Epilogue ~ PART TWO: Love Never Ends

"So," Draco said, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, "we have a three-hour ride's worth of time to kill and really thick curtains on the windows. What do you say we --" 

Blaise, who had been peering past one of the thick curtains at carriage beside them, which was carrying Harry, Hermione and Ron, dropped the curtain back in place and looked at him severely. "I am not going to get off with you, Draco. Oh, and I don't care how pissed I get at the party, I'm not going to get off with you then, either. We're going as friends." 

Draco smiled at her, a slight upward curving of his lips. "I don't suppose I could play the 'I nearly died' card?" 

"Only if I can play the 'I don't want to get nearly pregnant' card." 

He leaned back, stretching his long legs out so that his feet rested on the seat beside her. "You weren't always so prudish," he lamented. "Remember that time in the Quidditch shed after we beat Hufflepuff?" 

"Which time after we beat Hufflepuff?" she muttered. 

"All three, as I recall," said Draco. "And do you remember --" 

Blaise threw a hand up. "That's enough! Really, Draco, if I'd known you were going to act like this, I wouldn't have agreed to go to the wedding with you at all." 

"Yes, you would," said Draco. "The only thing you like better than expensive parties is attending them with the best-looking guy in the room. I can provide you with both. And how's the dress?" 

She smiled as if she couldn't help it. "Beautiful. I've never seen a red like that." She peered at him more closely through the dimness in the carriage. If it hadn't been for the length of her hair, in the shadow light, she could almost have been Ginny. He wondered if that was why she had cut it. "I can't help wondering..." 

"Wondering what?" 

"If all this is about Ginny. Bringing me to the wedding, the dress..." 

He raised his eyebrows at her. 

"If you're trying to make her jealous," said Blaise, "it won't work." 

"So the moment I'm not a bastard to you any more, you assume you're a cog in the turning wheels of my grand and evil plans? Perhaps you should work on your self-esteem issues a bit, darling Blaise." 

She looked at him steadily. "You didn't want me when you had me and you don't want me now." 

"I --" 

"You don't love me now," she said firmly. 

"This new laser-like insight of yours is very annoying," Draco said, taking his feet off the cushions. "So what do you suggest we do to while away the hours? I'm sure there are a variety of wholesome options freely available to us." 

"We could talk," she said. "We were always pretty good at talking. We could tell stories, jokes -- " 

"So how many Hufflepuffs does it take to screw in a light bulb?" Draco inquired, examining his flawless nails for possible defects. 

"A what?" 

"A light bulb. It's a Muggle illuminating device. You have to screw it in to make it work. Look, just say you don't know." 

"I don't know." 

"All of them," he said, "one to do it, and the rest to offer moral support. How many Gryffindors does it take to screw it a lightbulb?" 

She pushed the curtain open again and stared out the window. "I have no idea." 

"Three. Harry to do it, and Hermione and Ron to stand around telling him to be careful. Now, how many Slytherins does it take to screw in a lightbulb?" 

"Oh, for God's sake. I don't know." 

"None," he said, reaching past her and yanking the curtains closed. She felt his hard grip on her arm, then his fingers tracing the curve of her wrist. She could smell the spicy scent of his cologne. "We like it in the dark." 

*** 

The sun was setting as they arrived at the Manor, and Ginny could see that Narcissa had decorated it for the wedding with thousands of hovering light charms. They lit the Manor like a fairytale castle, from the gardens bound in ropes of light to the high turreted towers. She shivered a little, looking up as she stepped out of the carriage, remembering how Lucius had trapped Draco and Harry on one of those very towers, on a bitter winter night with the snow sifting down like iced sugar. 

Seamus, standing beside her on the steps, looked at her curiously. "What are you thinking?" 

She was spared answering by the rattling crunch of gravel as the other carriages pulled up behind theirs. Harry, Hermione and Ron spilled from the first one, and Blaise and Draco -- looking a little disheveled -- emerged from the second. Draco offered Blaise his hand to help her down from the carriage, but she ignored it, and stalked past him to Ginny. Her cheeks were bright red. "It was really hot in our carriage," she said, fanning herself with a ringed hand. "Was it really hot in your carriage?" 

"Not really," said Ginny. 

Seamus just stared at Blaise. She frowned. "You know, that thousand-yard Stare of Evil of yours is getting really annoying," she said. "I just thought you should know." 

"Could be that your cooling charms were broken," Seamus offered, still staring. 

"Oh, for goodness sakes," said Blaise. "Now you're just staring at me like that on purpose, aren't you?" 

"Maybe," said Seamus. 

The side of Ginny's mouth twitched, much to her delight. It was rare that Seamus made her smile involuntarily. 

"You're here!" a delighted shout echoed from the top of the stairs. It was Narcissa, in chic fitted spring robes of a sort of frothy pink shade that made Ginny instantly jealous. She'd always wanted to be able to wear pink, but it just made her look sunburned. Sirius and Remus appeared behind Narcissa, both grinning their welcomes, and the next few minutes were a flurry of greetings and hugs, offers of refreshment, and luggage being floated up to the appropriate rooms. 

Ginny found herself in a nicely appointed guest room, clearly decorated with some care by Narcissa in the time since Lucius had been gone. The yellow walls and pale green duvet made Ginny feel as if she were staying inside a flower, but they were very un-Malfoy. She slipped off her traveling robes and put on a light dress and sandals. She caught a glimpse of herself as she passed the mirror and turned her face away; she looked so tired. Sliding her hand into the pocket of her robes where they lay on the bed, she took out the flask of love potion and set it carefully on the bedside table. It glittered in the light that spilled from the window like a piece of jewelry, bright as all false promises. 

*** 

Sirius had decided he wanted a small stag night this time, just a few close friends at the Cold Christmas Inn. He'd invited Remus and Harry and Draco of course, and Ron and the rest of the Weasley boys, though Ron was the only one who came as the rest of them hadn't planned to arrive at the Manor until the next day. He had also invited Seamus as a sort of gesture of pity for all he'd been through -- Seamus, however, declined to come, much to Draco's relief.  

They sat at a long wooden plank table and drank ale and elm wine, and Lupin told embarrassing stories about Sirius' past and the time he'd asked two different girls to meet him on the same night in the prefect's bathroom, forgetting he had the plans with the first one when he asked the second, and they'd been so disgusted with him that they'd tied him up stark naked with Toothflossing Stringmints and left him there for the house-elves to find.  

"I was not naked," corrected Sirius, as the table erupted in laughter. "I was wearing socks." 

"Three socks, if I remember correctly," Lupin said. 

"I have no idea what you mean," said Sirius. "None." 

"Those girls must have been very, very angry at you," said Harry, impressed. He had a certain fear of very, very angry women himself; both Hermione and Ginny were terrifying when enraged. 

"Hell hath no fury like a woman invited to an impromptu threesome in the prefect's bathroom -- not that this has ever happened to me," said Draco. "I deplore sloppy scheduling." 

"I'm sensing a theme here," said Ron. 

"Is it 'Enchantment under the Sea'?" Draco inquired. 

Ron ignored this. "It's women," he said. "Women do us wrong." 

"Ah," said Draco. "And now the much-anticipated misogynistic ranting part of the evening." He motioned the waiter over and ordered several vodka shots in quick succession. When the waiter departed, he turned back to the table and gestured grandly towards Ron, who was glaring. "Pray continue." 

"Women," said Ron again, with that slight tremble of the eyebrow that meant he was very drunk indeed. "They use you. They lie to you. They leave you twitching alone in the darkness, choking on your own blood after they've plunged a dagger into your chest --" 

"Oh, dear," said Lupin. "You know, honestly, the worst thing a woman ever did to me was nickname me 'Fluffy' after she found out I was a werewolf.'" 

"Women are trouble," Sirius agreed sententiously, staring at the bottom of his empty tankard. 

"Don't say that!" said Harry. "You're the one getting married tomorrow." 

"To my mother, I might add," Draco pointed out, finishing his drink and reaching for another. He didn't seem drunk yet, not to Harry at least, though there was a certain glitter to his eyes that indicated that he might be getting there. 

"All except my fiancée, of course," Sirius amended. "She is a jewel." 

"Just wait," said Ron, jabbing a finger in Sirius' general direction. "She'll turn out to be a demon, or she'll dump you for Professor Lupin --" 

"Don't drag me into this," protested Remus. 

" -- or you'll find out she's Polyjuiced herself into your ideal woman in an attempt to get you to commit evil acts on her behalf, or she'll leave you for ­--" 

"Good Lord," said Sirius, staring at Ron, "you have had a bad time of it, haven't you? At your age, the biggest trouble I had with girls was keeping their names straight." 

Ron didn't say anything. He had put his head down on the table and begun snoring.  

"One down," said Harry, setting his empty butterbeer glass down on top of Ron's head, where it balanced precariously. 

"Very attractive," said a deep voice above them. "It does add a certain je ne sais quoi." 

Harry looked up, and blinked in surprise. It was Snape, looking as batlike as ever with his pale face and sweeping black robes. Greasy dark hair hung heavily to his shoulders. 

"I would have said a soupçon de gentillesse," said Draco mildly. He was on his fifth martini. "But what do I know." 

"Greetings, Severus. Did you come to offer your congratulations to Padfoot?" asked Lupin politely. 

""What Remus means to say," said Sirius, knocking back another swallow of firewhiskey, "is what are you doing here, Snape? Other than lurking in a foreboding manner, of course. I hope you're not going to pull one of those Wedding-Guest-who-stoppeth-one-of-three morbid acts tomorrow. Not that you're precisely a wedding guest, since I don't think I invited you." 

"That wasn't quite what I meant," said Lupin. "Actually." 

"My presence here is coincidental," said Snape. "I secured lodging at the Cold Christmas Inn last night, with an eye towards being here the day after tomorrow, at Dumbledore's request. In the interim period, I had intended to get in a bit of fishing." 

"At Dumbledore's request?" said Draco, looking up from his drink. 

"Yes," said Snape, looking down his long nose at his favorite student. "He wanted me with him when he reversed the Polyjuice Potion's effect on you and Potter." 

"Oh, right," said Draco, with a marked lack of enthusiasm. "That." 

"Indeed, that." Snape turned to Sirius. "In the meantime, I extend my congratulations to you on the eve of your happy event." 

Sirius choked on his drink. "Really?" 

"Yes," said Snape emotionlessly. "I have always liked Narcissa. If marrying you will make her happy, then my delight is boundless." 

Sirius squinted at him. "It sure looks boundless." 

"We all show happiness in our own way, Padfoot," Lupin remonstrated. 

"A good ninety percent of us show it by cracking a smile, at least," said Sirius. "It's not like I asked him to burst into song." 

"I could sing, if you like," said Snape. 

Sirius stared at him, perplexed. "What?" 

"Are you implying that I can't sing?" Snape asked. 

"I'm not sure he's implying it," said Harry. "I think he's just saying it." 

"I have been told I have a very nice voice," said Snape, ruminatively. 

"It's true," Draco said. "Especially with a quartet of house-elves for backup." 

Snape smiled thinly, then turned and walked away. Sirius watched him go with his eyebrows raised all the way up his forehead. "He's mad," he said, to no one in particular. "As a hatter." 

"Oh, I don't know," said Lupin. "I think he's trying to bury the hatchet." 

"What's so mad about hatters, anyway?" Draco asked, finally feeling the effects of five martinis and a bottle of wine. "I have a hatter in London. I quite like him. He's never seemed particularly mad to me. I mean, no more than most grown-ups." 

Ron sat up, sending the mug that had been balanced on his head careening to the floor, where it smashed into pieces, splattering Harry's shoes with remnants of butterbeer. Ron didn't seem to notice. "Hatters used to use mercury compounds to finish the fur trim on hats. Hatters working in poorly ventilated workrooms would absord the mercury into their blood. Over time, they would exhibit signs of mercury poisoning, including brain damage leading to psychosis. Thus the phrase, 'mad as a hatter.'" 

Everyone stared at him.  

Ron shrugged. "I remember it from some Muggle history book of my dad's," he said. "So what?" 

Harry slid a half-full mug of butterbeer across the table. "Drink more, Ron." 

Ron reached for the mug, but was arrested mid-motion by the sound of a familiar voice echoing through the room. He turned slowly, as they all did, to see Snape standing up at the small podium, surrounded by the group of musicians who not long ago had been playing "Greensleeves."  

"Ladies and gentlemen," said Snape. He must have done some sort of Sonorus charm, Harry thought, because his voice was positively echoing off the roofbeams. "I would like to sing a song in honor of a friend of mine, who is getting married tomorrow. That man, right there--" and he pointed at Sirius--"is not my friend. In fact, he is something of a tosser. But he is marrying someone I rather like, so in honor of the occasion, I'd like to sing the classic stag night ballad, 'I May Be A Tiny Chimney Sweep, But I've Got An Enormous Broom.'" 

"Crikey," said Draco. "I didn't think that song actually existed." 

"Oh," said Lupin. "But it does." 

Sirius said nothing. He was busy staring with his mouth open at Snape, who opened his mouth just as the band started up and sang, in a robust baritone: 

Oohhhhhhh, 

The chimneys were dirty at Mrs. McFry's 

And I'll grant they were worse down at Molly O'Clue's 

But the chimney sweep said, with a gleam in his eye 

"I've got a great tool here for cleaning the fluuuuuues..." 

"For I may be a tiny chimney sweep 

With a tiny grimy face 

But I'm carrying a broom that makes strong girls weep, 

Won't you let me up, up, up your fireplace?" 

A chimney sweep's job can be boring and dirty, 

A chimney sweep ain't drawn the best lot in life 

But who else could manage, without getting flirty, 

To clean out the smokestack on the mayor's young wife? 

Who else but the tiny chimney sweep 

With his tiny grimy face? 

For he's carrying a broom that makes strong girls weep 

Won't you let him up, up, up your fireplace? 

"My boy," said the mother, "You're smart as a whip, 

But don't be a lawyer or doctor, my son; 

Take the job of your father, that worthy young rip, 

For the chimney sweep's job is a sight more fun!" 

"For he might ha' been a tiny chimney sweep 

With a tiny grimy face 

But he carried a broom that near made me weep 

So I let him up, up, up me fireplace!"  

I met a young lady in Lower-South-Waine 

And I asked why the roofs there were covered in grime 

"Is your chimneysweep ill?" but she laughed and explained 

"He never cleans chimneys, but his service? Sublime!" 

"For he may be a tiny chimney sweep 

With a tiny grimy face 

But he's carrying a broom that makes the whole town weep 

So we let him up, up, up the fireplace!" 

Said the young maiden fair to the chimney sweep bold, 

"The clogged chimney's making it warm in the room!" 

But the chimney sweep grinned, showing teeth made of gold, 

And said "That ain't the clogging, dear, that's just me broom!"  

"For I may be a tiny chimney sweep 

With a tiny grimy face 

But I'm carrying a broom that makes strong girls weep, 

Won't you let me up, up, up your fireplace?" 

Our sweep tied the knot on a fair April day, 

His wedding, 'tis true, was the best of our lives-- 

A child nearly drowned when they tossed the bouquet-- 

There were sixty-nine priests there, and seventy wives! 

For he might ha' been a tiny chimney sweep 

With a tiny grimy face 

But he carried a broom that made all the girls weep, 

So they let him up, up, up the fireplace! 

"I've grown old," sighed the sweep, "and my wits have got loose, 

I can scarce tell me da from me poor younger brother. 

But at least for the wife I've got one great excuse, 

For at my age, I can't tell one bed from another!" 

"For I may be a tiny chimney sweep 

With a tiny grimy face 

But I'm carrying a broom that makes strong girls weep, 

Won't you let me up, up, up your fireplace?" 

'Twas a tragical day, when our sweep passed away 

(He fell down a chimney and busted his head) 

And the ladies of our town all wept with dismay 

Until walking to the coffin, a young urchin said: 

"Since I was a lad, this man trained me to sweep 

A good man, a kind man, as you'll all agree 

But I'm telling you now, my dear friends, please don't weep, 

For his trade will be continued, girls--he left his broom to me!" 

"For I may be a tiny chimney sweep 

With a tiny grimy face 

But I'm carrying a broom that makes strong girls weep, 

Won't you let me up, up, up your fireplace?" 

So raise up your glasses, yes, raise high your drinks, 

I'll buy you a round and we'll drink it down deep 

Let's have us a toast 'fore we catch forty winks, 

May we all be as lucky as our little chimney sweep!  

When Snape was finished singing, he bowed coldly and departed the stage. Sirius watched him go, his mouth hanging open. 

"When you said he wanted to bury the hatchet," he said finally, "I didn't realize you meant in my eardrums." 

"I didn't think he was all that bad," said Harry. 

Sirius was still shaking his head. "I... I just never..." 

Lupin chortled into his beer. "Now you have." 

*** 

It always amazed Harry that even in summer, the rooms in Malfoy Manor were chilly to the point of arctic. He'd curled himself up under the heavy duvet in his bedroom (the original duvet had been black, patterned with silver snakes, but he'd kept having nightmares that the snakes had come to life and were slithering on him. Eventually Hermione had given him a spare duvet of hers. It was yellow and sprigged with blue flowers. Harry supposed that in the end, he just wasn't a snaky kind of bloke) when there was a series of sharp knocks on the door. Swearing, Harry slid out of bed. 

His swearing increased in volume as his bare feet hit the cold stone floor. Half-hopping and swearing as he went, he made his way across the enormous room and threw open the door. Whoever was on the other side, he determined, would get a piece of his mind. 

It was Draco, wearing a pair of black jeans and black pullover, looking a bit like Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible, if Tom Cruise had had white-blond hair and a surprised look on his face. "Potter," Draco said, "was that you swearing a blue streak just now? Where'd you learn that language? I didn't even know you could do that with a pair of --" 

"It's two in the morning, Malfoy," Harry interrupted, "what the hell do you want?" 

"--although the six feet of surgical tubing was a nice touch, I thought. I must be rubbing off on you." He peered past Harry into the bedroom and shuddered. "Or not. Where'd you find that duvet? Hell's interior decorating supply shop?" 

"Hermione," said Harry, shortly. "Speaking of which, if you came by here to whinge about our love lives some more, I am tired of talking about girls. It never gets me anywhere and afterward I just feel sorry for myself." 

"Perhaps I should try to be more supportive," Draco ruminated. 

"Considering that the last time we talked, you told me I was a whinging, pie-faced newt, and that girls don't like complainers--" 

"Well, they don't." 

"If you're such an expert, why's your love life such a complete balls-up then?" Harry asked, reasonably enough. 

Draco ignored this. "Look, are you ready to go, or not?" 

