, isn't that Ginny?" 

"What? Why bring her up? She's not in your speech, is she?" 

"No," said Harry, in a tone that indicated he felt Draco was being exceptionally slow today. "She's over there, by the stands." 

Draco, taking on a hunted look, burrowed deeper into the grass. "What do you think she's doing here?" 

"I expect she came here to kill you," Harry said, retrieving his quill. 

Draco glared at him. "You have no sympathy, Potter. No compassion. That's your trouble." 

"You know," Harry pointed out reasonably, "if you ever actually told me anything about what's gone on between you and Ginny this past year, maybe I would be sympathetic." 

"As it is, lacking information, you fall back on mockery and slander." 

"Yes," said Harry. "That's about the size of it." 

Draco sat up, shaking grass out of his hair, and looked across the pitch at Ginny, a small bright-haired figure in the distance. Harry looked at him sidelong - sometimes, like a photograph in double exposure, he seemed to see another Draco, half-transparent, looking back at him - a Draco whose face had gone to bones and shadow, pale as etiolated lace, with lavender shadows under his eyes. A Draco so thin he looked like a gust of wind would blow him over, who seemed to stay upright only through sheer force of will. 

And then he blinked, and like a ghost, that Draco vanished, and he was looking at a slim blond boy whose skin showed the first gold shadings of an early summer tan, whose eyes were clear and gray and unshadowed, who gave off a bright aura of health and strength and vitality that made Harry wonder if there hadn't been something perhaps a little extra in that antidote - something that hadn't just healed Draco but had brought him back stronger than ever? 

"I think she's ignoring me," Draco observed, and bit down thoughtfully on a blade of grass. 

"I think she hasn't noticed us at all yet," said Harry. "Who's that she's with?" 

"Blaise," said Draco, gloomily. 

"Oh, right. I keep forgetting she cut off all her hair. I rather liked it better before," Harry said, thoughtfully. 

"Potter, you're practically a married man, you're not supposed to be noticing random girls' hair." 

Harry rolled his eyes upward. "Malfoy..." 

"I bet they're talking about me," Draco observed, sounding about as cheerful as a French aristocrat on the way to the guillotine. 

"You know, Malfoy," said Harry, with some asperity, "not everyone, everywhere, is always talking about you." 

*** 

"This is about Draco, isn't it?" Ginny said, turning to Blaise with her arms folded. The wind blowing across the Quidditch pitch was chilly; she hugged her arms around herself and shivered. 

"Yes. Well." Blaise hesitated. "Oh, all right. It is. How did you know?" 

"You had that look on your face," said Ginny with a grim certainty. "That only-Draco-Malfoy-could-annoy-me-this-much look." 

"I'll take your word for it." Nervously, Blaise reached for a strand of hair to twist, didn't find one, seemed to remember she'd cut off her long locks, and dropped her hand. "All right, here it is. Draco's asked me if I'll go with him to the wedding on Saturday." 

Ginny blinked; the wind suddenly felt very chill. "I - as his date?" 

Blaise paused to think before she replied. "It wasn't stated explicitly either way," she said, finally. "But my guess is that he'd like a companion and there isn't anyone else he wants to ask, so I'll do. We get along still. I'd venture to say we understand one another." 

Ginny shoved her hands into her pockets. "I suppose it isn't my business either way," she said. "I'm going with Seamus, of course." 

"Of course." Blaise moved past this without addressing it. Nobody ever really did address the issue of her and Seamus, Ginny thought, rather as if they hoped that if they ignored it, it would go away. "But I didn't want to do anything that might upset you." 

"That's thoughtful of you," Ginny said grudgingly. She thought of the wedding, which she had rather been looking forward to - one last celebration with all her friends before they scattered across the world, only one of them to return to Hogwarts in September. Herself. Now she thought of the shimmering ballroom at Malfoy Manor, and Blaise laughing in Draco's arms as they spun together under the floating chandeliers, and felt a sense of impending dread. 

Blaise grinned. "It's not a question of thoughtful. I know what a temper you've got, I don't want you hurling a punchbowl at me in the middle of the vows." 

"No, I wouldn't do that anyway," Ginny said. "Look, I've got a boyfriend. I'm not still carrying a torch for Draco Malfoy." 

Blaise raised an eyebrow. "You went through hell to save his life," she remarked. "That's more than a torch, it's a bloody bonfire." 

Ginny shrugged. "That was months ago. If anything was going to happen between us after, it would have happened already. But I'm with Seamus. I told you." 

"Yes, but do you love him? Seamus, I mean." 

Unbidden, Tom's words rose in Ginny's mind. I am her love, I am her hatred. I am her joy and I am her loathing and her abhorrence. I am her unrequited passions. I am her guilt and her remembrance. I am her beautiful despair. I am the futility of all her wishes. Out of blood and tears and ink, she made me. And I will never leave her. 

But he had been wrong, she thought, it was she who could not leave. "Sure, I love him." 

Blaise's lip quirked up at the corner. "Hey, do you remember that time in the Great Hall when Seamus just went totally mad and Draco -" 

"No," Ginny said firmly. 

Blaise looked dubious. "If you say so." 

*** 

Ginny was lying, of course, she did remember. Quite well. 

Once she'd been sure, quite sure, that Draco was going to live, she set about ignoring him as completely as possible. One school started again, she avoided him in corridors and after Quidditch matches, tried not to be around Harry or Hermione if they were going to see him, ducked behind pillars in the courtyard if she caught a glimpse of silvery hair or heard the sound of familiar laughter. 

At least it was nearly impossible to bump into him alone. Other Slytherins always surrounded him. While the Gryffindors had tiptoed around Harry since they'd all come back to school - as Ron pointed out, it's a little hard to brag about your winter trip to Ibiza with a bloke who spent his Christmas holidays locked in a fatal confrontation with Voldemort - the Slytherins were sucking up to Draco like they'd just invented the fine art of sycophancy. 

"A lot of them," Blaise explained to Ginny one evening in the library, "feel like they made maybe the wrong choice, you know, siding with the Death Eaters and that lot. Not because they were evil, mind you, but because they lost, and Draco's practically the only one in our House who's in really good books with the Ministry's current power players. Everyone thinks he just played it perfectly, you know, and no one wants to be on his bad side. He might sic Harry on them." She grinned. 

"As if Harry could be bothered with them," said Ginny coldly, and meant it. Harry had reacclimated to normal life at school better than they'd all been worried he would, after what had happened, and the fallout of what had happened - Dumbledore had done a good job of keeping the Ministry away, forbidding them from holding a ceremony in which they bestowed the Order of Merlin on Harry until after school was over, canceling several tickertape parades through Hogsmeade, and forbidding all reporters from the Daily Prophet from setting foot on Hogwarts grounds on pain of being eaten by Fang. People still stared at Harry in the hallway, of course. But people had always stared at Harry in the hallway. That wasn't new.

What was new, perhaps, was the way he looked back -- neither defensive nor challenging nor resentful nor shy. I know who I am, that look said, and if you don't, you're welcome to look -- it doesn't matter to me either way. Ginny remembered the Harry of years ago, who ducked stares and bit his lip in furious pain at the appearance of POTTER STINKS badges. That Harry was gone. "He's grown up so," said Hermione, in the sort of sad-happy voice that only someone who'd known Harry since he was eleven might be permitted to reasonably use.

Oh, I don't know. He doesn't look any taller to me. It wasn't Draco saying it, but Draco's voice in Ginny's head: sometimes she heard him whispering to her even when he wasn't there, and though she knew it was only her own unruly imagination conjuring up what he might say, it still made her uncomfortable enough to flee Hermione's presence without answering. 

That night, in the Great Hall over supper, Dumbledore announced that there was to be a memorial service for Pansy Parkinson and for the other victims of what had come to be known as the Christmas Killings. Ginny knew that Dumbledore was perfectly aware of Pansy's role in Ron's abduction and the rest of the whole sorry business, but she also knew he would never say anything about it publicly, and let those who had known Pansy come to terms with her death as they saw fit. All the blame for the killings had been laid at Voldemort's door, of course, which in a way was true, but still left Ginny with a sick, guilty feeling inside. 

She was sitting next to Seamus as Dumbledore spoke, and she saw his shoulders tense as Dumbledore talked of the Christmas Killings. Dumbledore spoke of the need to come to terms with death, to understand it as a part of life, and yet he said also that he understood the urge to rage against it, especially when the victim was so young and the act of murder was so senseless. "As we did when Cedric Diggory was killed three years ago," he said, "we must face that which is the ugly result of bigotry taken to its farthest extreme, of the sort of intolerance even the best of us can sometimes harbor-" 

A ringing in Ginny's ears blotted out his next words. "-of evil," Dumbledore went on, "the sort of evil the Ministry thought you should never know about, because you are children. But if we do not admit to the existence of evil, we cannot recognize it. And if we do not recognize it, how can we see it within ourselves?" 

The chiming in Ginny's ears grew louder; she realized it was not actually intangible guilt but rather the sound of Seamus' fork hitting the edge of his plate as his hand shook. She reached out and took the fork away from him. "Seamus -" 

He pulled back from her and staggered to his feet. Lurching a little, as if he were drunk or blind, he staggered from the Hall. A confused murmur of voices rose like the hum of bees in summertime, and Ginny saw Draco, all the way across the room at the Slytherin table, chin on hand, looking at her. 

She got to her feet and raced after Seamus. 

She found him in one of the corridors off the Hall, leaning against a wall, his head in his hands. He was murmuring into his fingers. She caught only a few words - "My hands - not my hands -" before she pulled his hands away from his face and held them tightly in hers, fighting the urge to shake him. 

"Seamus," she said, "what's going on? What's wrong?" 

He looked at her bleakly through a fall of light hair, from eyes a little too dark a blue. "Take heed," he said, " for I hold vengeance in my hand, to hurl upon their heads that break My law." 

She took a step back. "What's that from?" 

"I don't know," he said. "But I hear it when I close my eyes." 

"Why did you leave the Hall?' she asked. 

"Dumbledore was talking about me," he said. "I could feel everyone staring. Recognizing evil." He gave a short laugh. 

"No one was looking at you," Ginny said, trying to hide the anger in her voice. "No one thinks of you that way." 

"I do." 

"Then stop. How long are you going to torture yourself like this, Seamus? How long are you going to torture me?" 

She knew immediately it had been the wrong thing to say. 

"You don't have to stay with me, Ginny." His voice was flat. "I would understand if you left me. Anyone would." 

She half-closed her eyes. In the darkness she saw the Liber-Damnatis, the diary dripping its black ink blood across her fingers as she hauled it from the fire, the pages flying like startled birds as she ripped them from the binding. I hate you, Tom. I hate you. "But Seamus," she protested. "I want to help you get better. I need you to get better." 

He looked at her. "Why?" 

She floundered for a moment. "Because I love you." 

His face softened. "Ginny..." He reached out a hand, drew her hair away from her face, stroking the line of her cheekbone. For a moment he was the freckled boy who had kissed her behind the Quidditch shed before Christmas, who had invited her to visit his house in Ireland and meet his family. He had never reissued the invitation; she didn't know if it was because he wasn't sure of her or if it was because he was avoiding his bewildered, loving parents, who seemed to know there was something very wrong with their son - but not what. 

Of course no one knew what. Even Seamus didn't properly seem to know what; he only knew the nightmares, the strange voices that whispered to him at night, the bits and fragments of words and images that made his life a living hell. In all of it, there was only Ginny he drew comfort from; she was all that stood between him and the darkness. 

She pressed her cheek into his hand. "Maybe you should get some rest. We could go up to the common room..." 

"I was thinking of a walk," he said. "We could go to the rose garden." 

"No!" she said, so sharply that he dropped his hand. The garden full of stars like cold ice slivers, snow on the roses - "It'll be cold," she finished, lamely. "I should get my cloak at least." 

He stepped back, his eyes clouded. "That's all right. I should take some time on my own." He spun and stalked away, shoulders set rigidly. Ginny watched him go, her teeth sunk into her lower lip. Run after him, said her brain, he wants you to follow him. But a thick exhaustion kept her rooted to the spot. To have some time on her own - a chance to rest alone by the fireplace - 

Collapsing against the wall, Ginny watched him go, her teeth sunk into her lower lip. Run after him, said her brain, he wants you to follow him. But a thick exhaustion kept her rooted to the spot. And she had to admit the idea of being alone appealed to her. Not to be watching someone constantly for signs of changes in their mood, not to be constantly alert for signs that she was needed -- just to be able to collapse on the couch in front of the Gryffindor fireplace and shut her eyes --

"You know," said a drawling voice behind her, "I find Dumbledore's speeches a bit dull myself, but normally I just sleep through them. This business of charging out of the Great Hall in hysterics is eye-catching, but possibly not practical --"

"Don't drivel," said Ginny dully, turning her head to see Draco coming down the corridor towards him. It had been a long time since she'd really looked at him and the change in his appearance startled her. She remembered the thin boy who sat next to her bed the night she'd found the antidote for him and nearly died in the process. She remembered the hollows under his eyes, dark as if they'd been drawn there with ink. They were gone now, and so was the haunted thinness; nothing remained of his ordeal except the thick scarring on his left hand and a slightly intensified silver cast to his eyes.

"I'm not driveling," he protested. "You are," she said. "You know perfectly well why I ran out of the hall and it wasn't because the speech was boring."

He raised his eyebrows. "Honesty," he said. "How diverting."

"Seamus wasn't well," she explained. "I had to see if he was all right."

Draco spread his long-fingered hands wide. She could see the thick double-cross shaped scar that disfigured his left palm. "You do realize," he said, "you've become one of those sorts of girls."

"What sorts of girls?"

"I've heard you talking in the halls," he said blithely, "not that you ever talk to me any more, of course, but you have a carrying voice. Every other word you say is either "Seamus" or sometimes, for variation, "Shay" which I take to be some sort of repellent nickname for our potato-like Finnegan."

Ginny leaned her cheek against the cool stone of the wall. "Jealous?" she said, and immediately regretted it. She didn't want to provoke Draco, she wanted him to leave her alone. Just being as close to him as she was right now made her feel as if she were being turned inside out. 

"Yes," he said, "I was so hoping I'd get a chance to apply for the position of permanent nursemaid and caretaker to a possibly dangerous lunatic, but you beat me to it."

"Seamus isn't dangerous. Or a lunatic. He's --"

"Broken?" Draco suggested. 

Ginny felt the ghost of a smile flit across her face. "I prefer to think of him as ... sprained." 

Draco didn't laugh. "You like fixings things that are broken," he said. "I ought to know. Interesting, isn't it, that you haven't spoken to me since I was cured?"

"That's not --"

"The only conclusion I can come to is that you liked me better dying," he said. "But now you have Finnigan to put back together, you don't need me any more."