Harry banged his head gently against the doorframe. "No. I am not going anywhere with you, Malfoy. Tomorrow's the wedding and I need my sleep. I've got toasts to give, receiving lines to stand in, embarrassing formalwear to struggle into--" 

Despite his best intentions, within ten minutes Harry found himself, dressed and with his glasses firmly planted on his nose, standing in the corridor with Draco -- who, Harry now saw, had brought both their broomsticks and propped them against the wall. Draco was also fidgeting, which was generally a sign that he had something personal to say and didn't want to say it. Harry squinted at him with dawning suspicion. "So," he said. "What's all this about, anyway?" 

"It's --" 

"And don't say your love life, or I'll kill you with a rock." 

"--not my love life, you squinty-eyed pillock. It's my Epicyclical Charms." 

This was so unexpected that Harry rocked back on his heels. "What?" 

Draco pulled down the neck of his sweater just far enough so that Harry could see a double row of gold chains glinting against the light skin. "These. It's a bloody nuisance, carrying them around like this, never being able to take them off--" 

"I could carry one," Harry offered quietly. 

"No," Draco said, without anger or indecision. "That's not what I want." 

"Then--" Harry felt an absurd stab of something like jealousy, and fought it down. "You want to take it to someone else? You want me to come with you?" 

"I want you to come with me," Draco said. He took one of the brooms and held it out to Harry. 

"You can't give it to just anyone," Harry said, taking the broom. "It's got to be someone you really trust." 

"I know," Draco said. He had picked up his own broom and was heading for the window at the end of the hall. It was open, curtains blowing gently in the soft spring air. He leaned out. 

Harry leaned out next to him. "Someone who--" 

"Loves me?" Draco looked at Harry with sideways amusement. "Don't be such a girl, Potter. Come on. I'll race you." He slid with agility onto the window ledge, broom in hand, poised for flight. 

Annoyed, Harry crawled onto the ledge beside him. "I could race you if --" 

"Race me? A splendid idea." 

"--I knew where we were going. Who are we taking these Charms to?" 

Draco's look was secretive, amusement glinting under his fair lashes. "Someone I trust -- endlessly," he said, and dropped from the windowsill, tumbling into the night air on his broomstick with the reckless speed of an angel eager to begin the long fall from heaven. 

*** 

Following Draco on his broomstick through the tangled woods around Malfoy Manor would have been impossible for a flyer less brilliant than Harry, and was difficult even for him. Draco knew the woods intimately, knew every tree and branch, and he whipped between them like a flickering spark of silver in the dark. Harry knew his friend wasn't trying to lose him among the jagged branches, it was just that Draco loved to fly, he always had, and now that he was well enough again to fly as he wanted to, he was determined to do it with style. He spun upside-down several times on his broom as they shot out of the forest and onto the barren tract of land that bordered it to the east. To the west, the Manor glittered, bound with lights like a fairytale castle. To the east, a great blackness spread like a stain across the bare ground. It was only when Draco angled his broom down, and Harry followed, that Harry realized that the darkness was the Bottomless Pit. 

"Malfoy --" Harry cried in alarm, seizing his friend's arm and forcing it back down to his side. "What the hell are you doing?" 

"What does it look like I'm doing?" Draco's eyes were slitted against the wind and Harry couldn't tell his mood at all: happiness, exultation, despair, resignation, boredom? He could have reached to touch Draco's mind, but it seemed, in the face of their meeting with Dumbledore in two days, like more of a painful reminder than either of them needed. "I'm tossing my Charms into the Bottomless Pit." 

"But --" 

"But what? It's an ideal solution. They'll fall forever, never hitting bottom, never breaking. No one will ever find them again." 

"I don't understand," Harry said. "Why are you doing this now?" 

"I don't want to carry them any more," said Draco, the glitter of his narrowed eyes just visible through his lashes. 

"I told you I would," Harry said. 

The wind had died down. Draco opened his eyes and his clear, searching look was free of sarcasm. "I would put my life in your hands without a second thought if it were only myself I cared about." 

"I don't mind the risk," said Harry. "I don't mind the responsibility." 

Draco looked away from him, towards the endless blackness of the Pit. "Harry," he said. "You've never minded risk or responsibility. You've never been allowed to mind them. They've always been your whole life. But what kind of friend would I be if now that you might finally be free of all that, I placed yet another burden on you?" 

"Friendship isn't a burden," said Harry. 

"Most friends don't hold each other's lives in their hands." 

"We aren't most people," said Harry, but he could see from Draco's expression that the other boy's mind was made up. "All right," he said, releasing Draco's arm. "If that's what you really want." 

"It's what I want," said Draco, and he went lightly to the edge of the Pit, and looked down into it. Harry joined him at the edge and for a moment they looked down together into the yawning emptiness. It was like the sea in a way, Harry thought, the moonlight penetrating only the first layers of its atmosphere, suffusing them with a milky glow. Below that glow was impenetrable darkness. He remembered falling into it himself, his hand slipping out of Hermione's, and the sensation of spinning away into nothingness. 

Beside him, Draco took a deep breath and raised his hand, the Epicyclical Charms dangling from his fingers. They shimmered like tears in the moonlight. One, Harry thought, had been made in fear and bitterness, and the other had been made in fear and love, but either could be used to control Draco, to break him or kill him, and even though when he had held those charms in the palm of his hand, Harry had felt that he held Draco's life safe and protected, perhaps that was more selfish than it was true. 

Draco drew his hand back and threw the Charms with all his strength. They hurtled out into the darkness, spinning, their bright chains tangling together. They seemed to hang for a moment over the Pit before they fell, soundless and shining, and were swallowed up by the blackness. 

Draco stepped back from the edge. His bright hair shone in the moonlight and he was breathing as if he'd been running. "That's it, then," he said. 

"That's it," agreed Harry. 

Draco looked at him sideways. "Are you angry with me?" 

"No," Harry said, mildly surprised that it was true. "And in a way, I guess, it's the best thing you could have done with them. It's fitting." 

"And why's that?" 

"Because," Harry said. "Now some part of you will always be flying." 

*** 

Ginny spent a bad night, her sleep fraught with peculiar dreams. In them, she was dancing, spinning out of control in the center of a huge ballroom while whispering voices mocked her from the shadows. She woke up with the sun streaming through the paned windows, her eyes swollen and her head aching. 

Today, she thought, staring up at the ceiling. Today she would take the potion, after the wedding ceremony itself but before the reception. She would dance in Seamus' arms tonight and she would be happy about it. She thought of herself, dancing and smiling, happy and delighted, and her eyes filled slowly with tears. 

*** 

The wedding itself went off without a hitch. It was small -- much smaller than that evening's reception would be -- and took place in the rose garden which Narcissa had so carefully cultivated since Lucius had left the Manor. There were white roses everywhere: a trellis of them hung over the altar, Floating Charms kept bouquets of them spinning in midair, the rows of chairs facing the altar were girdled with them, and white petals lined the aisle where Narcissa walked to meet Sirius, who standing between Draco and Lupin and looking very pleased with himself. Narcissa -- who walked down the aisle on her own -- was beaming and looked beautiful, but the scent of the flowers made Ginny feel vaguely nauseated. 

"Isn't it lovely," Mrs. Weasley breathed. She was dressed in stiff pink robes with a spray of yellow flowers pinned to her pink hat. She was clutching a handkerchief in one hand and Mr. Weasley's arm with the other. "I do so adore weddings. Don't you?" she said to Seamus, who was seated on the other side of her and looked handsome and golden-haired in tailored dark blue. 

Seamus, who had once charmingly complimented Mrs. Weasley on her sweaters and told her how lovely she looked, stared at her with blank eyes and said, "Not really." 

"Oh," said Mrs. Weasley. 

Mr. Weasley stifled a snort and Ginny turned her attention back to the proceedings. Narcissa had reached the altar and was standing beside Sirius. Remus was saying something to Draco, who was nodding in agreement. Draco's silvery hair grew so quickly, she thought -- just last week it had been short and now it was long enough to curl over his ears and fall in his eyes in that way that made Ginny want to push it back. If he had a proper girlfriend, she thought, and wasn't carrying on this odd charade with Blaise, he'd have someone to see to his hair. Then she immediately felt guilty for thinking such things about Blaise, who was her friend, after all, and looked as pretty as an apple blossom today in a pink and white dress with a high neck. It was nothing like the garment Draco had gotten for Blaise, which Blaise planned to wear to that night's reception: a low-cut red dress made of a material so slinky and expensive that it felt like snake scales slithering along your hand when you touched it. She had showed it to Ginny, who'd felt immediately envious. Still, you had to be a certain sort of girl to wear that color red and Ginny wasn't at all sure she was that sort of girl. In fact, she was nearly sure she wasn't. 

The kindly-looking wizard who Narcissa had contracted to perform the marriage service had begun speaking. Ginny had gathered that he was some sort of distant uncle of Narcissa's, but he rather resembled Dumbledore's brother, the one with the unfortunate prediliction for goats. At the moment, he seemed to be reciting some sort of poem. "Love," he began firmly, "drives all the world. For in the words of Paul: 

If I speak in the tongues of men and angels,  

but have not love,  

I have become a sounding brass or a tinkling symbol.  

And if I have prophecy and know all mysteries and all knowledge,  

and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains,  

but have not love, I am nothing.  

Love is patient,  

love is kind,  

it is not jealous;  

love does not boast,  

it is not arrogant.  

It is not discourteous,  

it seeks not its own,  

it is not easily provoked,  

it thinks no evil. 

It does not rejoice in wrong, but rejoices in the truth.  

Love bears all things,  

Believes all things,  

Hopes all things,  

Endures all things.  

Love never ends --  

There was a sharp clatter. Turning, Ginny saw to her dismay that Seamus had bolted to his feet, knocking his chair backward. He was breathing hard as if he'd been running and was quite white-faced, sweat plastering his blond hair to his forehead. He turned abruptly and began shoving his way out through the seated crowd, nearly knocking people down in his haste to get away. Ron yelped with pain as Seamus trod on his toe, muttered a hastily apology, and bolted from the garden, heading towards the Manor as if Lucius' pack of slavering hellhounds were on his heels. 

Even Sirius and Narcissa had turned around and were staring. Ginny rose as the whispers did, conscious of Draco looking at her across the crowd, his grey eyes narrowed and cynical. Ginny began to push her way down the aisle of chairs when a hand shot out and gripped her wrist. 

It was Hermione. "Don't you dare go after him," she whispered. 

Harry, seated beside her, blinked. "But, Hermione --" 

"Someone has to," Ginny whispered back, acutely conscious of all the people around them staring. "He might hurt himself or something." 

Hermione stood up. "I'll go," she said, and despite Harry's annoyed protests, pushed her way down the aisle and dashed up the path towards the Manor. 

Her cheeks flaming, Ginny returned to her sit and slumped down next to her mother, wishing she could fold herself up so small that she'd disappear. Mrs. Weasley patted her hand sympathetically as the-wizard-who-wasn't-Aberforth-but-sort-of-looked-like-him cleared his throat and began speaking again. "Don't worry," she said soothingly. "It's just weddings. They make men all jumpy." 

"Bah," said George loudly, from behind them. Fred and George had arrived seconds before the wedding started, by Portkey, from a months-long beach vacation in Belize. They were both covered in a million new freckles and George, and least, smelled strongly of coconut rum. Ignoring his mother's glare, George added: "He's peculiar, Finnigan is. Very peculiar." 

"I don't remember him being all that peculiar before," said Fred. "He must have been playing it close to the chest." 

"I think I liked it better when she was dating Malfoy," said George. 

Mrs. Weasley shook her head so hard that the flowers on her hat bent as if in a stiff breeze. "Oh, great Merlin," she moaned. "Don't say that."  

*** 

Ginny sat on the windowsill at the end of the Manor's second floor hallway, a blank book open in her lap, a quill between her fingers. Through the window, she could see the house-elves cleaning up the detritus of the wedding ceremony in the garden below: folding up the chairs, carrying away the loops of strung-together roses. The sun was setting, all blood and fire, over the distant trees. 

She looked down at the book in her lap. With Tom gone - finally and forever, really gone - she had thought it might be time to start another diary, something she'd been terrified to do since it had turned out so badly her first year at school. Surely there was nothing wrong with the principle of a diary, especially a safe, blank one purchased from a Muggle bookshop. Surely if she couldn't share her thoughts with anyone else, she could share them with herself. So far, however, she'd written exactly one word: 

Today 

She tapped the feathered end of the quill against her forehead as if the gesture might shake loose a few more words, but her brain was buzzing too badly to think straight. She'd gone by Seamus' room after the ceremony, had knocked, but no one had answered. Part of her hoped he was all right. Another, smaller part of her, a shame-filled part, almost hoped he wasn't. 

"You look like a painting," came an amused voice, "of Genius, hard at work. What are you writing?" 

She looked up and saw Draco, like a black and white Beardsley portrait in his formal robes, looking down at her with calculated nonchalance. She scowled. 

"Nothing," she said, and slammed the book shut. 

"Ah," he said, "drawing pornographic sketches of me, then, are you? Well, you can't really be blamed for that." 

"There's nothing in here about you, Draco." 

"I find that hard to believe," said Draco, and made a lightning-fast grab for the book, yanking it out of Ginny's hands before she could react. He blinked down at the pages. "'Today'?" he said. "How laconic. Is this a diary or a tone poem?" 

"Idiot," said Ginny, and reached to snatch it back from him. A brief tug of war ensued, which ended when Draco let go of the book just as Ginny drew her arm back, a gesture that sent the diary sailing out the window. There was the sound of a crash, and a high exclamation. Draco leaned out the window. 

"Bugger," he said, "you've smashed one of the glass centerpieces. Quick, get down." He ducked out of the window frame and crouched under it, pulling her down beside him. 

"Oh, dear," Ginny said, overcome with guilt. "Will your mother be very upset? I hope it doesn't wreck the reception--" 

"Oh, don't worry about it, we've got dozens of them and my mother won't mind, it's the house-elves you have to worry about. They take everything personally. I rather miss the days my father kept them all in line with a strict regimen of terror. What with my mother paying them a living wage and ensuring their job security, they've gotten awfully careless. One of them even refused to polish my shoes with his tongue this morning, can you believe that?" 

Ginny rolled her eyes upward. "I know you don't really think that way," she said. "I just wonder why you have to pretend like you do." 

He grinned. "I find it very attractive when you analyze me like this," he said. They were on their knees facing each other, close enough so that she could see the little white half-moon scar on his cheek, the individual metallic eyelashes, like strokes of a silver pencil. She could lean forward and kiss him; it would be so easy. It would be a way to say goodbye. 

She stood up, jerking her hands out of his grasp. "I don't care what you find attractive," she said frostily, and turned to stalk off down the corridor. She could feel him watching her walk away and it made her nervous enough that her hand shook slightly as she reached the door of her bedroom, grabbed for the knob and flung it open -- 

Only it wasn't her bedroom. In her haste, she'd opened the door of the room beside hers. It was Blaise's room: Ginny could tell this from the bright pink trunk overflowing with clothes, the dark red dress flung carelessly across the bedspread, and the fact that Blaise herself was lying on the floor of the bedroom, entangled in a passionate embrace with Ginny's brother, Ron. 

Ginny's hand flew to her mouth. "Ron!" she gasped. 

"Weasley?" came an equally stunned voice from behind her. 

Blaise gave a little shriek and sat up. Her pretty dress was in disarray; so was her hair. Ron had turned a dark purple color, though not quite dark enough to hide the lipstick marks on his face. 

Blaise was the first of them to find her voice. "Haven't you ever heard that it's polite to knock?" she demanded, leaping to her feet and smoothing down the front of her dress. 

"Haven't you ever heard that it's polite not to lock lips with a half-witted troglodyte mere hours before you're supposed to be going on a date with me?" Draco replied. 

Blaise didn't look at Ron, who was rising sheepishly to his feet behind her, while doing up the buttons on his shirt. "It was an accident," she said. 

"I see," said Draco. "So you tripped and fell on his lips?" 

Blaise threw up her hands. "What do you want me to say? It just happened." She whirled around and glared at Ron. "Tell them. Tell them it just happened." 

Ron looked at her, then looked at Ginny, and lastly, he looked at Draco. It was a calm, measuring look, and held none of the hatred Ginny would have expected. It was as if he was looking at Draco and seeing him not as a rival or an enemy, but just as he was. "It didn't just happen," he said. "It's been going on for months." 

Blaise looked as if she might cry. "RON. YOU PROMISED."  

"I know," said Ron, "but I also made a promise to myself not to carry on relationships in secret any more. And whatever I might have thought of Malfoy, he doesn't deserve to be lied to like that." 

Blaise put her hand to her mouth, but said nothing. Her eyes were wide. Draco looked at her coolly. "My, what an original sort of sin you've found for yourself, Blaise," he said. 

"Oh, stop it," Ginny snapped at him, suddenly annoyed. "You've done worse. I just don't understand why you kept it a secret," she added, turning to Blaise. "Just because of Draco?" 

"No!" Blaise took her hand away from her mouth. "Because of you."  

"Me!" Ginny was astounded. 

"You're my friend," Blaise said. "But I didn't want you to think I was just using you to try to get close to Ron." 

Draco snorted. "Try to get close to Ron? If you'd gotten any closer to him, you'd have--" 

"Oh, shut up, Draco," said Ginny and Blaise together, at the same time. "Blech," Ginny added, for emphasis. "That's my brother you're talking about, Draco." 

Draco snorted again. He was leaning against the doorframe, looking bored and amused at the same time. "All that red hair," he said to Blaise. "Aren't you worried about clashing horribly?" 

Blaise shot him a glare, then seemed to think better of it. "I'm sorry if I hurt you, Draco," she said. 

"You certainly did hurt me. That image of Weasley slobbering in your ear will be burned on my retinas for all time." 

"I meant emotionally," said Blaise, with exaggerated patience. 

"Ah," Draco said. "I wouldn't worry about that." And he grinned. 

Looking relieved, Blaise turned to Ginny. "And I'm especially sorry I didn't tell you," she said. "I really do...like you." 

Ginny knew that for the reserved Slytherin girl, this was an enormous admission. "I like you, too," she said, and went across the room to throw her arms around Blaise; the other girl hugged her back, clearly relieved. 

"And now we get to the interesting part," said Draco, sounding pleased. 

Ron glared at him. "That's my sister you're leering at," he said. "AND my girlfriend." 

"If only your mum would get in on the action too, I could really hit the trifecta of your disapproval," said Draco consideringly. 