Ginny drew herself upright. She could feel her tiredness in her bones, her wrists and back: they burned. "That's not fair." 

"I'm not interested in whether it's fair," he said. "I'm interested in whether it's true." He took a step towards her; the torchlight flared up, and threw a shower of gold sparks across his pale face and silver hair. The curl at the corner of his lip was so familiar she could have traced it in her sleep... 

"Is it that hard a question?" 

"It's not really a question. More an observation. As to whether it's true..." She looked up at him; she was close enough to see the little crescent scar under his eye, a shade lighter than the rest of his skin. "What do you care?" 

"You're martyring yourself," he said. "Because you think what happened to him was your fault. You're developing a flatteringly saint like pallor, but that's hardly worth it. I liked you better freckled and flawed." 

"I didn't think you liked anything flawed," she said with asperity, but she found herself leaning into him, like a vine twining a trellis. 

"On the contrary, I'm a big fan of imperfection...Faultlessness is so dull." His hand was under her chin now, lifting her face so that she was forced to meet his gaze squarely. "He's not the blood you have to wash off your hands, not a stake to burn yourself at -- he's just a boy. How do you think he'd react if he knew he wasn't your love, but your penance?" 

She jerked away from him. "Why? Are you planning on telling him?" 

He laughed shortly. "Far be it from me to get between you and your martyrdom, Saint Virginia." 

"You never let anyone get between you and yours," she snapped back. "You come here acting all wounded that I don't seem to need you any more -- what would you do if I said I did need you, if I told you I needed you, thought about you, loved you, all the time?" 

Draco looked taken aback, and not pleasantly so. "I --"  

"That's what I thought you'd say. You don't want anything you can have. Just what you can't." She pulled away from him. "Well, you can't have me. You had your chance, Draco Malfoy, and you lost it." 

She'd thought it would hurt to say it, but it didn't; rather there was a sense of enormous satisfaction about it, the sort of satisfaction she'd felt when she was five years old and, having tired of Ron's teasing, had hit him over the head with a Widget's Cast-Iron Self-Cooking Fry Pan. Of course in this instance, there was slightly less blood. 

Draco arched his eyebrows into decided peaks. "One of us has lost it," he murmured in a desultory fashion, "but I'm not sure it's me." 

Ginny had expected any of several responses to her announcement, but for him to laugh at her was not one of them. Rage boiled up inside her. She reached up, sliding her hand into the neck of her sweater, and found the thin gold chain that hung there. She pulled it up over and over her head and held it out to Draco. 

Both Epicyclical Charms hung at the end of it, twisting and glinting in the torchlight. "Take it," she said. 

He looked at her with unusually explicit surprise. "What?" 

"I said take them," she replied icily. "You never asked me where they were -- you never asked any of us, did you? Who did you think was looking after them?" 

He shook his head, very slightly. The surprise had faded from his face and she couldn't quite read his expression: Anger? Disgust? Bitterness? Amusement? He reached a hand out and took the coil of gold chain and glass-and-gold-and-bone charms from her, closing his fingers around them. 

"That's twice," he said. 

She was angry enough that she could feel the tremble in her fingers. "Twice what?" 

"That you've given me back my life," he said. "Although only once that you've flung it in my face." 

The backs of her eyes burned; she knew she was near to tears. Not wanting to cry in front of him, she spun and ran down the corridor as her eyes spilled over, turning the torches on the walls to shimmering circles of blurry golden light. Had she stopped at the turn in the corridor to look back, she would have seen Draco watching her, his hand still extended, a look of wry resignation on his face. 

*** 

"No," Ginny said, again, now, "I don't remember that at all." 

Blaise looked at Ginny curiously. "Are you all right?" 

"I'm fine." 

Blaise leaned forward and pushed a strand of scarlet hair out of Ginny's eyes. "Are you crying?" 

Ginny hugged her arms around herself, shivering. "It's the wind. I told you, I'm fine." 

Blaise dropped her hand and muttered something - Ginny caught the words "Gryffindor" and "stubborn" and "bint." 

"I should get back to the tower," Ginny said. "Seamus is there and I don't like to leave him alone for too long." 

"Sure," said Blaise. "God knows what would happen if he was alone. He might raise up another Dark Lord to scourge the countryside or something." 

Ginny bit her lip. "That's not funny!" 

"Draco would have thought it was funny," said Blaise. And a few months ago, her eyes added, so would you. 

*** 

Miserable, Ginny curled on her bed in Gryffindor Tower, the velvet hangings pulled so that she lay inside a square of darkness. Now that she didn't even have the Trousers books to stave off the bleak thoughts, they flocked around her like black birds. The drumming of blood in her ears sounded like the incessant beating of their wings. 

So Blaise and Draco were going to the wedding together, so what? It was hardly her place to complain; since that night in the corridor outside the Great Hall, Ginny had spoken to Draco only once, and that out of forced politeness. She had no stake in any part of his life, and that included his love life. Of course, knowing that didn't stop her from feeling as hollowed out as a scooped Halloween pumpkin. 

Her hand snaked up and felt the locket she still wore around her throat, shoved down into the neck of her blouse where no one could see it. I love, and I hope. She thought of Draco, saying, I've only learned the difference between love and hate this past year... I'm a child and perhaps what you need is someone more grown-up. Finnegan, even.  

Finnegan, even. She thought of Seamus, his honest face, his blue eyes, his gentleness, his concern. Draco had said she'd be better off with him, and for a time, she had agreed. She wasn't sure if maybe she didn't still agree. What she really thought and what she wanted badly to think had become so tangled in her mind that she could no longer extricate herself from the knots.  

Ginny did know, on some level, that she had, just as Draco had said, become one of those girls - the sort who talk about their boyfriends endlessly and without reprieve, boring their friends, annoying their acquaintances, and positively revolting their family members. She'd never had patience with those sorts of girls in the past; the kind who wouldn't shut up about how terrific their boyfriend was, the cute things he did, the funny thing he said just the other day; they were the same kinds of girls who flew into weepy fits if their boy so much as smiled at another girl, who demanded he rid himself of all his female friends - or all his friends entirely - and who hurled tantrums at you if you happened to mention that time the year before when their boyfriend had taken Orla Quirke to the Yule Ball, gotten pissed as a newt, and been sick all over her new silk robes - even if, at the time, said girl had been dating Ernie McMillan and had never given her current boyfriend the time of day. They demanded of their boyfriend that he be a blank slate, devoid of romantic history, devoted only to them. Ginny despised that sort of girl; why live in fantasyland when reality would only inevitably intrude and bring you crashing down to earth in a big ugly mess? Why found your relationship on lies? 

Now she knew: sometimes the lies were all you could stand to believe. She saw Elizabeth's and Blaise's eyes glaze over when she talked about Seamus; saw Hermione's sideways looks of worry, and felt a new sympathy for those girls, who she now realized only talked about their relationships the way they did not because they thought they were perfect, but because they knew that they were anything but. Maybe love, she thought now, flat on her back staring up at the ceiling, is just a lie two people tell each other, and for it to work, they both have to believe it. And if she couldn't make herself believe it by sheer force of will, if guilt and desire were not enough, then maybe she would have to find another way. 

*** 

Hermione sat in the window embrasure in the Gryffindor Tower common room and looked down the spring-green sweep of lawn, dotted with gray stones and trampled flat where students had trodden their own paths from castle to Quidditch pitch. She could see Harry and Draco - really just moving dots from here, but she recognized Draco's silver hair and Harry's red sweater - walking up one of the paths towards the castle, deep in conversation. 