Ginny broke away from hugging Blaise. "My mother?" she began, then broke off as Harry and Hermione came into the room. Harry had his arm around Hermione, who wasaround in bewilderment. 

"What's going on?" she said. "What's all the yelling? And were you saying something about having a girlfriend, Ron?" 

"Ron has a girlfriend?" said Harry, looking surprised. "Nobody ever tells me anything. So who is it?" he inquired, turning to Ron, who looked wrung out, as if he'd just run a marathon. 

"It's me," said Blaise, frostily. 

Harry's eyebrows flew up. "But I thought you were dating Malfoy. You are dating Malfoy, aren't you? Or did you just dump him?" 

"Harry!" Hermione hissed. "Have some tact!" 

"Tact is just lying for grown-ups," said Ginny, without thinking, and saw Draco glance at her sideways in surprise. 

"Blaise and I were not dating," said Draco. "We had planned to attend the reception together, as friends, but since she has found love - albeit somewhat farther down the food chain than I had hoped -- I can hardly stand in her way." 

"Your forbearance is appreciated," said Blaise, sounding very Slytherin for a moment. Then she grinned. "Of course, us going to the reception as friends didn't stop you trying to get my knickers off in the carriage on the way over." 

"I was just testing whether you were still susceptible to my charms," said Draco loftily. "I didn't want you to get hurt." 

"I'm not sure I can say the same about you," said Ron, eyeing Draco as if the idea of knocking him down a flight of stairs was distinctly appealing. 

"I do love it when you're all possessive like that," said Blaise, slinking over to Ron and putting her arms around him. Ron looked pleased, if slightly embarrassed, by this public show of affection. Blaise glanced over her shoulder at the others, her lips curling into a smile. "There's about to be a certain amount of snogging in this room," she informed them. "If you don't want to watch, I suggest you leave now." 

Harry, Hermione, Draco and Ginny exited the room so swiftly that there was a minor bottleneck at the door, resolved only when Harry put his hands on Draco's back and pushed. They all emerged into the hallway at high speed, Harry reaching back to slam the door shut behind them.  

"Honestly!" said Hermione, looking flabbergasted. "Blaise Zabini and Ron. Who would have thought? -- I mean, honestly." 

"Why not Blaise?" said Ginny. "She's really nice." 

"She's a Slytherin," said Harry, looking dubious; then, catching Draco's look, added hastily, "Not that there's anything wrong with that." He grinned. "Some of my best friends are Slytherins." 

"Nice save, Potter," said Draco. Then, glancing past Harry, added, "Isn't that your door, Ginny?" 

She followed his glance. "Yes -- mine's the room next to Blaise's." 

"It looks like someone left you a note." He pointed, and Ginny saw that he was right -- there was a folded square of parchment wedged into the doorframe.  

"That's odd," she said. She bent to retrieve the paper, conscious that the others were watching her curiously. There was nothing written on the outside of it, not even her name. She unfolded it. Dear Ginny, it began. "It's from Seamus," she said, surprised, and rose to her feet, still reading. When she was done, she read it again, just to be sure. Then she raised her eyes, slowly, and looked at the others. "It's a goodbye note," she said slowly. "He's leaving." 

*** 

"I guess when he said 'leaving' he meant 'already left'," said Draco, dryly. The four of them stood in the doorway of the guest room that Seamus had been staying in, staring around them. The room was neat as a pin, the bed made and the towels folded neatly on a chair. All of Seamus' belongings were gone.  

"But why?" said Harry, sounding totally bewildered. "Why would he just leave like this?" He ran a hand through his mop of dark hair. "Should we ... owl him or something?" 

"No," said Ginny, so abruptly that it took her a moment to realize someone else had spoken at the same time she had. Hermione.  

"No," Hermione said again, this time quietly. "If he wants to go, let him go." 

Ginny stared at her for a moment. "You went after him at the wedding," she said. "What did you say to him?" 

"Nothing," said Hermione, but she flushed a dark red when she spoke, and couldn't seem to meet Ginny's eyes. 

"You're a terrible liar, Hermione," Ginny said coldly, then whirled and walked out of the room, clutching Seamus' note - now a balled-up knot of paper -- inside her tightly closed fist. She kicked open her bedroom door and stalked inside, turning to slam the door behind her.  

It didn't close. Someone was standing on the other side of it, holding it open. Ginny pulled her hand back with a scowl, and the door opened.  

"Draco," she said, wearily. "What do you want?" 

He looked at her, then down at the note in her hand. "So," he said, bluntly. "Is he gone for good?"  

"I don't see how that's any of your business," she snapped. There was a sharp, burning feeling in the back of her throat--she wasn't sure if it was tears, or something else. She was very conscious of the room behind her, especially the flask of love potion sitting out on her bedside table in plain view.  

"Let me guess," said Draco. "He needs some time to think." 

"Not in so many words," she said, grudgingly. She wanted to blame this on him, somehow, but the phrases in Seamus' letter rose up behind her eyes, unbidden, I love you, but I can't do this. Something's wrong and we both know it. I don't know how long I'm leaving for but I'll come back. It always comes back to that, she thought tiredly, doesn't it? Those four words. I love you, but. 

"If he's gone off to think, it could be quite some time," said Draco, his light eyes glittering. "Finnegan's brain always struck me as a bit like the Hogwarts Express -- reliable, but slow." 

"Unlike yours," said Ginny tightly, "which, if you're going to stick with the metaphor, is more along the lines of a rural Welsh railway." 

He widened his eyes at her. "How's that?" 

"Narrow, one-track and dirty." She felt herself smile at him, almost against her will. "Surely you've heard that one before." 

"I am not narrow-minded," he said. "Though the other two..." 

Ginny's hand had begun to hurt. She was still crushing the note from Seamus with her fist; glancing down, she thought of Tom, Tom crushing her hand until tears of pain stood in her eyes... "What do you really want, Draco?" she said. "Just to gloat over Seamus' departure?" 

"It does seem to have presented us with an interesting conundrum," he said. "I, now, have no date for the reception, and even someone of my ample and spectacular charms might have some difficulty finding a willing and attractive female to escort to the festivities in under three hours, not to mention the fact that really, we're in the middle of nowhere." 

"I'm sure there are some single female house-elves who'd be happy to oblige you." 

"And get my knees bitten? No thanks." He leaned forward a little, and said softly, "You do know what I'm asking you, don't you?" 

She raised her eyes to his. She could see herself reflected inside his pupils, surrounded by the stormy gray of his irises. "Spell it out," she said. 

"Go to the reception with me."  

She felt her mouth curl up at the corners. "Say 'please'," she said. 

For a moment, he said nothing, and she wondered if he were honestly offended, or really too proud to ask -- and then he reached out and touched her hair, very gently, with his scarred left hand, letting his knuckles brush her cheekbones, stroking his hand down the length of her hair to touch her throat, her shoulder, the curve of her collarbone. She felt the pulse jump in her throat, hoped he hadn't felt it.  

"Please," he said.  

It took all her self-control to pull away. "All right," she said. "Now go away so I can get dressed." 

*** 

Ginny sat on the end of the bed, looking at herself in the mirror that hung on the opposite wall. Her stomach felt as if it were alive with fluttering butterflies -- the same sort of butterflies that adorned her pale gray dress in a delicate pattern. She'd thought the material was so pretty when she picked it out in the shop, but now she could see that it was dull and washed her out, made her red hair look like dingy copper. Her freckles stood out like ink splotches across her nose.  

There was a knock on the door. Steeling herself, Ginny rose to open it. She only hoped that Draco didn't notice how awful the dress looked. Then again, who was she kidding? Of course he would notice, and he'd probably say something about it too, something cutting and offhand. Maybe it had been stupid to agree to go to this reception with him anyway. He'd only asked her because there was literally no one else he could have asked. Maybe-- 

The door swung open. It was Blaise, chic and sophisticated in a tailored black dress and stiletto heels, her lips painted rose pink, her eyes encirled with kohl. She was carrying something in her arms, something blood-red and satiny and heavy, and ... 

"Is that your dress?" Ginny asked, perplexed. "The one Draco bought you?" 

Blaise held it out to her. "No," she said. "It's your dress." 

Ginny blinked. "I don't know what you mean." 

Blaise smiled crookedly. "Draco might have said this dress was for me," she said, "but it was always for you. It doesn't even fit me, Ginny. Entirely the wrong measurements. Even the wrong shade of red, really. It's meant to go with more coppery hair than mine. It's obvious that Draco was thinking of a particular girl when he bought it, and that girl wasn't me. It was you." 

Ginny just stared. "I don't..." 

"Yes, you do," said Blaise. "Take it." And she offered it to Ginny again, and the light struck the dress just so, making it glow gold and red like the heart of a ruby. Almost without volition, Ginny reached out and took the dress, feeling its weight, its smooth, cold softness. It felt almost alive in her hands. "And go put it on," Blaise added, flopping down on the bed. "I want to see if I was right." 

Ginny made a face at her, then disappeared into the bathroom to change. She could feel just by touching the red dress, by sliding it over her head and letting it shimmy down to her feet, how expensively made it was, despite its simple cut. When she walked out into the bedroom, Blaise sat upright on the bed and whistled. "Look at you," she said. 

With a feeling half of dread, Ginny turned and looked at herself in the mirror. Looked -- and then stared. The dress clung to her body, molded itself to her chest, made her legs look impossibly long and her waist impossibly slender. She had pinned up some of her hair with gold clips in the shapes of butterflies, and the curls that hung loose cascaded down her back. Far from clashing, the dress made them look a darker red-gold than they were. She bit her lip.  

Blaise jumped up. "Malfoy won't know what hit him," she said cheerfully. "Unless you slap him silly for leering at you -- then he will, obviously." She cocked her head. "I hear someone banging on my door. Must be your brother." She strode out into the hallway, leaving the door open behind her. 

Ginny pulled her shoes out from under the bed. They were the same shoes she'd worn last year at the Manor, the ones that had started their lives as socks printed all over with a cheerful pattern of ducks. She slipped them onand went out into the corridor, where Ron was standing with Blaise, their heads very close. She cleared her throat before they started up with anything really disgusting, like kissing. 

Ron broke away from Blaise and glanced over at her. "Oi there, Ginny--" he began, and broke off, looking thunderous. "What are you wearing?" he demanded. "Or rather, not wearing. If Mum sees you in that, she'll do her nut!" 

"Don't be such a troll, Ron," said Blaise. "She looks beautiful." 

Ron made a choking noise. "Beautiful? She looks--well, I'd say how she looks, but one doesn't use those sorts of words around one's little sister." 

"I think I look nice," Ginny replied, smoothing down her skirt. "Really, Ron." 

"I'm just glad you're not going with Malfoy," Ron said. "At least I can trust Seamus not to paw all over you." 

Oh dear, Ginny thought, realizing no one had told him. "Actually..." she began. 

"What she means to say," said Draco, materializing in the corridor behind Ron, "is that she is going with me. Actually." 

Ron turned around and stared at Draco, who was busy doing up his cufflinks. He looked even handsomer than usual, though Ginny wasn't sure why. He had on some sort of elegantly cut black suit with a white shirt underneath, very plain except for the emeralds that glittered in the cuffs on his wrists. He looked a little tired and his hair was falling over his eyes but he was beautiful. She wanted to tell him so, but perhaps it wasn't done to say that sort of thing to boys. 

"But -- but--" Ron stammered. "What happened to Seamus?" 

"What indeed?" said Draco. "A mystery for the ages." 

"But he was supposed to be taking Ginny to the reception," said Ron, looking rather like he had as a small boy when George or Fred had handed him a chocolate that turned out, when he bit into it, to be full of frothing soap. "Not you." 

"And I was supposed to be taking Blaise," Draco pointed out. "Not you." 

"That's different," Ron protested. "It wouldn't have been fair for Blaise to go with you when her true feelings were for me." 

Even Blaise rolled her eyes at this, but Draco only smiled. "And it wouldn't be fair for Ginny to go with Seamus, when he's done a bunk and no one knows where he is, would it?" 

"But--" Ron began. 

"No buts," said Draco shortly. "You have no moral high ground to stand on, Weasley. In fact, you have sunk so far down from the moral high ground that you are rapidly approaching THE MOLTEN CENTER OF THE EARTH." 

Blaise yawned. "Is this when you two start punching each other?" she inquired. "Because if that's the case, Ginny and I will just head down to the reception and you can meet us down there once you're done knocking the stuffing out of each other, or whatever other latently homoerotic form of violence you choose to engage in." 

"What?" said Ron, looking betrayed. "Who are you siding with here, Blaise?" 

"Neither," said Blaise. "You're both being ridiculous. And I'm leaving." And with that, she flounced off down the corridor, her skirt swishing around her legs as she went. 

Ron hesitated a moment, then jabbed a finger at Draco. "Just keep your paws off my sister," he said darkly. "I can see the future, Malfoy, and if you lay a hand on her, yours will be short and bloody unpleasant." 

"In the old days, I would have taken this opportunity to make a nasty remark about your mother," Draco reflected. "But as times have changed, I'll just say this: I don't need to be a Diviner to tell you that if you leave Blaise waiting for you at the end of the hallway like this, your future will contain no sex again, ever. Think about it." 

Ron made a spluttering noise, gritted his teeth, looked once at Ginny, and then stalked off down the corridor after Blaise. 

"Ugh," said Ginny. "I rather admire how you did that, but did you have to mention my brother and sex in the same sentence? Because I really don't..." 

She broke off, because he was looking at her, his eyes travelling up and down her body with an excruciatingly slow and exact appraisal. When his eyes met hers, he smiled. "That dress," he said, "looks exactly like I imagined it would." 

Ginny's heart banged against the inside of her ribcage. "Is that good?" she said. 

"Very good," said Draco, and took her hand, drawing her towards him - not close enough to kiss, but so they stood side by side. "And I like the duck socks," he said, twining his fingers with hers. "They add a certain flair." 

Ginny glanced down at the sparkling shoes just visible under the dress's hem. "You remember them?" she said. 

She couldn't see him smile, but somehow, she felt it.  

"I remember everything," he said. 

*** 

"You've gotten better," Hermione said with a laugh, as Harry steered her across the dance floor with a determination that was more stolid than graceful -- but was nevertheless endearing.  

Harry smiled, shaking dark hair out of his eyes, though his gaze never left their feet. "Better at dancing, or better in a more general, moral sense?" 

"Better at dancing," said Hermione. "I already knew you had moral fiber. I believe you once won a tournament because of it?" 

At that he did look up, still smiling. A moment later he trod on her foot, but Hermione didn't really mind. Despite her earlier nerves, she'd been able to relax into the ambiance of the party. It was a slightly more subdued affair than the raucous birthday party they'd thrown here for Draco and Harry last year; this party had more of Narcissa about it, especially in the lovely decorations: the black and white silk banners that hung from the ceiling, the glowing, floating candles everywhere -- Hermione had flinched as one passed right in front of her, but it had given off no heat with its glow - and the overflowing pots of white and black roses everywhere. Every once in a while a rose would fall from one of them, turning to silk as it fell. People were picking them up and wearing them as party favors; Hermione had tucked a black silk rose into the blue satin band holding her hair back, and felt only a slight twinge when she did. 

There was a huge table running along one wall, laden with silver tureens heaped with sweet ices, chocolate-covered strawberries and all sorts of other treats. There were musicians on the adjacent stage, a group so delicate and fey-looking Hermione couldn't help wondering if they were faeries. Either way, she doubted that this year, Snape would be singing any karaoke. Near the stage, Sirius and Narcissa were dancing, seemingly lost in their own private world. It was nice, Hermione thought, looking at them wistfully, to see people get a second chance at happiness, especially two people who'd been so miserable for most of their lives. 

She did worry a bit about Professor Lupin, though. She hoped that now that Sirius was married, he wouldn't forget about his friend. Lupin seemed so lonely sometimes, living in his little cottage off the Hogwarts grounds -- 

"What are you thinking about?" Harry asked, breaking her out of her reverie. "Your face went all serious just then." 

"Oh," she said vaguely, "just thinking about people missing chances to be happy in their lives -- and then being lonely. I guess I was just ... wandering." 

He pulled her a little closer. "Hermione, I --" 

She caught a flash of red just over his shoulder and pulled back. "Look," she said. "It's Blaise and Ron -- and Draco and Ginny, behind them. I did wonder if they'd wind up coming to the reception together." 

Harry turned to look, though he didn't seem as interested as she'd thought he would be. "Blaise and Ron," he said. "That's pretty weird." 

She laughed. "And Draco and Ginny isn't?" They were coming down the steps as she spoke, Draco all white and black like the decorations, Ginny a lick of live flame in a red dress Hermione had never seen her wear before. She looked beautiful, and electric. 

"That's been brewing for a long time," said Harry. "Not that I could tell you where it's going to end up, of course." He spun her around in a turn, and now she was facing the other end of the grand ballroom, the wall of latticed French doors, each one of which led out onto a private marble balcony. Fleur Delacour and Viktor Krum were dancing near them, Fleur speaking sharply to Viktor in French and Viktor nodding along patiently, though as far as Hermione knew, Viktor didn't speak French. Perhaps he was better off that way. 

"Well, of course," said Hermione. "You never know what makes relationships work or not work. Not from the outside, anyway." The dancing crowd parted, and she saw Mr and Mrs Weasley dancing together, their arms around one another, looking perfectly content. "But it's lovely when it does work out, isn't it?" 

"It is," said Harry, "and that's why--" 

"Oh, goodness," said Hermione interrupting him. "Snape's here. I'm always surprised when I see him turn up for anything remotely festive." She indicated with a jerk of her chin where Snape stood, a foaming mug in his hand, deep in conversation with Charlie Weasley and Lupin. She chuckled. "And some people are married to their work, of course--" 

"Hermione," Harry said, his tone exasperated. "I've been trying to say something to you for the past five minutes and you keep interrupting me. Will you just listen for a second?" 

"Oh!" Hermione said, suddenly contrite. "Sorry, I was babbling. What is it?" 

"It's..." Harry began, and hesitated. Hermione looked up at him as if for the first time that evening and saw the hectic color in his cheeks, the sharp brightness of his eyes, the rapid pulse beating in his throat, and became truly alarmed. 

"Harry! Is something wrong?" 

"No," he muttered. "Nothing's wrong," and with that, he took a firm hold of her wrists and steered her across the dance floor to a shadowy alcove, some distance from the other dancers. "It's just private." 

"But you're all right?" she said, scanning his face for clues. "Nothing's happened?" 

He let go of her wrists then and took her face in his hands, his fingertips on her cheeks as light as kisses. The feel of them was so familiar, as everything about Harry was familiar, and beloved as everything about him was beloved, as she might love the best and brightest part of her own self. His eyes were wide, looking down at hers, his breath coming rapidly, and her instinct told her to put her arms around him and hold him and comfort him, for surely only a terrible sort of pain could make him look at her with such an intensity as this.  

"Hermione," he said, before she could move. "Hermione, I've got something to ask you..." 

"So ask me, Harry," she said, bewildered. "Whatever it is, you know you can ask me. You can ask me anything." 

He slid his hands down to her shoulders and gripped them tightly, so tightly it hurt. "Hermione," he said, levelly. "Hermione, will you marry me?" 

She felt her eyes fly open, her heart stop, and she wondered if all of her might suddenly stop as she fainted dead away like Sleeping Beauty wounded by the needle. But no, she was just Hermione Granger, not a fairytale princess, and she couldn't faint dead away on command -- no matter how much she wished she could when she looked up at Harry's face, Harry's beautiful, beloved, so-familiar face, his green eyes so wide and hopeful, and said: 

"No, Harry. No. I couldn't possibly. I'm sorry, but no." 

*** 

"Don't you think it's time you introduced me to your parents?" Blaise inquired as they moved -- fairly gracefully, Ron felt, considering his lack of serious dancing experience -- across the polished marble floor of the Manor ballroom. "I mean now that we're officially out, so to speak, to your friends." 

"I suppose," said Ron reluctantly. He couldn't help wondering how Blaise, beautiful and sophisticated as she was, would react to his down-to-earth, slightly shabby family situation. He tried to picture her casually pitching in to help his Mum with the washing up, and failed utterly.  

"Ashamed of me, are you?" Blaise demanded, fixing him with a piercing green stare. "I'm all right for a bit on the side, but when it comes to introducing me to your parents --" 

"I never thought of you as a bit on the side!" Ron protested, though he sensed that this, like most arguments with Blaise, was a battle he was going to lose. Mostly because she didn't play fair. It was like dating Malfoy -- if, he reminded himself quickly, Malfoy were a girl. A hot girl. Malfoy was neither of those things. In fact, it wasn't like dating Malfoy at all. He wished that thought had never occurred to him. 

"What on earth is wrong with you, Ron?" Blaise demanded, executing a complex turn and steering him along like a small barge as she did so. "You've turned a horrible green color. Surely the idea of introducing me to your family isn't that nightmarish." 

"No," said Ron, weakly. "It's not that." 

Blaise smiled that smile that always made his knees go wobbly. "Well, you're a Diviner. Surely you can look into the future and see how your parents take the news." 

"What if I told you that telling them would set off a chain reaction of apocolyptic events, covering all the world with a second darkness and flooding the Earth's continents with boiling, red-hot magma?" 

"I'd say you were shirking." 

"As I thought." Ron sighed. "I suppose I was rather hoping Ginny would do it for me." 

Blaise chuckled. "She looks as if her mind is on other things at the moment." 

Ron followed the line of her gaze and saw his sister, in that terrifying red dress of hers, her arms wrapped around Draco Malfoy. They weren't so much dancing as clinging to each other. "Why now?" Ron said plaintively. "I thought she was over her whole Malfoy fixation --" 

He broke off and stared. Just beyond Draco and Ginny, moving among the dancers like a flickering shadow, was a familiar, dark-haired figure. He would have recognized her anywhere, as much from the way she moved as from the black hair that wrapped her like a shawl, or the slim pale face, like a thumbprint in white paint against the shadowy background of the suddenly darkened room... 

Rhysenn.  

She knew that he saw her - she raised a hand, slim and white-fingered, and beckoned him towards her. She was smiling as she turned and slipped away through the dancers, headed for a low door at the east side of the ballroom. 

"What is it, Ron?" Blaise sounded actually alarmed now. "Are you --" 

"I'll be right back." Ron drew away from his dancing partner and hurried after Rhysenn, leaving Blaise, perplexed, staring after him.  

*** 

They were in a room full of people, and they were dancing. Distantly Ginny knew that the room was the ballroom at Malfoy Manor, and that it had been beautifully decorated in clean shades of white and black: white and black silk draperies drifted in the air like restless ghosts, and rose petals spilled from the sky at intervals. There was even a glittering ice sculpture that changed shapes as it melted: now a flower, now a swan with outspread wings. She saw all this, and didn't see it; she was focused entirely on Draco. 

They had been laughing together as they came down the stairs into the ballroom, but that had changed once they started dancing. Conversation had fallen away, swallowed up or vanished in the intensity of feeling that touching each other had brought with it -- Ginny knew she wasn't alone in feeling it, either; she'd seen the look on his face too, that funny, half-taken aback and half-wry look that meant that his own emotional response had surprised him. 

She could feel the roughness of his scarred hand against the bare skin of her back, the feather-light brush of his fingertips against her wrist. Her mouth was dry and her heart felt both impossibly light and impossibly saturated with feeling -- and all these things she had never felt with Seamus, not even when he was kissing her, she felt from the light touch of Draco's hands. 

She felt like a raw wound, cut open and terribly vulnerable to injury, and yet at the same time she felt more alive than she ever had. There was a word for this feeling, a word she had almost forgotten how to apply to her own life. 

Hope. 

I love and I hope. They were passing the long table where the ice sculpture sat; as they moved past it it morphed from the shape of a heart to the shape of a glittering star. "What did you say?" Draco asked, leaning in to hear her, his hair brushing her cheek.  

Ginny hadn't realized she had spoken out loud. Flustered, she said, "I was just noticing the ice sculpture. It's awfully pretty." 

"Yes. Mother does seem to have gone all out with the décor," said Draco, as if the topic interested him only mildly. "I suppose that's because Father never really let her have any say in it before." 

"No, it didn't seem like her. All that dark wood and -- what? Are you laughing at me?" she said, as a smile flitted across his face. 

"Every time we dance past your brother and Blaise, he glares at me," he said. "He seems quite certain I intend to 'paw all over you', as he said." 

"And you don't?" 

He laughed. "Sometimes I forget how direct you are. No, Ginny, I don't plan to put my hands on you - unless you ask me to." 

She shook her head, making the gold butterfly clips rattle. "I don't think you need to worry about that." 

"You've rather mastered the art of being scornful, haven't you, for a Weasley?" he said, with great amusement. "You know, it took me years to figure out who you were." 

She blinked at him, nonplussed. "What?" 

"I was twelve," Draco said. "I'd just come home for the summer and I went into the library looking for my father. He wasn't there, but someone else was. A most beautiful girl, taller than I was, with hair like the edge of a candleflame--" 

"You knew that was me?" Ginny was astonished. "You remembered?"  

"Oh, it took me a good deal of time to realize that it had been you. The real you was eleven back then, all knobbly knees and big eyes and an even bigger crush on Harry Potter. I never would have tied you in to the gorgeous girl in the library who said she was going to be my governess and then vanished between one instant and the next." 

Ginny laughed. "I think I told you you were tiny," she said. 

"You did. It was quite a blow to my masculine pride." 

"Masculine pride? You were twelve!" 

"I was quite disappointed you weren't really going to be my governess, either. I had an entire fantasy about misbehaving just so you'd punish me --" 

"Glad to hear you were entirely perverse even at twelve." 

"I assure you, governess fantasies are quite the norm, especially among members of the upper class." Draco steered her gracefully through a difficult turn. 

"Is that why you're telling me this story?" Ginny demanded. "Because I'm not going to dress up as a --" 

"Shh." Draco put a finger gently against her lips. She could smell the peppery scent of his cologne. "I'm telling you this story because I wanted you to know that for years I thought of you as the girl. The one I measured other girls against, even though I didn't know you, didn't know your name. And when I realized I'd actually known you all along but never recognized you --" 

"Malfoy?" A familiar voice broke through Draco's speech; looking as startled as Ginny felt, he stopped dancing. They both turned to see Harry standing just beside them, and from the way the others on the dance floor were staring after him, Ginny suspected he'd shouldered his way through the crowd to get to Draco. His collar was askew and he looked dazed, as if he'd been hit on the head. "Malfoy," he said, again, "I need to talk to you."  

Ginny was already pulling her hands out of Draco's, readying herself to let him go. He was staring at Harry, both corners of his mouth curled into that quixotic shape that meant he was truly nonplussed. "Now?" he said. 

"I need to talk to you," Harry said, again, and he really did look dreadful, Ginny thought, as if he were about to be sick. 

Ginny tried to step back, but Draco was holding her hands tightly, so tightly she could feel the bones in her fingers press against each other, and he said, "Harry, now is not a good time." 

"But--" Harry began, and then he looked from Draco to Ginny and back again, and a high flush colored his pale cheeks. "Quite right," he said, "I'm sorry to have been so rude,"and he turned and walked off, pushing his way through the crowd as if he were trying to lose himself in it. 

Ginny turned back to Draco. "I wouldn't have minded--" she began, but he was already pulling her towards him, starting to move them both back into the dance. 

"It's all right," he said. "What was it we were discussing? Governesses?" 

"And the upper class," she said, trying to make her voice light, but she could see from his expression that it was no good: the dancing light of mischief had left his eyes, and they were flat and grey as slate rocks. There was a strange resistance in him, too, as if instead of leaning to her he was pulling back, into himself.  

"Right," he said. "I was telling you--" 

She pulled away from him, and this time he wasn't expecting it. Her hands came free and she stepped back, seeing his puzzled look turn to a look of realisation when she said, "Draco. Just go." 

"I --" 

"I mean it," she said. 

He looked at her steadily for a moment, then swore under his breath, and turned away. She watched his bright hair until he vanished, swallowed up into the crowd. She had forgotten to ask him if he knew where Harry was going, but there was no real need to ask. He always knew. Her hand went to the chain at her throat. They should make a pendant that quoted the words from Seamus' letter, she thought. I love you, but. After all, there was always something.  

*** 

She was out on the balcony when he found her, sitting atop one of the marble railings as if she had no fear of the long drop to the garden below. Her black hair, unbound, fell to her feet and blew around her even though there was very little wind; her dress was the same color as her hair, a black that seemed to soak up the night. There was little color in her pale, pointed face, just the red slash of her lips, curled into a wide smile like a mask of Comedy. Her feet were bare. 

"Diviner," she said. "It's good to see you again." 

Ron stepped out onto the balcony and shut the door firmly behind him. He glanced around; there were other balconies than ran the length of this side of the Manor; most were occupied with couples. He could see a girl standing alone on a distant balcony, though it was too far for him to recognize her. In any case, no one was close enough to hear them. "I wasn't sure you'd come," he said. 

Her smile widened. "I don't normally obey summons these days -- but I'm fond of you, so I came. Though I don't flatter myself you missed me." 

"I associate you with being held prisoner by Voldemort," Ron said frankly. "I can't help that. But you did make it more bearable." 

"I have a certain native sympathy for prisoners. And you seemed so charmingly human -- so very ordinary, despite your talents." 

"I am ordinary," Ron said, "and I like it that way."  

"Do you still see the future?" Rhysenn asked, and cannily ran an arched, bare foot down the front of Ron's shirt, tweaking the buttons with her toes. 

"Don't do that," he said earnestly. "I have a girlfriend now." 

"I saw. The redheaded one who looks like she bites. Do you love her?" 

"Yes," said Ron. 

Rhysenn sighed. "That's depressing news. Don't tell me you brought me here just to announce that, or I'll be awfully annoyed." 

"Actually, I wanted to ask you a favor," Ron said. This was only somewhat true. Ginny was the one who had come up with this plan, and he had only agreed to it reluctantly. He had tried to ignore the small voice in the back of his head that said that half of Ginny's plans were world-beaters, while the other half were sure disasters. He fervently hoped this one fell into the former and not the latter category. "You can travel in time, can't you?" 

She frowned curiously. "I can travel in dimensions, and time is a dimension," she said. "But I don't do it often -- you can't change the past, and there's little point visiting the future; you'll be there anyway one day." 

"I don't want you to change the past. I want you to make sure it happens," said Ron. 

Rhysenn frowned at him. "Come again?" 

Ron reached into his pocket and withrew a scarlet circle that looked as if it were made of red glass, carved all over with peculiar runes. "Have you ever seen this before?" he asked. 

"No," she said, and Ron felt his knees go weak, realizing that this plan might actually be one of the world-beaters and not one of the disasters after all.  

"I need you to take this into the past and give it to someone," he said. 

"Seeing the future has unhinged your mind, Diviner," she said, with a shake of her head. "What would be the point of that?" 

"Because you've already done it -- look, I know you have, because you're the one who gave this band to Charlie to give to Harry, and you warned Harry about it later, but you can't have done that yet or you'd remember it." 

Rhysenn looked at him through grey, unblinking eyes like a snake's. "Who is Charlie?" she asked. 

Ron turned and pointed through the window. "There -- my brother. That one."  

Rhysenn looked pleased. "He's very handsome. I like him. He looks like you, but more solid. And older." 

"You don't like younger men?" 

"When you're six hundred years old all men are younger, but one does like to narrow the gap." She took the band from him and examined it. "These are powerful runes of protection." 

"I know," said Ron, glancing nervously into the window. If he took much longer with this, Blaise would kill him. "That's why you have to make sure to get it to Harry." 

"It sounds like a lot of trouble --" 

"You have to," Ron said earnestly. "If you don't, and Harry never gets the band, then he and Draco won't win out over Voldemort in Romania, and Lucius will never die, and you'll never be free." 

She looked at him hesitantly. "Lucius," she said. "How did he die?" 

"I killed him," Ron said, bluntly. And it was true -- he hadn't plunged the sword in, perhaps, but he'd killed him nonetheless. 

Rhysenn's hands tightened on the band until her knuckles stood out white and sharp, and her breath hissed through her teeth. "You killed him?" 

Ron nodded. 

"Then perhaps I do owe you, after all," she said. "Tell me precisely what I am to do." 

Ron told her, repeating Ginny's words to him exactly, though on some occasions he did forget specifics. "Oh, just say whatever you need to say to Charlie to get him to bring it to the party and give it to Harry," he said, finally. "Just make sure he doesn't see your face and can't describe you later. And when you get to the party, you can say whatever you like to Harry, as well. Just make sure he winds up keeping the damn thing on him and doesn't toss it in his trunk."  

"I can do that," said Rhysenn equably, sliding the band onto her wrist. She leaned forward then, shaking her hair out. "You won't kiss me good-bye?" 

"I can't," said Ron, with false regret. "Girlfriend." 

"Then tell me if I'll ever see you again, Diviner." 

"No," said Ron, and this time his regret was real. "You won't ever see me again. But you'll live a long time -- thousands of years -- and you'll forget me, and forget my name. But I hope you will remember --" 

Rhysenn drew back. She looked intensely strange and fey in that moment, the moonlight whitening her ageless face, her small teeth sharp and white as a kitten's where she smiled. "Remember what?" 

"That there is some value even in those of us who are ordinary. And that there is more to love than pain. Sometimes it can even make you happy." 

"Happy?" she said. "I've never been that." 

"No," he said. "But you will be." 

At that she did smile, a real smile that looked nothing like a mask. She rose lightly to her feet, balancing on her toes on the edge of the railing, so precariously that Ron reached for her without thinking. She stepped backward, away from his hand, and vanished; Ron raced to the railing and looked over it, into the gardens, but she was gone entirely, leaving on the echo of her silvery laughter behind. 

*** 

The library was dark. Harry was sitting in the window embrasure, looking down over the Manor grounds strung with lights, his hands clasped around his knees. Stepping into the room, Draco was hit with a powerful sense of déjà vu, so strong that for a moment he only stood in the doorway, looking and wondering. Will it always be like this?  

He took an unlit lamp from the desk and whispered Lumos to it. It flared into light and Harry glanced towards him, blinking. 

"Malfoy? I thought --" 

"What did you think?" 

"That you were busy," Harry finished, a little lamely. 

"I was," Draco said. "Now I'm not." He came over to the window, and Harry swung his legs down so that Draco could join him on the ledge. They were opposite the library's two great windows of colored glass, and the moonlight that came through cast alternating patterns of poison green, ice blue, and blood red across their skin. "So what is it that's got you looking like you just found out that you and Professor Trelawney are the last two people left on the planet and you have to repopulate the earth?" 

Harry frowned. "Professor Trelawney? Where do you come up with these things?" 

"So it's not that." 

"It's not--" Harry began indignantly, then checked himself. "It's Hermione." 

"This is me," said Draco, "falling off this ledge with astonishment." He raised the lantern a little to cast more light on Harry's face. "You do look like death," he admitted. "What did she do?" 

"It's what I did. I asked her to marry me." 

At that, Draco was so honestly startled that his hand jerked and he nearly dropped the lamp. He caught it again by its thin wire handle, and it swung in his grip, sending a crazy-quilt pattern of shadows shooting around the room. "Why would you do a completely blockheaded thing like that?" he demanded.  

The look Harry turned on him was distintly sour. "What's wrong with asking people to marry you?" 

"There's a lot wrong with asking people to marry you. That implies you're asking more than one person, and won't they be annoyed when they all show up at the church at the same time? As for what's wrong with asking Hermione: nothing particularly except that neither of you is old enough to get married. Do you expect her to be some kind of child bride?" 

"Seventeen is adult in the wizarding world," Harry muttered. 

"Yes," Draco agreed, "and that means you can get married, not that you should. Not everything that happens to be legal is a bloody brilliant idea. Of course the converse is also true--" 

"But I want to get married. I want to marry Hermione. There isn't anyone else I can picture myself married to, and I can't bear the thought of losing her." 

"Losing her?" Draco set the lamp down carefully. "Who said anything about losing her? It's not an either-or, you know, marriage or nothing. Besides," he added, more gently, "you shouldn't marry someone just to keep them tied to you. People stay because they want to, and if they don't, there's nothing you can do to make them." 

"My parents married young." 

"There was a war on. They knew they might die." And they did, the obvious corollary, hung between them, unsaid.  

"I feel like I might die," said Harry grimly. "I feel like there's nothing to hold on to." 

There's me, Draco wanted to say, but was it true? Would it be true once the spell on them was lifted? He knew Harry was thinking the same thing, could tell it by the look on his face (and would he ever know someone like that again, be able to deduce their every thought from their slightest movement?), so he said, "Don't be melodramatic, Potter. Did she say she never wanted to see you again?" 

"No," Harry admitted.  

"Did she say it made her sick to look at you?" 

"No." 

"What did she say?" 

"She said no," Harry replied. "She said 'she couldn't possibly.'" 

"And what did you do?" 

"I left," Harry said, in a tone that indicated that this had clearly been the only sensible course of action. "I went looking for you or Ron, but Ron wasn't around and you were --busy." 