She linked her arms around her legs, drawing them up to her chest; her book Onieromancy and the Study of Protective Magic which had been perched precariously on her knees, slid down into her lap. It was getting darker outside, the sky streaked with the first markings of sunset. Soon Harry would come up the stairs and through the portrait hole, smelling of grass and boy and spring afternoon, and they would curl up together on the couch and read or talk until it was time for dinner. 

The thought of Harry brought a helpless smile to her face. She wasn't sure when or how they had gotten back together; there hadn't been an event, just a sort of natural falling back into things: into walking to class holding hands, sitting folded together in the common room at night, the sort of near-telepathic interconnectedness she had missed so badly when they'd started having problems at the beginning of the school year. She was happier when Harry was around, and she knew from the way that he lit up when he saw her that he felt the same way. He was part of her and she of him: not in a possessive way, she thought, but in a way that brought to her mind those old words from the Song of Songs: I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine. 

It made her nervous. Nothing could be this good, she thought, without it going terribly wrong. Sometimes she took her blue glass ring out of its box on her nightstand and looked at the crack that ran through it, straight down the middle, and then she would put it away and sit silently on her bed for a while, just thinking. 

Out the window, she saw Harry stop walking and wave. Ron was coming down the front steps of the school red hair a bright dot at this distance, lanky frame instantly recognizable. He pointed behind himself, gesturing, Harry caught up to him, Draco just behind. An earnest conversation ensued. 

Ron. Things were good with Ron, too, she thought. She'd been terribly worried that a great distance would have grown between herself, Ron and Harry after everything that had occurred, but that didn't happen. In some ways, the three of them were closer than ever - it was as if all the buried resentments and secret unhappiness that had plagued their relationship before had been burned away, and they'd been granted a chance to start over. 

Of all of them, she thought, Ron had changed the most. Where once he'd been nearly as hotheaded and impetuous as his sister, he was more thoughtful now, slower to anger, often to be found lost in thought. When Hermione had questioned him about it once, he'd replied that in Romania, he'd learned that if he looked far enough into the future, he could see the end of the world. "Of everything," he said, chewing on the end of his quill, "stars, planets, galaxies - the end of magic. It gives you some perspective, knowing that." 

Hermione supposed that it did. She didn't ask him if he'd looked that far ahead, either. She found she didn't want to know. Whatever Ron saw in the future, he kept it to himself, and for that, she was grateful. 

Even if the urge to ask him did sometimes worry at her like a the pain of an old injury. One thing she had Harry had never discussed that did nag at her was what they planned to do when school ended. On their last day at Hogwarts, Malfoy carriages would arrive to take them to the Manor for the wedding; Hermione was riding with Harry and Ron, Draco with Blaise, and Ginny, of course, with Seamus. There would be a few days of festivities at the Manor, and after that - nothing. The future stretched ahead like a blank swath of unmapped terrain. Whatever Harry's plans were, she didn't know them, and didn't know how she'd feel about them. 

And she didn't know how he'd feel about hers, either. 

Down on the school's front steps, Harry and Draco parted from Ron, and then from each other, heading in opposite directions. Ron stood on the steps by himself -- pensive? Lonely? She couldn't tell. A moment later, someone else joined him there. A girl, also with red hair. Ginny? Hermione thought, and was about to lean forward when and the curtain she'd drawn across the embrasure was pulled aside. Hermione looked up, blinking. 

Ginny stood in front of her, holding the curtain out stiffly and glaring. Hermione didn't take this personally - Ginny spent most of her time these days either glaring or looking as if she might cry - and she doubted it had anything much to do with her. "Hermione," Ginny said. "I need to talk to you." 

So it hadn't been Ginny with Ron, Hermione thought, perplexed. She scooted back, making room for Ginny on the window seat. "What about?" 

For a moment, Ginny hesitated. It was enough time for Hermione to notice that Ginny had buttoned her cardigan crookedly, that her normally neat and beautifully brushed hair was straggling out of its plaits, and that she had an odd, circular bruise on the back of her right hand. She felt a nearly painful wave of sympathy for her. She had been so brave back in January, so brave she'd nearly died, yet she seemed unable to find peace in the knowledge of her own courage. Instead, she seemed wrecked. 

At last, she spoke. "I want you to make me a love potion," she said, avoiding Hermione's eyes. 

Hermione's sympathy vanished in an wave of incredulous astonishment. "You want me to make you WHAT?" 

Ginny scowled. "A love potion." 

Hermione dropped her book and, seizing hold of Ginny's wrist, yanked her down onto the windowsill beside her. The curtain fell closed around them. "Surely you're joking," Hermione said. "Tell me you got into the wine we bought for the wedding and you're reelingly drunk. That would be a relief." 

"I'm not drunk. I know exactly what I'm saying." 

"Clearly you don't. Do you have any idea how immoral love potions are? How illegal?" 

"Oh, like you care about legality," Ginny snapped. "I know all about the Polyjuice Potion -" 

"That was in a good cause!" 

"So is this!" 

"Ginny," Hermione hissed, struggling to keep her voice down, "you cannot give Draco Malfoy a love potion, do you understand me?" 

Ginny's mouth dropped open just as the curtain was pulled back and Harry stood in front of them, smiling pleasantly and smelling, as Hermione had predicted, rather strongly of lawn. "I was wondering where you'd got to," he said to Hermione. "You two plotting something?" 

Hermione said a small prayer to the Relationship Gods that they would forgive her the lie she was about to tell. She could only imagine what would happen if Harry found out that Ginny wanted to give Draco a love potion. His head might actually fly off and bounce around the room like a Bludger. "We're talking about dresses," she said. "What to wear to the wedding." 

"I was thinking of something simple and black myself," he said. "Maybe a nice pearl choker." 

To Hermione's surprise, Ginny laughed, though her color was still high. "I think you could be a bit more adventurous than that," she said. "Stiletto heels are in right now." 

Harry looked mildly interested. "I can never see how girls can walk in those -" 

"Harry," Hermione said, smiling in a way that made her face feel stretched, "I think Ginny and I want to continue our conversation in private." 

Harry's eyebrows went up. "Really?" 

"Well," Hermione said, "I wouldn't want you to know what I'm wearing before the wedding." 

"You know, Hermione," Harry pointed out, "it's not actually us getting married, so..." 

"It's tradition," Hermione said firmly. 

"Bollocks," Ginny muttered. 

Harry looked at her curiously and seemed to notice her high color and agitated expression for the first time. "Heard Draco's going to the wedding with Blaise, have you?" he said, without malice and addressing both of them, though his words seemed meant for Ginny. Ginny's color darkened. Before she could say anything, Hermione got to her feet and grabbed Harry by the shoulders, pushing him out through the curtain and into the common room. 

"Honestly, Harry," she said, "do have some sense, won't you? And leave me alone with Ginny, we need to talk." 

"I'll say," he said, and dropped a kiss on the top of her head. "See you at dinner, then?" 

Her anger melted. "Of course." 

"And if you wind up wearing some horribly unflattering meringue-type thing to the wedding, don't look at me. I tried to advise you." 

"At least it'll match your powder-blue tux," she said, and let go of his shoulders. He dashed away upstairs as Hermione took a deep breath and returned to the window embrasure. 

Ginny was hunched into the corner of the window, worrying at something that hung around her throat. She dropped her hand when Hermione appeared and glared at the other girl defiantly, her cheeks scarlet. 

"All right, I didn't tell him anything," said Hermione. "But that's on the condition that you forget this stupid idea immediately. I mean, using a love potion on someone, it's - it's a violation. It robs them of their volition, their will. It's like Imperius, but worse in a way, because they don't even know what's happening." 

"It's not an Unforgivable," Ginny said, her voice tight. "And anyway, I happen to agree with you." 

"You - what do you mean, you agree?" Hermione stared at her. "Do you hate Draco that much?" 

Ginny was shaking her head slowly. Red curls of hair bounced against her cheek, startling against its whiteness. "You really think I'd do that," she said flatly. "That I'd use a love potion on - on him?" She bit her lip. "It's not for Draco." 

Hermione looked at her in astonishment. "Not for Draco?" she echoed. "Then for who?" 

"I should think that would be more than obvious," Ginny said. "It's for me, of course." 

*** 

Harry had just reached the door of his room when he felt that tickling at the back of his mind -- like a hiss or a whisper, but more insistent -- that meant that Draco wanted to talk to him. He lowered his hand from the doorknob, letting his mind relax. 

Potter? 

Yes, I'm here. 

You know how Weasley said Dumbledore needed to talk to us? 

Yes. I know, I was just -- 

The other boy sounded oddly constricted. Look, I think you'd better come here. 

Harry felt suddenly cold all over. Are you all right? 

Just get here. 

Forgetting about his muddy sweater, Harry clattered back down the stairs -- as he passed the closed window curtains in the common room, he wondered just what it was that Hermione and Ginny were actually up to, he hadn't believed for a moment that they'd been talking about clothes -- and ducked out through the portrait hole. 

"Fizzwhanging snozzlefritters," he muttered to the gargoyle that guarded Dumbledore's office, and it obligingly let him through. As he rode upward on the wooden staircase, he felt that chill again, now centered in his stomach. He hadn't heard Draco sound like that since -- well, not since January. 

January. Sometimes when he closed he eyes he saw the blasted landscape of Romania, the gray earth outside the towering stronghold, the long lines of mountains marching away in the distance like jagged black teeth. He felt the chill in his bones again, that seeping cold and exhaustion. He saw the castle corridors lit up like high noon, and Draco lying in Hermione's arms, silver blood trickling from the corner of his mouth.  

Sometimes in dreams he remembered the ones he had killed: the guards, the men at Viktor's flat. He remembered the hot water he'd scalded his hands with afterward, but he could not remember their faces. He'd told Draco that once, a few days after he'd gotten the antidote but was still in the infirmary -- Snape had insisted, though Draco already looked like a completely different person. Draco had looked up at him, tousle-haired in pajamas. "Hell is murky," he said. 

"What's that supposed to mean?"  

"Don't think about what you can't change, Potter." 

"I killed people, Malfoy." 

Draco's eyes were brilliant. "You're the savior of the wizarding world," he said. "Let someone else be its bloody conscience." 

The stairs stopped rising; Harry was in front of Dumbledore's door. He pushed it open. 

The moment he walked into the beautiful circular office, the chill in his stomach constricted into a hard lump of ice. Not just Dumbledore was there, but also Lupin and Snape, sitting in chairs on either side of the Headmaster's desk. Both looked somber. Draco sat opposite them, slouched into an armchair. He was expressionless, but the skin around his mouth looked pinched. 

"Harry," said Dumbledore - the light from the window reflected off his glasses, making it impossible to read his eyes - "You'd better take a seat." 

Harry didn't move. "What is it?" he said, rising panic sharpening his voice. "Is it Sirius? Has something happened to him?" 

"No," Draco said, sitting forward, "it's nothing like that, Potter. Nobody's died. " 

Harry looked at Snape. "It's not Malfoy's antidote, is it? It's not wearing off or something?" 

"That would be impossible," said Snape dryly. 

"Come on, Potter," said Draco. "It was an antidote, not a contaminated Ecstasy tablet. No one's dying, no one's dead, no one's even come down with a suspicious cough. Relax." 

"That's true," said Lupin in his gentle voice. "I suggest you sit down, Harry, and listen to what the Headmaster has to tell you." 

*** 

"For you?" Hermione echoed, staring. "Why would you want to take a love potion?" 

Ginny raised her chin defiantly. "So I can fall in love with Seamus." 

"Oh." Hermione could feel her righteous indignation trickling away. "Oh." 

"So it's not like Imperius," Ginny went on, "because it's a spell I'd be casting on myself. And I would be aware of it, but it wouldn't matter, because it's not taking away my choice. This is my choice. I'm so close already - really, I'm almost in love with him, I just need a little push." 

Hermione pushed her hair back out of her eyes, her mind working frantically. "Ginny," she said at last, as gently as she could, "what if you just aren't meant to be in love with Seamus? Love potions, they're forever. You won't be able to change your mind." 

"I don't want to be able to change my mind." 

"I'm sure he wouldn't want you to do this." 

Ginny set her jaw. "Then don't tell him." 

"I wasn't going to, but -- Ginny, you have to see that this idea is absolute madness. It'll illegal, it's immoral, it's dangerous --" 

"You know why I came to you?" Ginny cut in, her voice shrill. "Do you?" 

"Because I'm good at Potions?" asked Hermione, not without sharpness. 

Ginny looked at her as if she'd said something unbelievably stupid. "No. I came to you because you're one of the few people that knows the truth. That knows about what happened to Seamus, and how it was my fault. That everything's my fault. How I left the Liber-Damnatis in the past, the way I brought Tom back -- Seamus wouldn't have been possessed by Tom if it wasn't for me." 

"He wouldn't have been freed from Tom if it weren't for you, either," said Hermione. "You've done what you could to make it up to him. You saved him. You brought him back." 

"Back to what?" Ginny said bitterly. "Nightmares, panic, torturing guilt -- he didn't kill those people but he feels like he did. It was more my fault than it was his but I'm not the one who remembers them dying, bleeding their lives out --" 

"They were evil people, Ginny." 

"That doesn't make it not murder," said Ginny, and Hermione did not reply because she could think of nothing to say. Ginny leaned forward, and the sunset light from the window cast a rosy glow over her pale skin and picked out the strands of gold in her coppery hair. "Only I know what Seamus has been through," she said. "Only I can help him, and I owe him that much. It's true that he wouldn't want me to martyr myself. But if I took a love potion, I wouldn't be. I'd be with him willingly, even happily." 

Hermione leaned her head against the window; the glass felt cool against her hot cheek. "I have to ask you," she said, "Ginny, do you really want a potion to make you fall in love with Seamus, or just something to make you fall out of love with Draco Malfoy?" 

Ginny looked for a moment as if Hermione had slapped her, but also as if she'd been expecting the slap. "I thought about that," she said finally. "But as far as I know, for one thing, there's no magic to make you fall out of love with someone --" 

"True," Hermione said, thinking of her own experience, how the love potion had worked on her like a medieval torture instrument, pulling her in half. However much it had made her love Draco, it hadn't made her love Harry any less. "It's like weight-loss or increased-intelligence spells. No one's figured out how to make them work." 

"And even if they had, I wouldn't do it. Loving Draco, that's a part of me I wouldn't want to lose even if I could. I figure it'll fade over time, but at least I'll be able to remember it." 

Hermione opened her mouth, then closed it again. Ginny, she thought, lived in a world that was ruled by her own internal logic. It made it hard to argue with her. 