"A delicate way of putting it," Draco said. "Has it occurred to you to ask her why she said no?" 

"Of course not! You just don't do that. I mean, I have some dignity," Harry added stiffly, looking suddenly very young in his elegant dress clothes, his glasses halfway down his nose and his tie coming unraveled.  

"Dignity just gets in the way where romance is concerned," Draco said thoughtfully. "I'd ask her. It's Hermione. She's probably got a reason." 

"But maybe I don't want to know what it is." 

"It's always better to know," Draco advised him. "Otherwise you'll rip yourself up wondering. And bore the hell out of me by jawing about it endlessly," he added, in a helpful tone. 

Harry put his hands up to cover his face; when he took them away, he looked resigned. "All right. But if it goes badly, Malfoy, I'm holding you responsible." He slid down off the window ledge and Draco followed him, setting the lamp back down on the desk where he'd found it. They left the room together, both of them blinking in the sudden bright light of the corridor outside. 

Draco looked sideways at Harry. "Do you need a drink to firm your resolve, Potter?" 

"No. When I drink I just get stupid." Harry squared his shoulders. "I'll be all right." 

"I just wish you looked a bit more all right," said Draco as they set off down the corridor to the ballroom. "You're still sort of a pinkish-green color. It does complement your eyes, the green, but it also makes you look like a mollusc." 

"I can't help it." They had reached the double doors to the ballroom; Harry turned around and gazed mournfully at Draco. "Don't you ever get that feeling," he said, "like there's a huge scary monster inside your chest trying to burst free? Do you think that's what being in love always feels like?" 

"No," Draco said, pushing the door open with his elegantly shod foot and gesturing for Harry to go in ahead of him. "I think you have indigestion. I'd see a mediwizard if I were you."  

*** 

Ginny, Draco had thought, ought to be easy to spot with her fire-engine red dress and equally bright hair, but search the ballroom as he might, she seemed to have vanished. He caught a flash of red as he made his way towards the silver punch bowl, but it turned out to be Charlie Weasley, steering Blaise Zabini across the dance floor. Blaise was looking pleased with herself. Draco wondered idly if she intended on dropping Ron for another one of the Weasleys -- Charlie certainly seemed a better bet, looks and intelligence-wise -- but Blaise was surprisingly loyal in her way. She'd certainly been loyal to him when he'd done little to deserve it.  

He was about to head to the French doors to see if Ginny had decided to step out onto one of the balconies, when he felt a hand touch his shoulder. He turned and saw Dumbledore standing just behind him, holding a silver tankard in one hand and beaming inquisitively down at him. "I thought I'd see how the birthday boy was doing," he said. 

Draco blinked. "It's not my birthday, sir," he said. "That was the last party we were at here. This time it's my mother's wedding." 

"How silly of me," said Dumbledore breezily, but Draco caught the glint of amusement in the headmaster's eyes and wondered, not for the first time, what he might be up to. "And are you enjoying yourself?" 

"I suppose so." 

"Not dreading tomorrow too much?" the Headmaster said. His tone was light, but his blue eyes were keen and penetrating. 

"Tomorrow?" Draco said slowly. "You mean the -- the spell reversal we discussed before. That will be tomorrow?" 

"I expect to see you both in the study at noon, yes."  

Draco said nothing to that. 

"Do not think I delight in being cruel to you," said Dumbledore, more gently. "I would not do this if I didn't think it was for your own good." 

"My own good," Draco echoed, flatly. 

"You don't agree, Mr. Malfoy?" 

Draco looked down at his left hand. The scar there, thick and double-cross-shaped, had its own whitish gleam under the flickering lights. He said, "Part of me wonders who will walk out of that room tomorrow, after you're done with us. Harry will be the same. I didn't change him like he changed me. But I wonder if I'll even know myself -- and if that means the self I'll be tomorrow is a lie, or perhaps the lie is what I'm living right now. And have been for a year." 

"I am not sure you are correct about Harry and whether you have changed him, but we will leave that aside for the moment," said Dumbledore with a certain dry concern. "If you don't mind my bringing it up, it is true, is it not, that in the last moments of your father's life, the curse Voldemort had laid on him was lifted?" 

As always happened when he talked about his father, Draco felt as if the air was being suctioned from his lungs, leaving him gasping. He said tightly, "It wasn't a curse that was lifted. It was something Voldemort had taken from him that was given back." 

"His paternal affection for you." 

Draco nodded. Air, he thought. He wished he could go out onto one of the balconies and catch his breath. 

"That must have been difficult for you," said Dumbledore.  

"I didn't feel anything about it at the time," Draco said. "He looked at me and he said all these things, things he'd never said - never would have said -- and I just thought: more lies." 

"But that was actually when he spoke the truth to you," said Dumbledore. "It was the past seventeen years that had been the lie." 

Draco looked away, no longer able to bear the headmaster's steady gaze. "It doesn't matter," he said. "It was too little, too late." 

"I agree," Dumbledore said, surprisingly. "And that is what I don't want for you. To find your true self too late. To live a lie." 

"But what if I hate my true self? What if he's just the same unpleasant bastard I remember him as? What then?" 

"That is always the choice," said Dumbledore. "The ugly truth or the beautiful lie." 

"I thought truth was beauty," said Draco with a short, unmirthful laugh.  

"In poetry, perhaps. But not in life." 

"That must be why I prefer poetry," said Draco. He looked up at the Headmaster. "There is something," he said, an idea, which had nagged at him before but never been fully realized, blooming suddenly to life in his head. "A favor I wanted to ask you. If it were at all possible..." 

"There's something you want from me?" said Dumbledore, eyes glinting behind his spectacles. "If this is about the Quidditch Cup --" 

"It's not about the Quidditch Cup. It's not really about school at all -- well, tangentially, maybe, it's about something at school, but not really part of school. I mean --" 

"I think perhaps you should slow down," said the Headmaster, looking amused, "and tell me exactly what it is you want. Who knows--? I might even give it to you." 

*** 

The sets of French doors at the far end of the ballroom each opened on to a small marble balcony that overlooked the gardens. They were supremely romantic spots, and Harry had already interrupted several couples mid-snog -- including Aidan Lynch and an unidentified buxom female in a robust pink corset -- before he found Hermione.  

The doors were already propped open, so she didn't hear him as he stepped out onto the balcony. She was leaning against the balustrade, her hand at her throat, worrying at something that hung around her neck on a fine chain. Her blue and white dress was simple, plain and Empire-styled without lace or ribbons to distract from its clean lines. Her riotous curly hair was knotted up at the back of her head, though much of it had already sprung free and haloed her face with a coronet of dark curls. Through the blue satin band that held her hair back, she had thrust one of the black silk roses from the ballroom. Harry had always thought of Hermione's looks as timeless, as if she might be at home in any era -- she might not be conventionally pretty but her face had the strong clean lines that spoke of inner grace and strength. With those bones, she would be lovely to him even when she was older, and Harry had always thought that he would be there, to see her grow more beautiful as she aged, and now realizing that perhaps that would never happen, he felt a keen pain just above his ribs as if he'd run too far and fast without catching his breath. 

He said her name, and she turned, dropping her hand from her throat and looking at him in astonishment. Whatever it was she had been holding glittered blue against her skin. "Harry?" she said. 

He shut the French doors behind him, tapping the knob with his hand as he did so and whispering a locking charm under his breath.He heard the click as the doors fastened shut. When he turned back to Hermione she was still staring at him, wide-eyed. "I...didn't think you would want..." 

"Would want what?" Harry tried to keep his voice as even as possible.  

"To see me again." She bit her lip. 

"Ever?" He was surprised at the light evenness of his own tone. He would never have predicted he'd be able to hold his own emotions in check like this -- and then he realized who he sounded like. Malfoy. It wasn't as if Draco's ability to conceal whatever he felt hadn't annoyed Harry keenly in the past, but he embraced it now with relief. Shouting at Hermione would accomplish nothing but making them both more miserable; that he could talk to her at all made him grateful for that part of Draco he had absorbed into his own personality. "I wouldn't want that," he said, moving away from the doors. She stiffened as he approached, but he only leaned against the balustrade and looked at her from a distance of a few feet. "We can't let our friendship be destroyed over this." 

"No, I..." He had expected her to look relieved, but instead she only looked even more distressed. "I wouldn't want that either," she finished. 

"I'm glad to hear that." Harry could see distant figures on the other balconies, mostly couples, and felt a sharp pang of jealousy -- he might have learned how to conceal his emotions, he thought, but there seemed no way around having them in the first place. "So, is that what you want? To be friends?" Hermione looked away quickly, as if hiding the expression on her face, and Harry said, "If that's all you want, tell me now and I'll never bring it up again." 

Hermione's voice sounded muffled. "Don't be stupid, Harry." 

"Stupid?" The flat edge of his tone was beginning to fray; apparently there was only so far even Malfoy cool could get you. "I thought we were going to be together for the rest of our lives and you just told me that that's not the case. Don't you think I deserve at least a straight answer as to why? Or what it is you want from me? How do you expect me to be around you if I don't even know how you think of me --" 

"You don't have to be around me," Hermione said, her voice still muffled. He wished he could see her face. "I've accepted a place in Cornwall at the Institute for Medical Wizardry. I want to be a mediwizard, Harry. I don't ever want to have to sit by again while someone I love is injured or dying and know that there's nothing I can do." She took a deep breath. "The place starts next week and lasts a year. After that I would go on to an apprenticeship in London--" 

"A year? Is that what this is about? Hermione, I can wait a year. We could get married when you come back, move to London --" 

"That's not what this is about!" she flared, and turned back to him; he could see that her eyes were shining with tears. "This isn't about me, it's about you." 

Somewhere in the back of Harry's head, a voice said dryly, That's certainly a reversal of the old 'it's not you, it's me' line. Points for originality. So now he was thinking like Draco. Harry shoved the voice to the back of his mind and said, "What about me? Do you think I wouldn't want you to go? I would miss you, but of course I know how important your studies are to you, and --" 

"No, no, it's not that either," Hermione said in despair. "Don't you--" 

"I could come with you, we could get a house and you could pursue your work - it would save you money on accommodations, and I --" 

"Harry, try to understand, please--" 

The anger finally broke through his calm. "I think it's pretty clear that I don't understand!" 

"And I don't know how to explain it to you, it's just that --" she took a shuddering breath --"ever since I've met you, Harry, all the time I've known you, your life has been about one thing. Killing Voldemort. And I always thought it was sad, that your life could never really be about you or what you wanted, that all of what you could accomplish was narrowed down to that one thing. But I understood it. It was life or death for you. For all of us. The problem is, though, Harry, that you never learned to live any other way. Since Voldemort's been dead, I've watched you trying to make your life about something else -- and now you want to make your life about me, and I won't let you. If I loved you less, maybe I would let you. Maybe I'd be glad I had a boyfriend who showed me such devotion. But I love you too much to let you go on never knowing what you really want or who you really are."  

He stared at her, his mouth half-open. "That's not true." 

"Isn't it?" She sounded exhausted, as if her speech had taken all the energy out of her. "What would you do in Cornwall, Harry, while I was studying?" 

"I don't know," he admitted after a pause. "I'm sure I'd find something." 

"That sounds fun for you," Hermione said acidly. 

"Fun?" Harry echoed, puzzled. 

"Yes, fun. You know, those brief shining moments we had in between you trying to kill or be killed. Snowball fights, that sort of thing." 

"I can't make my life about snowball fights, Hermione." 

"And I'm not saying you should." She shook her head, her dark curls bouncing against her cheeks. "I'm saying you need to be a whole person, Harry. You don't even know who you are or what you want to do. You've let other people make your life for you, because you had to. And now you want me to make your life for you, but I won't. How do you think I'd feel, watching you wander aimlessly around Cornwall, bored and miserable, just because I was there? You could be almost anything you wanted to be, Harry. Do anything you wanted." 

"I don't know what I want to do," Harry said. "There's almost nothing I'm sure of, Hermione. Nothing except that I know I want to be with you." 

She looked at him sadly. Her eyes were still bright, though the tears hadn't yet spilled down her cheeks. She said, "I'm not enough. Not enough to hang your whole life on. Some day you'd figure out exactly what it is you do want and then you'd hate me for not letting you find it out earlier..." 

He moved towards her and this time she didn't move away, just stood slumped against the balustrade as if all the strength had gone out of her. "I would never hate you," he said. 

"I went to the Mirror of Erised once," she said, "and looked in it -- though I knew better, even then -- and in it, I saw myself alone. And I was horrified -- I thought maybe it meant I didn't really love you. Or that I couldn't love. And then when all that happened with Ron, I thought maybe I'd gone mad and didn't know what I was doing. That was a bad time for me, Harry. But I realized, later, when I saw you in Romania, what the mirror was telling me. I do want to be alone, I need to be alone, so that I can know who I am and you can know who you are. Because only then can we really choose to be with each other." 

"You sound so calm," Harry said, looking down into the garden. The wind was blowing the rose petals from the afternoon's ceremony across the grass in small white tornadoes. "I suppose you've been getting used to this, over all these months." 

"I'm not calm," Hermione said tightly. "I'm terrified." Her hand was at her throat again and he realized what it was that she was holding: the blue glass ring he had meant to give her at Christmas, that he had thrown against the wall instead. A silver thread ran through it, where it had cracked but not shattered.  

"I could fix that, if you wanted," Harry said, taking another step towards her and touching the ring lightly with his fingertips. 

"No," she said, letting go of the chain so that the ring slithered down the front of her dress. "I like it the way it is." 

"Flawed?" 

She looked up at him, half-startled. "Flawed but perfect," she said.  

His hand brushed her hair. "This is really what you want?" 

"It's not what I want." She shivered. "It's what I know. You think I'm not terrified? Terrified if I let you go you won't ever come back to me?" 

"I'll always come back to you," he said, and was startled when she threw her arms around him, burying her face in the front of his shirt. He could feel her shaking, as if she were crying, though she made no noise.  

"I love you," he said. "I should have said it before, when I asked you. I'll always love you." 

"I know," she said, into his shirt. "I love you, too. Sometimes I wish I loved you less. This is too hard. I can't do it. I can't." The last word ended on a wail, and Harry tightened his arms around her, feeling the sharp edge of the ring she wore around her neck as it dug into his skin.  

"Don't," he said. "There's never been anything you couldn't do, once you set your mind to it." 

At that, Hermione actually laughed a little, and pulled away, looking up at him with too-bright eyes. "That's so typically Harry Potter," she said. "Now you're trying to make me feel better about not marrying you?" 

His hands slid to her waist, and to her surprise, he lifted her up suddenly so that she was sitting on top of the marble balustrade. Now her head was higher than his and she was looking down at him, her hands braced on his shoulders. "You'll come around," he said. "Eventually." 

She leaned down until the silk rose in her hair brushed his cheek. "And in the meantime, you'll try to have fun, right?" 

"I'll do my best," he said, and lifted his face so that she only had to lean down a fraction for their lips to touch. She slid down from the balustrade as they kissed, balancing precariously on the tips of her high-heeled shoes. Framed against the lights of the French doors, their clearly outlined silhouettes seemed to soften and reform as they clung together, two separate shadows melding into one. 

*** 

When Ginny came back into the ballroom, she searched in vain for Draco. He was nowhere to be found. At first, she thought he must still be with Harry, but after dancing with several partners, including Viktor Krum, a Malfoy cousin or some such with slightly crossed eyes, and Aidan Lynch ( "He's all grabby, like an octopus," Blaise warned her, not untruthfully), she saw Harry and Hermione come in to the ballrom through a set of French doors. They were holding hands, Harry's former air of despondency having entirely vanished.  

Ginny looked around the ballroom with a sinking heart. Perhaps Draco had found some other girl in the interim and gone off to snog with her in the gardens? After all, they had never established that this was a date, of the serious date variety. Technically she still wasn't quite broken up with Seamus -- in fact, if she were entirely honest with herself, she still hadn't decided what to do about that love potion.  

"You all right?" said a voice at her elbow. It was Charlie, looking concerned and a little rumpled. She wondered if it was just something about being a teacher: they all seemed to wind up looking as if they'd been crumpled up and left to straighten out on their own. Charlie's hair was rumpled and his tie creased, but his expression was bright and cheerful. "You look a bit confused. Where's your boy?" 

It took Ginny a moment to realize he meant Seamus. "Oh, he was called away at the last minute. Family thing," she said, vaguely. 

"That explains his sudden dash from the wedding," said Charlie. "And why you were dancing with Draco--" 

"You haven't seen him, have you?" Ginny asked. "Draco, I mean." 

"He was talking to Albus," said Charlie slowly. "And then, I think, he went upstairs -- it looked as if he stopped to say goodnight to Sirius and Narcissa, so I'd guess he probably isn't coming down again." He paused at her expression. "Is that bad news?" 

Speechless for a moment, Ginny glanced around the room again, as if Draco might reappear, despite Charlie's words. She saw Ron and Blaise, seated in a corner, their heads close together, Harry and Hermione dancing, Sirius and Narcissa, hand in hand, laughing with Professor Lupin by the ice sculpture. She lifted her chin. "Not bad news, no," she said. "I'm glad you told me."  

Charlie looked baffled. "Hey, if you--" he began, but by the time he got to the end of his sentence, she was already walking out of the room. 

*** 

"Hiding up here, are you?" 

"I'm not sure one can be said to be hiding, precisely," he said gently, "if one is in one's own room. At the very least, it's not a very effective method of concealing oneself." 

"I didn't say you were hiding from me," she said, crossly.  

Draco's eyebrows went up. "Then who...?" His mouth curled at the corners. "I see," he said. "You mean I'm hiding from myself, don't you? Now that's insightful. Really, you can just see right through me like a pane of glass, Ginny Weasley." 

She shook her head. "What did Dumbledore say to you? You weren't acting like this before." 

"How do you know I talked to --" He broke off and shrugged. "I doubt it's old Albus," he said. "I think it's far more likely that I'm sobering up. I apologize if I was inappropriate. I tend to get flirtatious when I'm drunk." 

"You weren't drunk. I didn't see you go near the punch table all night." 

Draco only looked at her as if he were waiting for her to say something worth replying to. She felt herself flush. 

"And you weren't inappropriate," she said. "This is what's inappropriate, this stupid pretense of yours that I don't care about you and you don't care about me." 

"I never said that." 

"You don't have to. You know just how to behave to drive me away. You've been doing it for a year, pushing me away but never quite far enough -- it's like you've sawed away at this tie between us until there's only the thinnest thread left, but you can't quite bring yourself to cut it entirely, can you?" 

He looked up at her through heavy-lidded eyes. "Can't I?" he said. 