"Never mind," Ginny said abruptly. "I can tell you're not going to help me. I guess I didn't really think you would." 

"It's a ridiculous plan. Surely you must see that." 

"That's what you said at first about me going into the past to get the antidote for Draco -- and that worked." 

Hermione was taken aback for a moment. That was a desperate situation, she wanted to say. But she could see that for Ginny, so was this. Draco would have died if Ginny hadn't gone back in time for him, but looking at Ginny's miserable face, at the violet shadows under her eyes, she couldn't bring herself to make light of her pain. "I'll think about it," she said. 

"No you won't," said Ginny, "but I suppose it's nice of you to say so." She paused. "If I get the potion somewhere else, at least say you won't interfere." 

"Ginny--" 

"Never mind!" Ginny hopped down off the window sill, her small hands clenched. "Just forget I asked." 

Hermione passed a hand over her eyes. "You do realize," she said, "if you succeeded in your crazy plan, it would be the end of you and Draco -- forever." 

Ginny looked at her, eyes smoldering. "You ought to know better than anyone, Hermione," she said, "you can't lose something you never had." 

And she ducked out through the curtain. Hermione heard her give a little gasp, as if she'd stubbed her toe on something, and then the pattering sound of her footsteps on the stairs overhead. Hermione covered her face with her hands, swimming in the cool darkness behind her closed eyelids. I wasn't asking you for your sake, she thought, I was asking for Draco's. Forever is a long time, even for a Malfoy. 

*** 

When she emerged at last from behind the curtain, carrying her heavy book, she saw what had made Ginny gasp. Harry was standing in the middle of the common room, entirely silent and totally still, like a tree that had grown up suddenly out of the floor. Hermione bit back her own noise of surprise. "Harry? I thought you were ... " 

Her voice trailed off as he turned to look at her. His face was blank, his eyes a much darker green than usual. 

"Harry," she said, again, this time with real concern, and moved towards him. "Are you all right?" 

He looked up. His eyes didn't seem to focus on her. "I was just in Dumbledore's office. He..." 

"Yes? What did he say? Is everything all right? Is Sirius?" 

He laughed shortly. "That was the first thing I asked him, too. But no, it's nothing like that. Everyone's fine." He raked his hair back from his forehead. "I shouldn't be making a big deal out of it. It's nothing." 

"What's nothing?" 

"I'll tell you later. I have to send a message to Sirius. Confirm what time we're supposed to be picked up tomorrow morning. He's sending the carriages." He reached out a hand, caressed her cheek briefly. "I need some time to think, okay?" 

"Okay." Hermione didn't want to push. She watched him duck out through the portrait hole with a flutter of nervousness in her stomach. Harry was much better about keeping things to himself than he had been once, but he still tended to disappear when he was unhappy, like an injured cat huddling under a porch. 

It wouldn't hurt for me to do a bit of thinking myself, she realized. She'd been meaning to take a last walk down to the lake and it would probably be deserted now. She'd left the shawl Draco had given her for Christmas lying across the back of one of the armchairs. Setting down her book, she wrapped it around herself before following Harry out the portrait hole and down the tower stairs. 

*** 

Sunset light turned the lake to a ruby mirror, streaking the sky with seashell pink and bloody scarlet. Grass whispered under Hermione's feet as she found the narrow path that wound around the lake. The air was chilly - as high up as Hogwarts was, spring came late and winter lingered, stretching its cold fingers into May and even the beginning of June. 

Hermione remembered when the lake has been a frozen sheet of glass, the trees, stripped to bare branches, a skeleton orchard. She remembered standing on the front steps of the school, sugared with snow, waiting with Ginny for the boys to come back from Hogsmeade. And Draco walking up the hill, carrying Harry, who'd passed out from drinking too much, trying to forget how miserable he was. They'd all been miserable back then, for different reasons, everyone isolated in their little bubble of unhappiness. But things were better now. 

Weren't they? 

She tried to duck under a low-hanging tree branch, but knocked it with her shoulder, sending a shower of pink, apple-smelling petals down on her head. She raked them out of her hair impatiently. 

"You needn't do that," said a slow voice from behind her. A voice that, if it hadn't been so cultivated and careful, she would have said sounded almost slurred. She whirled around. Draco was lying on the verge of grass just at the edge of the lake, his boots nearly in the water, his silvery head pillowed on his right arm, bent under him. He was looking up at the sky meditatively, eyes half-slitted against the fading light. With his left hand, he described a lazy circle in the air. "It looks quite pretty, what with the petals being so pink and your hair being, all, you know..." 

"Brown?" Hermione said with some asperity. "Are you drunk, Draco?" 

He rolled over onto his stomach. Leaves were caught in his fine light hair. "Perhaps," he said, with great dignity. "Just a bit." 

"Did you get into the Archenland wine? That was supposed to be a present for Sirius!" 

"I may have had a mouthful," Draco admitted. "But I'm sure my future stepfather wouldn't begrudge me a bit of a tick off his bottle. He probably won't even notice." 

Hermione put her hands on her hips. "You uncorked it, didn't you?" 

Draco ruminated upon this before allowing that he must have done. 

"Fine. You owe me ten Galleons - that was my share of the gift." She sank down on the grass near him and stared out at the lake. "Drinking before supper, that can't be a good sign." 

"I prefer drinking during supper, but Dumbledore says it sets a bad example for the innocent first-years." 

"Draco, this is ridiculous." 

"Oh, I agree, those first years are far from innocent. The other day I came into the common room and Ermentrude Braddock and a bunch of the first-year boys had gotten into the Lifting Lemon Fizzes. We had to hook them all down with umbrellas and they still spent the next six hours high as kites, if you know what I mean." 

"I'm not sure I do," said Hermione, digging into the cool grass with her fingertips. She found a blown dandelion and plucked it. "And that wasn't what I meant when I said ridiculous. I meant this skulking around the lake business, moping and drinking. What on earth's the matter?" 

"Nothing on earth," said Draco, looking up at her through his eyelashes, "specifically." 

"Stop that," Hermione said crossly. "Don't look at me like that." 

"Like what?" 

"You know," Hermione said darkly. "Look, is this about Ginny?" 

Draco sat up, raking grass out of his hair. His eyes were narrowed silver crescents. "No. It's not about Ginny." 

"You know she's going to the wedding with Seamus -" 

"Of course she is. I think she feels she has to keep a close eye on him in case he starts exhibiting signs of Evil." 

Hermione giggled. 

"What?" 

"Oh, just thinking, all this work you've put in to reform yourself and Ginny goes and chucks you because you're not evil enough. Not as evil as Seamus, any road. Potentially evil, I should say," she corrected herself, with a flicker of conscience - Seamus was her friend too, after all, and what had happened to him was horrible. 

"You're very amusing," Draco said darkly. "And she didn't chuck me. She was always with Captain Cardboard, really, if you think about it, except for that brief bit where he tried to kill everyone in England." 

"He did not." 

"Several of them, at least. Look, if she prefers a block-headed, mutton-footed cretinous vat of testosterone pudding to me, that is simply her bad taste." 

"I think initially," mused Hermione, "she was looking for someone who was pretty much the opposite of you." 

"Well, she succeeded. I'm clever, he's the mental equivalent of a mass of algae that's underperforming intellectually. I'm gorgeous, he's a hideous lump of --" 

"That's hardly fair, Draco." 

"Oh, I don't blame him for his looks. I blame his mother, the troll, and the bartender." 

"I mean insulting him's hardly fair - it's not like he carried her off against her will. Anyway," she added, turning the dandelion over in her fingers, "I hear you're going to the wedding with Blaise." 

He shrugged. "Why shouldn't I? Can you think of a reason? I like Blaise. She's a good friend." 

She squinted at him. "So all this - business with Ginny and Blaise and whatnot - that's really not why you're drinking?" 

"It's really not," he said firmly. 

"All right. I'm sorry for jumping to conclusions." She held out the blown dandelion to him. "Make a wish?" 

"I don't believe in wishes," he said, but he blew, and the airy white seed heads flew up into the air between them, ticking Hermione's nose. 

"Your wish'll come true," she said, looking at the bare green stalk. She tossed it aside. 

"I told you," he said, standing up, "I don't believe in wishes." He held out a hand to help her to her feet. "Shall we walk?" 

"What's wrong with wishes?" She let him draw her to her feet and then slid her hands into her pockets; her fingers were cold. The narrow path that led between the trees and around the lake was darkening, still sequined here and there with fragments of light from the sinking sun. The light lent a rosy cast to Draco's brown skin, caught the brighter threads of his silver hair and made them shine like metal. 

"What do you wish?" he said, not looking at her, but through the trees, towards the lake. 

I wish, she thought. I wish I knew what would happen to Harry and me after school ends. I wish I knew what would become of us. I wish I knew how to tell him what I know I have to say. I wish I didn't love him like I do. Sometimes I wish I had never met him at all. She said, "I wish I knew how to dance. I've been reading about how there are all this complicated fancy dances at a big wizarding wedding, and I've no idea what to do with my feet. I'll probably break Harry's toes." 

He laughed. "That's easy enough." They had reached a small clearing; he turned and held his hands out. "I can help you with that." 

Hermione didn't take her hands out of her pockets. "I thought you didn't like to dance?" 

"I don't. But I know how." 

"Are you good at it?" she asked teasingly. The cold wind off the lake was making her shiver. 

"My father beat me until I perfected my skill, so yes." 

Hermione gasped. "Draco, I'm -" she began, and saw that he was grinning. "You're such a bastard," she said. 

"Come on." This time she let him take her hands. His were warm, counteracting her chill, though she still felt like shivering. "Put your feet there and there - like that - and watch what I do. Follow me." 

He was a good dancer - which didn't surprise her, he wouldn't say he was good at something if he wasn't. It was easy to follow him, the grass whispering under their feet, the wind blowing her hair across her face, the trees rustling in their own secret tree-language all around them. She thought they sounded surprised. Disapproving, maybe. Still, it was good to have warm hands in her cold ones and she found that her cheeks were burning, the cold air a welcome icy kiss against them. 

"This is the hard part," he said, and turned her gently so that her back was to him, his hands on her shoulders. She could feel the pressure of his fingers through the thin cotton of her sweater. The fingertips of his left hand rested lightly against her bare neck. "Reach one hand behind you -" 

She spun around so that she was facing him. "Enough," she said. "Tell me why you were drinking. Or I'm done dancing with you." 

Light sparked in the gray depths of his eyes. "Why do you want to know so badly?" 

"Because I saw Harry before I came down here, and he was acting like someone had hit him with a tree trunk. Is the same thing bothering you that was bothering him?" 

The light in his eyes darkened. "He was - but he seemed so calm in Dumbledore's office. I wouldn't have thought..." 

""Can't you tell?" Her voice came out sharper than she'd meant it to. "How he's feeling, I mean." 

He made a noise like a groan under his breath, and let go of her. He sank down onto a boulder and stared out at the lake blankly. 

"Oh, not this again." She sat down beside him, looking up at him with a mixture of irritation and sympathy. "What is it? What did Dumbledore say to you?" 

Draco looked at her sideways, a wry, knowing look that held more than a hint of self-depreciation. It was a look that said that he knew perfectly well that she'd never let up until he told her the truth, and that part of him was annoyed by this, while another part was grateful. He said, "You remember the Polyjuice Potion that Harry and I took, that turned us into each other?" 

"I think I can cast my mind back that far," she said dryly. 

"You remember how it lasted much longer than it was supposed to?" 

"Right. I thought Dumbledore said that was because of your Magid powers?" 

He didn't answer this directly. "And you remember how we've guessed that its ongoing effects led to - to our ability to speak to each other silently? The feeling of each other's feelings, that sort of thing." 

"The telepathic bond." 

"Yes. That." He shifted slightly, bending to pick up a twig, from which he began methodically stripping the leaves. "Well, as it turns out, Dumbledore wasn't quite truthful with us." 

"Wasn't quite truthful - what do you mean? Did he lie?" 

Draco chuckled softly. "Sometimes I wonder if the old bastard ever tells the truth." He stripped another few leaves from the twig; sap oozed like blood from the torn patches on the bark. "Well, apparently they - that's Dumbledore and Snape - didn't quite trust our Magid powers to do the job, so they added a little something extra to the mix, and voilà. An instant telepathically-bonded, Voldemort-fighting unbeatable team." 

"But...why?" Hermione was bewildered. "Why you? Why did they want that?" 

"Well, it had to be someone who was a Magid, would be my guess, so it couldn't have been you or the Weasel. I think they considered Fleur but dropped her as a candidate - too flighty. I'm the only other Magid in the school." 

"I still don't understand." 

"I think they wanted someone who'd follow Harry anywhere, who'd die for him, protect him to the end. He's the priceless resource, you know. Or he was. That prophecy. No one else could have killed Voldemort. And they knew his nature, of course. How likely he'd be to cut himself free to face the final battle by himself, not wanting to endanger his friends. So they created someone he couldn't cut himself free of." 

"But you - you hated each other. Despised each other. You're the last person Harry would have -" 

"It doesn't matter," Draco said, in an odd, dead sort of voice. "After what they did to us, we couldn't have hated each other. When they realized I was the only available, acceptable Magid in the school, it must have presented something of a knotty problem for them. After all, my training - with weaponry, with the Dark Arts - must have seemed extremely useful, but at the same time, how could they be sure I'd stay loyal?" Draco tossed the twig, now thoroughly denuded, into the lake. It landed with a gentle splash. "They had to make sure that Harry's safety would be as important to me as my own. They had to tie us together. Indissolubly." 

"So they made you one soul," said Hermione, remembering something, "in two bodies." 

"Not for much longer," said Draco. 

"What do you mean?" 

"I mean it was an experiment, and it worked wildly better than they'd hoped. But if it hadn't well, Snape would always have been standing by with the antidote, to put us back the way we were before." 

"Back the way you were before? Well, but it did work. If what they wanted was to create an inseparable team - to keep Harry from going it alone - they did that. I mean, just because the bond between you was magically initiated, so to speak, doesn't mean it's any less real." 

"Perhaps not," said Draco, "but it will be less real next week when Snape gives us the antidote." 

Hermione stared at him. Her face felt stiff, and not just because of the cold. "The what?" 

"There's an antidote. Some sort of second potion to counteract the effects of the first one. So that'll be it. No more funny mind-speak. Back to normal for both of us." 

"But I - is that what you want?" 

"I don't think it matters what I want. Dumbledore hinted that they'd hardly expected the original potion to have as intense an effect as it did. He seemed to feel that since the eventual effects couldn't be guessed at, the safest thing to do was go ahead with the antidote. He said they'd only waited until now because they didn't want to disrupt the rest of our school year." 

"What did Harry say?" 

"He said, 'All right, fine, when do we do it?'" 