"I think if you could have," Ginny said slowly, "you would have, already. You can't stand letting yourself love someone because you think it'll destroy you both. That's why loving Hermione was so perfect for you. You could never have her. And Blaise, you didn't love her at all. Which was cruel, you know, but I suppose in your backwards way you thought you were being kind. And me--" 

"And you?" Draco was standing up very straight now, looking at her, his affected disinterest having vanished. His face was shut, making her think of a locked box whose plain design left no clue as to what was contained within. Over the months she had dreamed all sorts of things into it, and perhaps opening it, she would find she had been entirely wrong about its contents. But at least she would know. "What is it you want to hear?" he asked, musingly, and very calm. "The ugly truth or the beautiful lie?" 

"I want the truth. That's all I ever wanted from you." 

A sharp laugh escaped him. "Oh, now, that isn't true. There's nothing pretty about the truth, Ginny, especially about me. It's all prickly bits and sharp edges. Try to pull it out of me and you'll only wind up with cut and bleeding hands." 

"Then I'll make it simple for you," she said. "Say you don't love me." 

For the first time, he seemed caught off guard. "What?" 

"Say you don't love me," she said. "If it's true, say it. I know you wouldn't lie." 

Draco looked as close to nonplussed as she'd ever seen him -- as if she'd asked him suddenly the answer to a deviously difficult Arithmancy problem while he was in the middle of doing something else. "Ginny..." 

"The truth won't hurt me," she said. "Really, it would be a mercy, either way." 

"Maybe I don't have an answer," he said. 

Ginny's hand went to the front of her dress. She drew from the bodice of it her wand, and pointed it at him. "Then I'll Veritas you," she said. "I'm taking this out of your hands, Draco. That should be a relief to you -- shouldn't it?" 

He had taken his hands out of his pockets, reflexively, as if he meant to ward off her spell. He had his head down, looking at the wand, but when he raised it, she saw that he was starting to smile -- a smile of wry relief, the same sort of look she'd seen on his face once after an especially hard Quidditch match, a look that said that the battle had been hard fought but there was some joy, perhaps, in at least knowing that it was over.  

"I don't want to love you," he said. 

The wand in Ginny's hand trembled. She could feel herself breathing hard, too hard; she was getting lightheaded. "And?" she prompted. 

"And I remember when I knew you were that girl, the one I remembered," he said. His voice had a tone she'd never heard in it before: defeated but not unhappy. "We were in Slytherin's castle, and you were shouting at me about something. I knew you then. Something about how you looked when you were angry did it, I think. Or it might just have been the fire -- there was a fire in the library that day, when I was twelve." 

Because Lucius was burning the diary, Ginny thought, but she was remembering that room in the castle, the fire in the grate and Draco looking at her with sleepy, deadly eyes; their kiss had tasted like salt and brandy. "I remember," she said. 

"Perhaps that's why I've always thought of fire, when I think of you," he said. "Perhaps that's why the red dress. Or perhaps it was because I knew there was something between us that, if we gave ourselves up to it, would burn us up and leave nothing behind."  

The wand wavered in Ginny's hand. "I don't know what you mean." 

He was looking at her thoughtfully now, the wry smile gone. "Perhaps you could survive it," he said. "But that which is hollow burns easily. I couldn't give you what you wanted -- not without running the risk of being consumed myself. I had so little of me to go on..." He shook his head, as if snapping himself out of a daydream. "I put what roadblocks I could in our path -- to keep me from disappointing you. And I knew I was disappointing you as I did it, but I imagined it was an easier disappointment than you would face if I let myself love you." 

"But you wouldn't cut me off completely. You would push me away and then pull me back -- why?" she cried, lowering the wand. 

"Because I'm selfish," he said. "Haven't you been listening? And cowardly, too. And I made my actions seem mysterious, I suppose, so you wouldn't know just how selfish and how cowardly --" 

She shook her head so vehemently at that that he broke off with a choked laugh. 

"You deserve better," he told her, gravely. 

"You told me love can't grow in a dying heart," she said, her mouth dry. "You said you would love me if you could." 

"With all my rags of heart are capable of," he said, "I remember, Ginny. You don't have to quote me to myself."  

"You aren't dying any more," she said.  

"I know," he said. "And I was so good at it, too. I'm not nearly as good at knowing how to live." He searched her face for a moment with steady grey eyes. She could tell he was nerving himself up for something; he had that look about him, contained but kinetic. "Dying would have been the easy way never to have to answer your question," he said, "or any questions, and if there is one thing that has always been true about you, it's that you make me question myself -- and questioning myself inevitably proves to me how little of myself exists to sustain that sort of interrogation. I know you, Ginny, better than I know myself. You are whole and entire -- loyal and honest and stupidly, amazingly stubborn and beautiful as you are -- and I'm shadows and the ghost of old lies held together by good intentions and hope." 

She dropped her wand. It landed with a click on the floor and rolled under a small night table. "Say you don't love me," she said.  

He took a step towards her. "Ginny --" 

"As a favor to me, please, just say it. I'm asking you --" 

"Do you really want the answer?" He was standing in front of her suddenly, close enough to touch, and his face was very white but his grey eyes burned with a sharp clear light, like transparent crystals.  

"Yes," she whispered, "yes, I want it, yes." 

He caught her wrist, she knew it was with his left hand because she felt the light scrape of his scar against her skin. "I can't say I don't love you," he said in measured tones, "because it would be a lie. I love you. I think I have for longer than I've known it. I tried not to love you. I didn't want to love you. I did all I could to push you away, but in some way, somehow, I have found that you are -- to me -- essential." 

Her breath caught. It was suddenly very quiet in the room between them, Draco looking down at her, his mouth a flat hard line. She could hear the ticking of the clock on the bedside table, the rustle of branches hitting the window. The uneven sound of his breathing. He was looking down at their joined hands, where his fingers wrapped her wrist. As suddenly as he had taken hold of her, he let go. 

"And there you have it," he said. "The truth. I take it by your astonished expression that you had expected something different?" 

She said nothing. She couldn't find her voice; she had imagined this moment so many times, imagined his voice, saying those words, but she had never imagined her own response, what it might be. Her dreams had ended with him. They always did. 

He put his hand against the wall as if to steady himself. "I suppose I deserve that," he said, "your silence." 

She still said nothing, and he looked away from her, towards the window. The stars were just visible through the thick glass, like faint blurs of light. She could see herself in the dark glass as if it were a mirror; see her own white face, the bright flame-color of her dress, the metallic shine of the clasps that held up the straps. She lifted her hand to the clasps and undid them, one by one. The dress slid with a whisper of silk to the floor at her feet; she stepped out of it, and walked across the room to Draco, and put her hand on his arm. 

He looked at her with what was, for that moment, the purest astonishment she had ever seen or imagined on his face. "Ginny..." 

"That dress comes off more easily than any other piece of clothing I've ever owned," she said. "Did you think of that when you bought it?" 

"Perhaps," he said, slowly, his eyes never leaving her face. "Ginny, you don't have to--" 

She put her hands, flat, on his chest. She could feel his heartbeat against the palm of her right hand, through the stiff white material of his dress shirt. The emeralds at his wrists winked at her, though he kept his hands at his sides. "I want to," she said. 

He reached for her then, but stopped mid-gesture, his fingers millimetres from her face. She could feel the warmth of him, radiating from his skin, but they were not --not quite--touching. 

"What's wrong?" she whispered. 

His expression had not changed, but his light eyes had gone so dark that they were nearly black. Dark with desire, she thought, and felt an odd burst of something like triumph, or delight, mixed with desire of her own. "You have to ask me," he said. "I told you I wouldn't touch you -- unless you asked." 

She raised her chin. "Please," she said. 

His fingers touched her then, hands cupping her face as he bent to kiss her -- a kiss that started out gentle and quickly flared into a near-ferocity that left her mouth feeling bruised. Her nerves sang as he kissed her cheek, her jawline, her throat; she pulled at his tie, the buttons of his shirt, snapping some of them off in her impatience and haste to get it over his head, to feel his skin against hers. The scar where the arrow had gone into his shoulder gleamed like a silver crescent. She kissed it, and heard him laugh, say something she couldn't quite hear, and then his arms went around her, lifting her up, and she realized he must have whispered Nox because the room went dark and there was only moonlight as he laid her down on the bed, only moonlight and through the window, the faint, changeable illumination of the stars. 

*** 

The moon was out in all its brightness, and to an eye less trained in observing its every alteration, however slight, it might have looked full. Remus Lupin knew better. He felt the stir of the moon's cycles in his blood now, like an old sailor intimately familiar with the changing course of the tide. Three days, he thought. Then it would be full, but it wasn't yet, and that was fortunate because he was enjoying himself where he was, sitting at the top of an old and crumbling stone stairway that led down to a patch of thick grass and rocks that had probably once been some sort of private garden. The air smelled of grass, and faintly of roses. 

"Contemplating your old enemy?" said Sirius, who had come up behind him with the silent grace that had earned him his nickname among his friends at school. He sat down on the step beside Remus and cast a considering glance at the sky. His tie was loose and his cuffs unsnapped, and in the darkness it was impossible to see the grey threads in his black hair.  

"We've come to something of an understanding," said Remus, "the moon and I. I wouldn't call it an enemy." 

"It looks full," Sirius observed. 

"It isn't." 

"Obviously." Sirius moved his considering glance from the moon to his old friend. "So where are you off too now, Moony? Teaching over the summer again, like last year?" 

"No," said Remus. "Not this summer, I don't think." 

Sirius cleared his throat. "You know, Narcissa and I have talked." 

"That's good," Remus observed, "since you married her." 

"Talked about you, I mean," Sirius clarified. "And we'd both be happy - perfectly happy -- if you wanted to live here, you know, in the summers. There's plenty of rooms. And the dungeons have cells in them, you know, if you wanted to lock yourself up." 

"That's very thoughtful of you." 

"I'm not joking, Remus. You know how James and Lily always said their house was ours too. I never thought I'd have a house to offer my friends -- I never thought I'd live that long, and then, when I was in Azkaban, I never thought I'd get out. But now I have a home, and I want you to know it's yours, too. Whatever's mine -- is yours." 

Remus rubbed the back of his hand across his tired eyes, and smiled. "I know. And when I was at school, I remember how we used to say we'd all live in a house together when we grew up, and we'd have Ministry jobs together and do everything together. It was comforting at the time. But I'm too old for that now, Sirius. I need my own house. My own life." 

Sirius was silent for a moment, toeing a pebble in the dirt with the tip of a shoe. "If it's money you need then --" 

"I don't need money." 

"I thought you wanted to buy a house." 

"I do." 

"Teaching suddenly paying better these days?" Sirius inquired. 

"Perhaps." 

"Those books of yours doing pretty well, too." 

"Yes, actually --" Remus began, and stopped, realizing. "My ... books?" he said slowly. 

Sirius was grinning. "I do know, you see. I'm not a complete idiot." 

"You mean you know --" 

"That you're Aurora Twilight? Of course." 

"But -- how? I didn't -- I mean, I don't --" 

"I remember when you used to tweak Lily for reading those books," Sirius said good-naturedly. "You always said you could write one yourself in a week and make a million galleons." 

"Did I say a million? I may have been slightly overestimating..." 

"You used to say all you had to do was give yourself a stupid pen name like Rosamunde Moonlight and churn out some mindless pap and all the witches would go mad for it because after all, you're a man and you know what women want." 

"I did NOT say that." 

"You did actually. Ah, sweet confidence of youth." 

"Optimism, I would say. I suppose I actually thought by this time of life I would know what women wanted." Lupin propped an elbow on his knee and rested his chin thoughtfully on his hand. "Even the writing part turned out harder than I thought. It seems even mindless drivel requires some work." 

"Oh, it's not all drivel, Moony. I found some parts of it surprisingly good -- the part where Tristan thinks he's going to die so he declares his undying love to whatserface, that was quite moving, I thought." 

"Yes," said Remus drily, "I'm sure the love of Tristan and whatserface is one for the history books."  

"Anyway," said Sirius, with a grin, "I thought it was quite well done." 

"It'll buy me a little cottage, any road," said Remus, "somewhere nice and quiet. I don't need much -- a teapot, a place for my books, and a good quantity of dog biscuits for when you come visiting." 

"And a desk to write at." 

Remus was silent for a moment, looking thoughtfully down at his hands, scarred by so many transformations. "I had thought I might write a real book," he said. "A story about four friends and how differently their lives turned out than they thought they would when they were children." 

"A real book," echoed Sirius, and then, "Don't you think it'll hurt, writing about all that? Aren't you afraid you'll remember it all?" 

"I am much less afraid to remember," said Remus, very quietly, "than I am to forget." 

*** 

Ginny opened her eyes slowly and blinked up at the ceiling in confusion, for a moment forgetting entirely where she was. She could have sworn that the ceiling of the guest room had a pattern of fleur-de-lis on it, where this ceiling seemed to be embossed with a design of curling snakes... 

Memory hit her with a jolt, and she sat bolt upright. She was in Draco Malfoy's bedroom, and that was his ceiling. It wasn't the first time she'd looked at it, either. She put her hand over her mouth and glanced down; Draco was sleeping peacefully in the bed beside her, sheets tangled around his waist. The moonlight outlined him in patterns of shadow and frost, silvering the already-bright hair and etching the lines of muscle along his back. For a moment, she sat quietly, enjoying the view. Then she slipped out of the bed and went to retrieve her gown and wand. She dressed quietly, so as not to wake Draco, and wound her hair into a neat, if unglamorous, bun at the back of her neck. Her butterfly clips were gone -- probably under Draco's bed or lost in the sheets, but looking for them would only wake him up, and besides, it wasn't as if she planned to see anyone. Or be seen. 

She made her way down the steps barefoot, pausing only to retrieve something from her bedroom. It took her several tries but she eventually found the door that led to the rose garden outside.  

The air was perfect: cool without being cold, and scented like roses and lavender. Since Christmas she had hated roses, the color and smell of them, but now she found it no longer bothered her. Some of the white petals from the previous day's ceremony still ghosted by on the wind, tickling her cheeks and catching in her hair.  

She made her way down one of the paved paths until she stood a distance from the castle. Then she drew out the flask of love potion Hermione had given her and looked at it meditatively for a moment. She pulled the stopper free. The smell that rose from the flask was like the smell of rotted flowers, the corruption of something transient and sweet. She ran her finger slowly around the flask -- it was slightly warm from the liquid inside it, and from being held in her hand -- and then, with a set face, she upended it, spilling the love potion onto the leaves and flowers of a nearby rose bush. The liquid ran down the bush in threads of silver and sank into the earth.  

"What are you doing?" said a masculine voice, just behind her. 

Ginny whirled in surprise, half-expecting it to be Draco -- perhaps she'd woken him after all -- but the eyes that looked back at her were blue, not gray, and the hair was gold and not silver. He was dressed in jeans and a light sweater, and the freckles on his face were visible even in the dark. 

"Seamus?" she whispered. She could feel the hand that held the flask trembling. "What -- I mean, I thought you had gone." 

"I told you I was going to come back." 

His voice was even, almost toneless. She felt her hand tighten on the flask -- it was solid silver, very heavy, a formidable weapon -- before she caught herself. This is Seamus, not Tom. Seamus would never hurt you.  

"I didn't know you meant you'd come back in the middle of the night and skulk around the Manor grounds," she said. 

A faint smile touched his mouth. "I came by broomstick, actually. I was about to knock on the door when I saw you sneaking down the path into the garden. I couldn't help wondering what you were up to." 

Ginny glanced down at the flask, and then back up at Seamus. "Watering the rose bushes?" she ventured. 

"Watering them with love potion," said Seamus. "Are you sure that's wise?" 

She gaped at him. "How --" 

"Hermione told me about your plan."  

I knew she was lying. Silently, Ginny called Hermione any number of profane names. Out loud, she said, "Is that why you left?" 

"Not precisely. That was part of it, I suppose," he said, reflectively. "I can't say I was pleased that you felt you needed to drug yourself to care about me." 

"Seamus," she said, wretchedly. "I do care about you. I honestly do. That's why I wanted to -- you know -- use the love potion. Just to give myself a little push." 

"Interesting," said Seamus. "And even more interesting that you seem to have changed your mind." 

"I thought you weren't coming back," she whispered. 

"But I am back." In the moonlight, his blue eyes looked almost blue-black, the color of dark pansies. "So what are you going to do now?" 

She lowered her head. The sense of guilt and gnawing defeat was like a pain in her chest. "Whatever you want me to," she said. "I can get more love potion -- or if you don't want that, maybe we could try something else. We could go away together. Maybe if it was just us --" 

"Is it that you could never have loved me?" he asked, flatly, "or is it that you can't love me as I am now?" 

"It doesn't matter," she said. "I made you as you are now." 

"If I told you to pack your things and come with me, would you do it?" 

"Right now? Tonight?" She stared at him. 

"Yes. Tonight." 

"And go where?" 

"Does that matter?" he demanded. 

"No," Ginny said numbly. "I suppose not." She glanced down at herself; her bare arms were bumpy with gooseflesh. "I'd need to get my clothes -- and write a note to my parents." 

Seamus shook his head slowly. "All this just for guilt, Ginny?" 

Her head came up quickly. "I told you. I care about you." 

"But you don't love me," he said, and took a step towards her, and another, and now she was pinned against the rose bush, the thorns catching in the material of her dress. "And you never did. It was always Malfoy. You would have done anything he told you to, because you loved him. Me, you only pity." 

"I don't pity you, Seamus," she said, struggling to keep her voice even. 

"Not at the moment," he said. "At the moment, you're afraid of me." She saw his mouth twist into a bitter line. "I suppose we'll never know now, will we?" 

"Know what?" 

"If it ever could have worked out. You, and me the way I was. I won't be that way again. I still have some of him in me. Like a residue left behind. His soul is gone, but the shadow it cast is still there, inside me." 

"Seamus --" 

"No. Let me finish," he said, so sharply that she tightened her grip on the flask. "I know him, Ginny, better than probably anyone other than you ever did know him. And he loved you. In his twisted, backward way -- something about the way you brought him back, your tears mixed with his blood, you were part of him. He couldn't get free of you. He killed shadows of you to try to burn you out of his head, but it didn't work. You obsessed him."  

"But you're not him -- we were together before any of that happened --" 

"That doesn't matter," said Seamus. "He took my love for you and fed it into himself. He couldn't escape it, so he transformed it. He was in hate with you. He dreamed of killing you the way I might have dreamed of kissing you. Once." 

"Once?" Ginny said faintly. "You don't want to kiss me ... any more?" 

Looking down at her, he shook his head slowly. "How do you think it feels," he said, "to look at the one person you love most in the world, and dream about killing her? Not because you want to, because you can't help it. I used to think about how beautiful the curve of your shoulder into your neck was. Tom just thinks how your neck would look with blood splashed all over it." 

Ginny made a faint, sickly sound. If she brought her hand up quickly enough she could catch him on the temple, and -- 

"I know you're thinking about hitting me with that flask," said Seamus. "Don't bother. My reflexes are better than yours." 

"I could scream," she said. "They'd come running." 

"Probably," said Seamus, sounding suddenly tired. "But I wouldn't bother. I'm not going to hurt you, Ginny. I came here to let you go." 

"Let me go?" she echoed, puzzled. 

"You stay with me out of guilt," said Seamus. "Don't bother arguing, I know it already. I appreciated that in the beginning. I did. It was a help to have you with me. But as time went on I started to realize that being around you was keeping that part of me that was Tom Riddle still alive. He feeds on your proximity. I need to not be near you, Ginny, for that part of me to die forever. You think you're being kind by staying with me, but actually, your presence tortures me. I'm sorry, but I need to be away from you. Do you understand?" 

"Seamus," she whispered. "Why didn't you tell me this before?" 

"I didn't really understand it myself," he said. "Hermione made me understand it -- she said she could tell from watching me what I was going through, that you'd never understand it because you couldn't see how I was when you weren't there, how different I was. And she said you'd bleed yourself out trying to help me when all along being away from you was the only thing that would help us both. I mean, I thought it was just that I was never going to get rid of that part of me that was Riddle, but when I talked to her I realized that when you weren't around, I didn't have those thoughts." 

"If I'd taken the love potion--" Ginny began, suddenly transfixed with horror at the thought. 

"Then we'd both be miserable. You'd love me, I couldn't stand to be around you. And I suppose Malfoy wouldn't have been too happy, though you never can tell with him. He's a strange one." 

Ginny could only agree that this was true. "Where will you go, Seamus?" 

He moved back, freeing her from the rose bush. She pulled her dress away from the snagging thorns. 

"I don't know," he said, "and I wouldn't tell you if I did. When you hear from me again, it will be because I know there's none of him inside me any more. Without you around, I'm hoping he'll die of starvation." He shook his head, and turned to retrieve his broomstick from where he'd stashed it behind a tree. She wasn't sure if she was imagining it or not, but it seemed to her that the set of his shoulders was more confident, relaxed even, than she had seen it in months. "Quite a pair of right stupid prats we've been, thinking we were being heroically self-sacrificing when actually we were just putting the other person through hell," he added, mounting his Cloudburst with the ease of long practice. "So much for suffering in silence." 

Ginny agreed that this was true. Her knees felt weak with relief, and she wondered for a moment if she was going to pitch forward onto the grass. 

"Good luck," Seamus added, more gently. "And I hope Malfoy makes you happy."  

So do I, Ginny almost said, but she stopped herself, knowing it wasn't what she really meant. "I am happy," she said. "But not because of Malfoy." 

"Good," said Seamus, and before she could say anything to that -- before she could even wish him good-bye -- he had kicked off from the ground and was flying, a bright speck in the dark sky that receded swiftly until it was lost among the clouds. She stood a long time after he had gone, staring up into the dark sky, before she headed back to the Manor with a determined stride.  

*** 

Harry woke up early, with a faint and gnawing sense of dread in his stomach. It didn't help that it was a beautiful day, that beams of yellow sunlight were spilling into his room through the window, or that he was quite sure he could hear birdsong. He still had the sense that something was off-kilter, not quite right. It wasn't Hermione, he thought, swinging his legs off the bed. They'd worked things out. And the wedding had gone off well. And he'd worked out what he wanted to do for at least the next six months of his life -- provided Malfoy was amenable -- which was something of an accomplishment. Maybe he was just hungry. 

He threw on some jeans and his Puddlemere United shirt and padded downstairs to find some breakfast. Narcissa had completely done over the enormous Manor kitchen, which had once sported a terrifyingly huge cast-iron stove that looked like you could bake a troll in it and stacks of burnt-black pots and pans. It was still huge of course, but much friendlier-looking, with a long wooden serving table that at the moment was laden with all sorts of breakfast items -- muesli and milk, toast and eggs, bacon and kippers. Harry snagged a sweet roll and a yogurt and sat down to eat. There was a hot pot of coffee floating above a Heating Charm on the table, but Harry eschewed it. Coffee made him jumpy. 

He could hear a murmur of voices from the dining room -- so he wasn't the only one who was awake -- and was considering getting up to check it out when Draco staggered into the room in his black pajamas, his hair sticking up, looking remarkably like the Ghost of Christmas Past as portrayed in a secondary school theater production. Harry choked on his sweet roll. 

"M'foy," he said, around a wad of roll, when he caught his breath, "wha' on urf --" 

Draco threw himself down into a chair opposite Harry and stared at him with large, tragic eyes. "A terrible thing has happened," he announced. 

Harry swallowed. "What?" he demanded. "What terrible thing? Are you all right? Is Hermione all right? Ron --" 

Draco waved an impatient hand. "I'm not talking about them," he said impatiently. "I'm talking about me. A terrible thing has happened to me. Ginny," he announced, "has left me." 

Harry felt his eyebrows shoot up. "She left you?" 

Draco nodded. 

Harry reached for his yogurt. It was quite possible that he was going to need protein to get through this conversation. "You know," he said cautiously, "I always thought that for someone to leave you, first they had to be..." He paused. "With you. You know?" 

"She was with me!" Draco snapped. "Where have you been? Get with the program, Potter." 

"I thought I was with the program," Harry pointed out. "She was dating Seamus right up until yesterday afternoon." 

"Exactly," said Draco, although, Harry felt, he had not made the kind of observation that merited an 'exactly' as much as it merited, perhaps, further explanation. "And after that she was with me." 

Harry blinked in befuddlement. "So what makes you think she's left you now?" 

"Because when I woke up this morning, she was gone." 

Harry choked on his yogurt, which was nearly as unpleasant as choking on a roll. "From your bedroom, you mean?" he said finally, when he got his breath back. 

"Well, where else would we have been sleeping? Be reasonable, Potter." 

"So you -- you mean to say that you --" 

Draco heaved an elaborate sigh. "All right, look. Maybe you should just read this. It'll clear up your confusion." He tossed a folded bit of parchment at Harry, who caught it with a Seeker's expert reflexes. "It's the note she left on the pillow when she LEFT ME, to forestall your inevitable question." 

"All right..." Harry set the yogurt down on the table while he unfolded the note. Draco eyed it hungrily.  

"Is that black currant?" he demanded, and when Harry nodded, snaked it off the table and began eating it thoughtfully. At least being heartbroken hadn't affected his appetite, Harry noted. 

The letter had clearly been written in a hurry -- Ginny's normally neat handwriting sloped all over the page -- and took up most of a sheet of parchment. Harry began to read, but was swiftly brought up short. 

"Er, Malfoy," he said. "there's some pretty steamy stuff in this letter. I'm not sure I should be reading it." 

Draco waved his non-yogurt-occupied hand airily. "We have no secrets from each other." 

"Yes, but--eurgh, okay, I'm skipping that part...I don't even know how you managed that without breaking something. There's some pretty ripe descriptions of your appearance in here, too. 'Silver hair'? Who has silver hair?" 

"I do," said Draco. "Or what color did you think it was?" 

"I dunno," Harry said. "Blond?" 

Draco snorted as if this were the most ridiculous thing he had ever heard. 

Harry made a noise as if he were being strangled. "Not only that, Malfoy, but apparently you can go all night like a pile driver. Did I need to know that? I don't think I did," he added plaintively. "Now there is an image that will haunt me. Thanks a lot." 

"What's a pile driver?" asked Ron, coming into the kitchen with his red hair sticking straight up as if he'd slept clutching a live wire. 

Harry immediately shoved the letter down his shirt. "It's a Muggle device that -- that --" 

"Runs all night long," said Draco blandly. "Sort of a perpetual motion machine." 

"Perpetu-what?" Ron said good-naturedly, pouring himself a cup of tea. "You blokes do manage to have the most boring conversations ever, don't you?" he added, and wandered by them into the dining room. As he went past Draco muttered under his breath, just inaudibly enough, "Oh yeah? Well I shagged your sister."  

MALFOY, Harry said silently, horrified, That's only funny when it's not actually true. 

I disagree, said Draco, who was rapidly finishing the black currant yogurt. "Anyway," he added out loud, "did you finish the letter?" 

"Regrettably yes," said Harry, fishing it back out of his shirt. "And I don't see what you're so worked up about." 

"She left me," Draco said, again. "You don't think that's a big deal?" 

"Well, I can't say I'm surprised, given the bizarre way you've treated her for the past year. Anyway, she makes some good points here. She's got another year of school and you don't, so --" 

"Hogwash," said Draco. "She has used me for sex and then dumped me. Nothing like this has ever happened to a Malfoy before." 

"Maybe they just leave that part out of the family histories." 

"Impossible," said Draco, glowering down into his empty yogurt container. "This is humilating." 

"I don't see how," Harry pointed out reasonably. "You've been used for sex by a beautiful girl who disappears on you after a torrid night of passion. I bet that hardly ever happens to anybody. Much less anybody who's seventeen years old." 

"You have a point." Draco brightened. "Although I can't believe you just said 'torrid night of passion.'" 

"Neither can I, really. Anyway, she didn't dump you. She's just sort of -- put you off. For the time being." 

"I am Draco Malfoy," said Draco, eating a biscuit. "I do not get put off." Still, he looked moderately pleased with himself. "Perhaps she feels if she spends too much time around me over the summer, she'll be overwhelmed by passionate yearning when she goes back to school, and die of despair. Or something." 

"Or something," Harry said dryly. Draco had eaten all the blackcurrent yogurt, so he contented himself with raspberry. "Anyway, aren't you going on that world tour of yours all summer? You weren't thinking of canceling that, were you?" 

"No," Draco said, looking entirely startled. "I hadn't thought about it, but no. Of course not." 

"Perhaps Ginny had a point about you not being entirely ready for commitment." 

"That depends," said Blaise, gliding into the kitchen in a sort of green silk dressing-gown that made her fiery hair look impossibly bright. "Commitment to St. Mungo's, possibly." She poured herself some tea. 

"There speaks the voice of bitter experience," said Draco, buttering a roll. Harry wondered if he planned to eat his way through everything on the table. "Draco Malfoy cannot be tamed." 

Blaise rolled her eyes and came around Harry's left side to get the sugar bowl. Her arm outstretched, she paused and stared. "That's Ginny's handwriting," she said, staring over Harry's shoulder. "Why have you got a letter from Ginny addressed to 'my dearest darling'?" 

"I don't! I mean, that's not what it says. I mean --" Harry, rattled, crumpled the note into a ball in his fist.  

"That is too what it said," insisted Blaise. "Why on earth's Ginny writing you love notes, Potter?" 

She said this, Harry felt, very loudly, and just as Ron and Hermione entered the kitchen, holding empty plates and chatting in a friendly manner. Their conversation broke off abruptly. "What did you say?" said Hermione, with saucer eyes. 

"Oh dear," said Blaise.  

Ron looked baffled. "Why would my sister be writing love notes to Harry? I mean, I thought that sort of thing was well in the past." 

"It's not a love note," said Harry, clutching the balled-up parchment to his chest.  

"It is, rather," Draco pointed out unhelpfully. "Clearly the product of an infatuated mind." 

"Yes, but --"  

"But why would Ginny be writing a letter like that to Harry?" Hermione demanded, setting her plate down with a clatter. 

"Well, you don't need to make it sound like I'm an unfanciable berk who no one could possibly ever be fond of," Harry pointed out, nettled. 

"Don't change the subject," Hermione snapped, and before Harry could react, snatched the letter right out of his hand. 

"Excellent reflexes," Draco said admiringly. "Why didn't you ever play Quidditch again?" 

"Because it's a loathsomely dull game," Hermione replied, her quick dark eyes scanning the parchment. "It certainly is a love note," she said coldly, and then, slightly less coldly, "but Harry, you haven't got silvery hair, or moonlight colored eyes, or -- my goodness," she finished, flushing a dark red. "I have a feeling this letter was meant to be private." She dropped it back on the table hastily, looking as if she'd picked up Crookshanks and he'd bitten her on the finger. 

"Moonlight-colored," mused Draco. "So true, so true." 

Ron, who might be a bit stolid but was not actually slow, looked from the letter, to Draco, and back. "My sister wrote a love note to MALFOY?" he demanded, and reached for the letter.  

Harry, sensing imminent disaster, flung a hand out. "Immolatus," he said, and the note shuddered once, and sifted into ashes.  

"You burned my note!" Draco looked annoyed. "That note had sentimental value!" 

Yes, well, your life has sentimental value to me, and if Ron found out what you got up to with his sister last night, he'd snap you in half, Harry pointed out. 

Ron looked at Hermione, who was still pink about the cheeks. "What did it say?" he demanded. 

Hermione looked from Draco, to Ron and then to Harry, who was wishing just this once that he could communicate silently with Hermione as he did with Draco. He did the best he could with his eyes, and she must have understood him, because she turned to Ron and said, "It was just a note saying that she'd had a good time at the party with him last night." 

"Huh." Ron looked unconvinced. "Well, don't think you're going to get another chance to drool all over her today, Malfoy. She's gone off with Fred and George for a beach holiday, and I'm not going to tell you where, either." 

Draco looked as if he were about to say something rude back when the kitchen door swung open again. It was Narcissa this time, dressed in pale gray, a worried expression on her face. She stepped into the kitchen, letting the door swing shut behind her. 

"Boys," she said, gently, looking from Draco to Harry, "Dumbledore's come to see you. He and Severus are waiting for you in the study."  

*** 

Sorry I burned your note, Harry said, as he and Draco left the kitchen -- Blaise and Ron looking after them with confusion, and Hermione with large, sympathetic eyes -- and headed for the staircase that led to the Manor's second floor. I panicked. 

I could tell. Draco's inner voice sounded dry and somewhat remote, a sea-change from the dramatic, ebulliently woeful tone he'd taken just a few minutes ago in the kitchen. "It's all right. Look, would you mind coming with me to my room? I don't fancy facing Snape and the Headmaster in my pajamas."  

"At least they're silk," Harry said. It makes me nervous talking about Snape and Dumbledore out loud. I always have the feeling they're listening.  

"We don't have to talk about them, then," said Draco flatly. They'd reached his bedroom door; he reached for the knob.  

We don't need to use our voices -- 

"No," said Draco. His gray eyes were coolly thoughtful. "I think it's about time we got used to not being able to do that any more." He vanished into his bedroom before Harry could say anything back to that, and Harry was left to fidget aimlessly in the corridor for several minutes before Draco re-appeared, now in a dark blue pullover and jeans. Something sparkled on the sleeve of the pullover, but he turned away and began walking down the hall before Harry could see what it was. 

He did, however, hurry to catch up. "Look, before we go in there, do you want to talk about this?" 

"If there was anything to say, we would have talked about it already," said Draco. This sturck Harry as an infuriating tautology, but he couldn't think of anything to say to it. They had reached the study door; it was open by a crack. Draco knocked once and pushed it open. 

Harry followed him inside. He rarely came into this room. It reminded him of Lucius, of the day Lucius had brought him in here and offered him the antidote for the poison that was killing Draco, in exchange for the Worthy Cup. It didn't look much different now -- clearly Narcissa had changed nothing in the room. There was the big mahagony desk, the sideboard with the brandy decanter standing on it, now covered in dust, and the box beside it that had held Lucius' tobacco. But behind the desk now sat Dumbledore. The light that filtered through the narrow windows caught the bright sparks that shone off the rims of his spectacles, but his face was in shadow. Behind him stood Snape, looking more like a dark crow than he ever had before, his face a narrow white line between the parted halves of dark, greasy hair.  

"Harry," said Dumbledore warmly, "and Draco. Good to see you both. Please, have a seat." He indicated two high-backed chairs that had been placed in front of the desk. Harry lowered himself into one; Draco remained standing, just beside the other one, and Harry had a feeling he too was remembering facing his father in this room. "You remember," Dumbledore said, templing his hands beneath his chin, "of course, why you're here." 

"This is about the antidote," Harry said, as Draco seemed inclined to remain silent. "To the Polyjuice Potion." 

"That is correct. Severus?" said Dumbledore, and Snape stepped forward and set two large glass vials of a brownish solution on the desk.  

"These," Snape said, "have been designed precisely to reverse the results of the potion you took last year. The effect should be close to instantaneous. I will of course by standing by in case there are any problems, though I anticipate none." 

"Nor any side effects?" asked Dumbledore, with a raise of his white eyebrows. 

"None. This potion is quite perfect, I assure you." Snape reached forward and snapped the lids off each of the vials. "I have measured out the correct amount for each of you. It would be best if you swallowed them at the same time, or at least within the same minute." 

Harry looked at Draco for his reaction, but Draco was simply staring at the vial in front of him, his grey eyes winter-bleak. There was no curiosity in them, nor really even any resignation, just a sort of blank acceptance. A sort of concern registered on Dumbledore's face. "You may take a moment if you like, to prepare yourself," he said. "Mister Malfoy, I hope you will pass on to your mother my compliments for what she's done with this house. I was at Malfoy Manor once as a boy myself, and I recall thinking that for a structure so grand, there was precious little homelike or beautiful about it. That has certainly changed." 

"I'll be sure to pass that along, Headmaster," said Draco, with perfect politeness, and reached for the vial that was on his side of the desk. Very slowly, he turned to look at Harry, almost as if he were being dragged around by the shoulder by some unseen force and made to look at him. "Shall we then, Potter?" he said, and indicated with a wave of his hand the vial that stood swirling and smoking on the desk in front of Harry. Harry was reminded forcefully and suddenly of Lucius, in this same room holding a very different vial, and with a very different expression on his face than Draco's, though they shared the same beautifully modulated, aristocratic voice.  

Harry reached for his vial. It was cool to the touch, despite the smoke rising from the surface of the liquid, and smelled -- well, rather like Polyjuice Potion, though undercut by something sour, like lemon juice or vinegar. He looked back at Draco, half expecting a sort of mordant cheer, perhaps a raise of his vial in a macabre toast, but Draco only stared down at his hands and Harry was reminded of the look on his face when Draco had kissed his cheek just outside the castle in Romania, kissed him and said, "Te morituri salutant."  

"Are you ready, then, Potter?" said Snape, in his slippery-cold voice, dry as snake scales. "The Headmaster and I do not have all day." 