Hermione found this hard to believe. "Wasn't he angry?" 

Draco picked up another twig and ripped out a few leaves. "Maybe. I think he's used to having the needs of the wizarding world run his life for him. Hell, maybe I am, too." 

"They can't make you do it, Draco. You could tell them --" 

He turned his head and looked at her, his eyes coolly disdainful. "You really think," he said, "that I'd refuse the antidote if that wasn't what Harry wanted?" 

"I'm sure it isn't what he wants." 

"Are you?" said Draco meditatively. 

Hermione didn't answer. 

"I wouldn't blame him if it was. He must be tired of it by now." 

"Tired of what?" she said. 

Draco stood up. The sun had set completely now, but the lake seemed to have gathered the remains of the daylight into itself and shone like a polished mirror. "All of us." 

Harry isn't tired of me, some small voice in the back of Hermione's head protested. But she said nothing. Draco, despite all his evasions and deflections, had an unerring instinct for the unpleasant truth at the heart of the matter, at least when it pertained to other people. She thought of the unanswered questions between herself and Harry, and shivered again. 

"Do you know what he's doing when school ends?" she asked abruptly. 

Draco turned to look at her, and she saw the faint surprised turn of his mouth, though his voice was even when he spoke. "No. I don't." 

"Do you know what you're doing?" 

"I think I'll travel," he said, easily -- too easily, she thought. That polished, casual voice sounded false to her. "Nearly dying made me think about all the things I haven't done. I think I'd like to see the world, maybe for a year or so." 

"Oh." A pang shot through her. "Surely there are other things you haven't done that are a bit closer to home?" 

The curl at the corner of his mouth turned wicked. "What exactly are you suggesting?" 

"Oh, forget it," she said with a glare, wrapping her arms around herself for warmth. 

Now he was all contrition. "You're shivering. Should we go back?" 

Hermione half-closed her eyes. Through her narrowed lids she could see the crescent of silver metal that was the lake, the budding choirs of branches, wet black and dark green studded with the shards of new pink flowers, the saturated-cobalt of the sky overhead -- and she realized, with a jolt, that she would never again sit by this lake at twilight, never again see the sun set over the Forbidden Forest, setting the tops of the trees ablaze. She had thought she would pass this moment with Harry, but things didn't always turn out the way you had planned them. "We can't ever go back," she said, "not really." 

Draco raised an eyebrow. The wind off the lake blew a veil of silver across his eyes. "What did you say?" 

Hermione stood up, brushing leaves and damp petals from her skirt. "Oh," she said. "It was nothing." 

*** 

Ginny's stomach growled. She had gone back to lying in bed with the hangings drawn, though, she thought, if she'd had some foresight she would have brought a tin of biscuits or at least some crisps to gnaw on, since she had no intention of going down to supper. The last night before the end of the year in the Great Hall always had a festive atmosphere, and she wanted no part of it. Nor, tonight, did she care who won the Quidditch Cup or had the most house points. 

She pressed her hands against her stomach and sighed. She always forgot to eat when she was unhappy, and if she wasn't careful she'd go back down to skin and bones the way she had been in January. Not that she wanted to be enormous, but she always looked better with a bit of a chest and all her ribs not sticking out like a xylophone. 

Her mind wandered to the dress folded on top of the belongings in her trunk, waiting to be worn at the wedding. Blaise had helped her pick it out -- yard on yard of scarlet satin, glowing like the hot tip of a poker. Ginny had said that she'd always thought redheads weren't supposed to wear red themselves, and Blaise had told her not to believe everything you read in Teen Witch Weekly. 

Blaise had meant to make her laugh, but Teen Witch Weekly just reminded her of Draco, of sitting on that rock with him near Charlie's dragon camp, Draco telling her about his dreams, but so wryly that she'd thought he was joking. She wondered if that was when it had happened, when thinking of him had become like a fire that burned away other thoughts. And she wondered why it had taken her so long to get tired of it, of being a question without an answer, a single, sounding note without a reply. 

The hangings around her bed rustled. She sat up quickly, seizing one of her pillows and holding it across herself. "Who is it? Elizabeth?" 

"No." A hand came through the hangings, yanked them apart. It was Hermione. There were leaves in her hair. She looked flushed. "It's me." 

"Oh." Ginny hugged the pillow. "Come to lecture me a bit more about my terrible judgment and bad ideas?" 

"No." Hermione thrust her other hand through the hangings; there was a stoppered silver flask in it, with a design of snakes around the top. "I came to give you this." 

Ginny actually felt her eyes pop wide. "What is that?" 

Hermione frowned. "There's only a sip in there, but that's all you need. Just remember, the effect lasts for half an hour and applies to the first person you see, so be damn sure it's Seamus. Only death can reverse the effects, and I seriously don't want to go through that again." She thrust the flask forward. "Take it." 

Ginny didn't need to be told twice. She snatched it out of Hermione's hand. "This is really love potion?" 

"It's really love potion," said Hermione. 

"You made it so fast..." 

Hermione's eyes sparked briefly. "I know where to get it. And I borrowed the flask, kind of without telling someone, so keep it hidden." 

"I didn't think you were going to..." 

"Yes, well, neither did I," Hermione said shortly. "Don't make me sorry I did." 

She yanked the hangings closed, leaving Ginny sitting speechless and alone, in the dark. 

*** 

Which was how Ginny came to be sitting on the plushly upholstered seat of a Malfoy carriage pulled up in front of the school, across from Seamus, with the silver flask of love potion held carefully on her lap. If she looked out the window, she could see the crowd of students spilling down the steps and across the lawn, Dumbledore and McGonagall and the other professors standing framed in the great doorway, waving and smiling. 

Harry and Hermione and Ron and even Draco were in among the thick of the students, exchanging good-byes, and Ginny supposed she could have joined them, but she didn't feel much like it. After all, she was coming back next year. She didn't have to bid farewell the way they did. Hermione and Ron and Harry had spent the morning ranging over the castle, saying good-bye to the places they'd known and loved, or in some cases, such as the Potions dungeon, known and hated. Ginny supposed she could understand how they must feel, but mostly she felt a dull impatience with the whole business. She felt that it was worse to come back to school with all your important friends gone than not to be able to come back at all, but she wasn't sure she'd be able to convince them of that. They were deep in the grip of the sort of nostalgia only felt by people who hadn't actually started missing a place yet. If they sold Hogwarts souvenir tea-towels, Ginny suspected, they'd all be waving them like flags. 

Seamus didn't seem to share their feelings. He was slouched against the bench seat opposite her, his face in shadow, his eyes half-closed as if he were exhausted. He looked up, as if feeling her gaze on him, and opened his eyes. In the darkness, they were a very dark blue, nearly violet. 

"Are you feeling better?" he asked. 

She'd nearly forgotten that the night before she'd sent him an owl saying she was too ill to come to supper. "Oh. Yes, much better today." 

He smiled. When he smiled, he looked like himself again. He leaned forward a little. "Are you looking forward to the wedding?" 

"Yes," Ginny said, almost surprised that this was true. "I think it'll be fun." 

"And afterwards..." 

"We're going to your parents' house in Ireland. I know." She tried not to sound impatient. 

"I haven't seen them since -- since everything that happened." He took a deep breath. "I need you there." 

"I'll be there," she said. 

"Unless..." He reached out a hand, took her fingers and squeezed them. "Unless it'll make you unhappy. All I want is for you to be happy," he added. "That's all I ever wanted." 

Epilogue_2