"That's all right, Severus," said Dumbledore. "Harry, you look troubled. Is everything all right?" 

Harry raised his head. "Yes," he said, and saw Draco shoot him a look, narrow and thoughtful and surprised. "Yes, everything's all right. I was just making up my mind about something." 

"Indeed," said Dumbledore. "And have you reached a decision?" 

"Yes," said Harry. He leaned forward and set the vial back down on the desk. Then he stood up. "It's awfully kind of you to go to all this trouble to create a reversal for the Polyjuice spell," he said. "But all the same, I don't think I want it. I'm sorry for having wasted your time." 

"But --" Dumbledore began, sounding bewildered. 

"You can't refuse the potion!" Snape interrupted, looking shocked. "Headmaster --" 

"Actually," said Harry, "I think you'll find I can refuse it. I'm seventeen -- an adult. And I'm no longer a student at Hogwarts, Professor Snape, so I think you'll also find that you have no real authority over me." 

Snape muttured something darkly in response to that, something that was only audible to Dumbledore, who sighed. 

"Technically, Harry, you are correct," he said. "Neither of us have any real authority over you. But I think you'll agree with me, won't you, that I have always looked out for your best interests?" 

"Yes, sir," Harry said, more quietly -- Dumbledore's sincerity was much harder to take than Snape's angry bluster.  

"Looked out for his best interests?" said Draco, suddenly, surprising everyone in the room, even Harry. "You dumped him as a baby on a bunch of soulless Muggles who tortured him for eleven years. You've tossed him in front of dragons, let him stand up to Dementors alone, left the responsibity of saving his godfather from Azkaban entirely on his own shoulders when he was thirteen years old and you say you've always looked out for his best interests?"  

Dumbledore raised his head, his glasses a gold blur in the dimness. "I did not realize, Harry," he said quietly, "that you held quite such a catalogue of resentments as that." 

"I don't," said Harry, almost surprised that he meant it. "I know you've always looked out for the wizarding world's safety first, and mine second. I don't resent that. It was what you had to do. I've always admired you for it, and tried to be like you. To make unselfish choices. My whole life was always about trying to be whatever it was that I had to be, molding myself into what was needed, at that moment, to fight Voldemort. But Voldemort's gone now, and I'm not a child any longer. The descisions I make now are going to have to be about my own life, and what kind of man I want to be. You can consider this my first decision, if you like. I don't want that antidote. I will not take it. Is that clear?" 

"What's clear," said Snape coldly, "is that you have truly mastered the art of ingratitude, Potter." 

Harry smiled at him, the bland, infuriating smile he'd learned from Draco. "I respect your position, Professor," he said. "I just don't share it." 

"Headmaster," Snape said, turning to Dumbledore. "There is more at stake here than Potter's petty show of independence. If he does not take the potion, it may well impact the efficacy of Draco taking it. Potter may be grown-up enough to make decisions for himself, but I don't think he should be allowed to make decisions for other students --" He caught himself, his voice tightening, --"for others, I mean. Should he?" 

"That is a point of some merit, Severus," said Dumbledore, and looked at Harry. "You do realize how your decision affects Mister Malfoy?" 

Harry bit his lip, then nodded. "If Draco wants to take the potion, I'll take it as well," he conceded. "I don't want to be unfair."  

They all turned to look at Draco, then, who was standing quietly, holding the vial in his hand. The light was bad -- Harry could only see the light color of Draco's hair, part of the outline of his chin, and didn't realize until Draco lifted his head entirely and looked straight at him that he was smiling. "You know," he said, "I've really had enough of antidotes, myself."  

And his set his vial on the desk, next to Harry's.  

*** 

Snape looked at Draco with a sort of frozen horror. "You cannot be serious, Draco," he said.  

But it transpired that Draco was quite serious, and so was Harry. They stood their ground while Snape blustered at them, which was somewhat difficult, and while Dumbledore looked at them with thoughtful concern, which was more so. Eventually Snape seemed to wind himself down into silent glowering, and Dumbledore stood up, drawing his traveling cloak over his shoulders. 

"Very well," he said. "You've made your decisions, and I respect that."  

"Thank you, Headmaster," said Harry, with some relief. 

Draco said nothing, but Dumbledore touched him lightly on the shoulder as he passed, and said something quietly to Draco, something Harry could not hear, but Draco smiled faintly, and nodded assent. And as Dumbledore passed Harry, he put his hand on Harry's shoulder, and said, so quietly that only Harry could hear him, "And may that be the first of many wise decisions you make from this moment on, Harry Potter." 

Snape, who had been gathering up his things, including the two vials, stalked after the Headmaster without a word -- until he reached the doorway. He paused there and spun around, fixing Draco with a sharp look. 

"I shall keep the potion on hand," he said, "in case you change your mind, Draco." 

"Thank you," Draco said politely. He had always been polite to Snape. "I don't think I'll be wanting it, but thank you nevertheless, Professor." 

Snape shook his head slowly, his narrow mouth twisted angrily. "So you are content, then," he said darkly, "to be, from this day on, Harry Potter's shadow? Is that all you want?" 

Draco turned to look at him. His hands were clasped at his back, the window with its great Malfoy crest just behind him, and perhaps he looked to Snape much as his father, at his age, might have looked -- but there were lines of humor around his mouth that Lucius had never had, and a certain quiet self-understanding in his eyes that all Lucius' years had failed to give him.  

"I am content," he said. "Isn't that enough?" 

Snape frowned, and stalked out of the room without another word, slamming the door behind him. 

"I don't think he likes you much," said Draco. 

"Yeah," said Harry. "I used to be on his bad side. Then I thought I was edging more over towards the good side. Now I think I'm right back over on the bad side again." 

"You never mastered the art of sucking up," said Draco. "That's always been your problem." He looked around and shuddered. "I hate it in here," he said. "And I never did finish breakfast. Back to the kitchen?" 

"In a second. There's something I wanted to ask you," said Harry. "I was going to ask you before, but we got sidetracked." 

Draco, halfway to the door, turned and looked at him curiously. "What is it?" 

"You said you were still going to travel around the world," said Harry. "That you hadn't changed your plans." 

Draco shook his head slowly. "That's true." 

"I was wondering if you'd mind if I came along with you. I've never seen the world at all, not outside England. Unless you count nearly starving and freezing while hunting down the Dark Lord, which I don't." 

Draco started to smile. "You want an upgrade from 'half-drunk staggering through the chicken coops of Eastern Europe in the middle of winter'?" 

Harry shrugged. "I want to see what there is out there to see. And I want to see it with you." He paused. "I can't think of anyone better." 

Draco's beginnings-of-a-smile had become a real smile. He looked lit up from within, as if someone had lumosed a light on inside him. "I'm leaving in a week, you know," was all he said. "Do you think you can be ready by then?" 

"I could be ready by tomorrow. What the hell's it going to take you a week to pack?" 

"Are you joking? I have to see my tailor and have clothes made up -- traveling clothes, and then I have to plan my course, you know, there's more to it than just sticking pins in a map. And there's gagdets to buy -- you can come with me tomorrow to Diagon Alley, there's this new Wizi-Photo gadget I just have to have, it takes pictures, and memorizes directions so you'll never get lost, and it makes soup -- not very good soup, but they're still working out the kinks, I think. And --" 

"I take it this means, yes, I'm allowed to go with you?" 

Draco came up short on that, and smiled. Almost a grin, really, if Draco Malfoy could be said to do anything quite as outré as grinning. "You saved the world," he said. "You might as well see what you saved." 

*** 

In the end, Harry was glad for the week in between the wedding and their departure. The guests left the Manor slowly; the Weasleys went back to the Burrow the next day, but Ron lingered behind to have some time with Harry and Hermione before they were separated. Blaise stayed as well, and she and Ron were often to be seen strolling the grounds together. Blaise was clearly in owl contact with Ginny, though she said nothing about the notes she received; Draco got only a blank postcard with a seaside vista on the front, but he laughed when he got it and folded it away in his pocket. 

Hermione sat on a chaise outside and studied for her course in Cornwall while Ron, Draco, Blaise, Harry, and often Sirius and Remus played pick-up games of Quidditch on the pitch in the back gardens. They went to Diagon Alley one morning and Draco bought everything in sight, including a pith helmet, and Harry promised all and sundry that he would be sure to take a photo if Draco ever actually wore it. On another afternoon Draco took the sword Terminus Est and carried it up the hill to his father's mausoleum, where he wrapped it in layers of cloth and left it inside the plain marble structure. Sirius went with him, and when they came down again Draco seemed noticably lighter, as if he'd left a weight behind him at his father's burial place. Ron came up to him and they spoke together, civilly and even thoughtfully, and never mentioned to anyone else, ever, what they had talked about. 

The days slid by, langorous and golden. The evenings were often spent out on the lawn, picnicking, playing Flamingo Croquet, or lying on their backs watching the stars come out one by one. Nights, Harry spent with Hermione, and they did not talk about the future, and only a little bit about the past. It was a time that he would always remember as enchanted, as close to perfection as life could get without being unendurable in the ending or the recollection afterward. 

The ending did come, as endings always do, and Harry said goodbye to Ron first, with a fierce hug on top of the Manor's front staircase. A carriage had come to take him to Blaise's house, where he would meet her parents -- and afterward they were headed to the Burrow where she would, at long last, meet his. Ron looked half amused and half like someone headed to his own funeral, which Hermione remarked on as she hugged him too, before he climbed into the carriage alongside Blaise, and it vanished down the drive. 

Hermione went next and that was more painful. She and Harry said their farewells privately, but there were still streaks of tears on her face when she carried her bags to the front steps of the Manor and waited there for the carriage that would take her to Chipping Sodbury to meet her parents. Sirius, Narcissa, and Remus all bid her farewell, and then it was Draco's turn and Harry went down the stairs with her bags to give them a moment to say goodbye to each other.  

"Shall I write you?" he asked with langorous amusement, and she laughed. 

"If you like," she said. "The black roses at the reception -- did you make those?" 

"No, but they were my idea. You know I prefer black to white. Why should white get all the adulation when perfect darkness is so much more soothing to the eye?" 

She touched his face lightly with her hand. "You remember when you asked me if there would be beautiful things where you were going?" 

Draco remembered a long corridor, fading light and fainter voices. He said, "I remember." 

"I think I can safely say yes, now -- there will be." She dropped her hand. "Take care of each other," she said, and ran down the steps. Harry put her into the carriage, and as she leaned out of it to kiss him good-bye, the sunlight struck the blue glass ring on its chain around her neck and made it glow with the blue-white light of a star.  

Harry came up the stairs. "There's only us left now," he said, and Draco had been worried that he would sound shell-shocked or distraught, but he sounded only meditative. "I suppose we'd better pack." 

"You haven't packed yet??" Draco demanded, momentarily losing his cool. "There's a bloody carriage coming for us in an hour, and we've got a boat leaving at --" 

"Calm down, Malfoy." Harry was laughing. "I packed last night. And I don't have three trunks full of hair product, either." 

They went to get their things, and when they returned, each with a bag slung over his shoulder (through the magic of one of his gadgets, Draco had managed to shrink his three trunks of hair products down to a manageable size), Narcissa, Sirius, and Professor Lupin were sitting on the stairs. At the foot of the stairs was a carriage, its doors open. "All these good-byes are wearing me out," Sirius said morosely, as he stood up to wish them bon voyage.  

"We'll be in Greece in August," said Narcissa, hugging Harry and letting him go. "Maybe you could meet us there." 

"That's our honeymoon you're inviting them on!" Sirius protested. He looked as if he might hug Draco, but settled instead for shaking Draco's hand in a manful sort of way, and promising to send him money if he needed it. Draco forbore from saying that there was little chance he was going to need any money; even if he and Harry drank nothing but expensive champagne and ate nothing but caviar for an entire year, it was unlikely they'd dent the Malfoy millions -- not to mention Harry's own not inconsiderable fortune.  

Lupin handed Harry a slender book. "I wandered the world for several years myself," he said. "I've written down some of my favorite places. If you're interested..." 

"I am," said Harry, pocketing the book. "Very. Thanks." He smiled as Sirius joined them, and briefly clasped Harry's shoulder. 

"I just wish," he began, and fell silent, though all three knew what he had been going to say, I just wish James and Lily were here to see you.  

"I know," Harry said. "But they're at peace now. That's what's important." 

"Are you?" said Lupin quietly, his lined face thoughtful as he studied Harry's expression. 

Harry thought for a moment of Draco, saying, I am content, with such assurance that Harry had been startled. "Yes," he said. "I'll always miss them, my parents. But I remember what you said to me, Sirius. That the things we do for love, those things endure. They're always with me." 

Sirius' eyes darkened, and he gripped Harry's shoulder again, hard enough to hurt. Lupin seemed about to say something when Narcissa's voice rose over them, sounding perplexed, "I know, isn't it peculiar?" she was saying, as she glanced over at a cluster of her white rosebushes, which lined the circular drive at the front of the Manor. One of the bushes sported roses which seemed to have turned overnight to a deep and glowing shade of red. She frowned. "I don't remember planting red roses..." 

"Don't fret about the herbaceous borders, Mother," said Draco. "There are much more interesting things to fret about. Me, for instance. I'm about to go off into the wide world all alone--" 

"Hey!" interjected Harry, affronted. 

"--I might be kidnapped by gypsies, or set upon by bandits. Anything could happen." 

"In that case, I feel sorry for the gypsies and bandits," said Narcissa, touching her son's face with her fingertips. "If there's one thing that doesn't concern me, it's you. My son can take care of himself." She dropped her hand, smiling. "And that goes for Harry, as well." 

Muttering something about tragic lack of maternal concern, Draco kissed his mother's cheek and headed down the steps with his bags. In a moment, Harry followed him. They kept the windows of the carriage open so they could look out and wave goodbye, long after the figures of Sirius, Remus and Narcissa had shrunk to the size of pinpoints and vanished, long after even the Manor was out of view. 

At last Harry slid back into the carriage, collapsing into one of the thickly upholstered seats. Draco was still leaning out the window, saying something to the carriage driver. A moment later he dropped back into the carriage and began rooting around in his bag. "Have we got any chocolate?" he demanded. "I'm starving." 

"Those are our provisions! Leave them alone," Harry said, kicking Draco's hand away from the bag. "And what did you say to the carriage driver?" 

"We're going to Paris, Potter, not the Kalahari Desert. You can buy chocolate in Paris." 

"Fine, fine. But what did you say to the driver?" 

Draco smiled more sweetly than the chocolate he'd liberated from the duffel bag. "I asked him to make a stop on the way to the coast." 

"A stop? Where?" 

Draco bit into the candy bar. "You'll see." 

*** 

It was afternoon by the time the carriage stopped with a jolt, shaking Harry awake. He yawned and turned toward the window.  

A familiar scene met his eyes. The green lawns, the great gray staircase sloping up to the double oak front doors, the jumble of turrets and battlements rising high into the thin, clear mountain air. "Hogwarts?" he said incredulously. "Your stop was Hogwarts?" 

"Yep," said Draco, cheerfully. He had been lounging on his bench seat, reading through Lupin's book of travel notes. Now he carefully tucked it back into the duffel bag and swung himself out of the carriage.  

Harry followed him, looking around in amazement. "I don't get it. Weren't we just here? Are you nostalgic for school already? I thought that was supposed to take ten years at least." 

Draco, who was in the middle of asking the driver to wait for them, shot him an irritable look. "I have an errand here, okay? Hold on to your trousers, Potter." 

"My trousers aren't going anywhere, Malfoy. But I feel compelled to point out that it's summer holidays -- no one's going to be in the school, except maybe Dumbledore, and he won't take kindly to us breaking in." 

"I asked him at the reception," said Draco, heading for the stairs. "He gave me permission. Of course, you needn't come with me if you don't want to." 

Harry shrugged and followed him. "I suppose it's too late to get expelled."  

"I love how you always look on the bright side."  

They had reached the top of the stairs; Harry was used to seeing them propped open to the sunset. It was odd to find them closed. He tried a knob, but it didn't turn. "See? Locked," he said. "I don't think an alohomora is going to open this door, either." 

Draco shot him a long, dark look, then reached out and put his hand to the door. It slid open soundlessly. "I told you," he said. "I have the Headmaster's permission." 

Surprised past arguing, Harry followed Draco into the flagstone-floored entrance hall. The enormous hourglasses that normally kept track of House points stood empty. Draco passed them without a second glance and headed for the wide marble staircase that led upward. He was silent as he went, and Harry followed him silently, though the sense of being in the huge castle alone was unnerving. He noticed creaks in the floorboards he'd never heard before as they passed the statue of Lachlan the Lanky on the seventh floor, turned a corner, and found themselves in a long corridor that Harry didn't recall. There was a single door along the west wall, and Draco went to it and threw it open. He stood in the doorway, staring into the room, as if he could go no farther. 

Harry joined him in the doorway. The room they looked into was nearly bare, with a wall of unshaded windows. Dust motes danced in the air, gilded by afternoon light. The only item of furniture in it was a magnificent mirror on two clawed gold feet. The light struck the mirror at such an angle that the surface seemed to shimmer like water and the inscription over it was unreadable. Not that it mattered; Harry knew well enough what it said. 

"I show you not your face," he said, "but your heart's desire." 

Draco said nothing. He was still staring at the mirror. A nervous pulse leaped in his throat.  

"Is this what you came for?" Harry demanded. "The Mirror of Erised?" 

"To look in it," Draco said shortly. "Yes." 

Harry shook his head. "The Mirror isn't a game," he said. "It's not necessarily pleasant to look at your heart's desire, especially if it's something you can't ever really have." 

"And do you think my heart's desire is something I can never really have?" 

"I don't know." Harry thought of Lucius, and wished he hadn't. "I don't know what it is you really want." 

"Neither do I," said Draco. He was leaning against the frame of the doorway, facing the room, but his gaze was elsewhere. "But I want to find out. In Slytherin's castle he showed me a mirror of Judgement, that shows you what you've been, and what you might be. But I want to know who I am right now. I want to know if this past year has changed me." 

"You seem different to me," Harry offered. 

"Seem isn't good enough," said Draco. "Our heart's desires don't just tell us what we want, they tell us who we are." He looked over at Harry then, grey eyes clear but unreachable. "You'll wait for me here?" 

Harry, feeling no need to stand in front of the Mirror himself, nodded once. "If that's what you want." 

"It's what I want," said Draco, and went into the room, shutting the door behind him. 

*** 

With the door closed, the room was enveloped in an intense quiet. The floor was layered with grey dust that showed no footprints. Draco wondered how long the Mirror had been here, though he suspected the manner of its conveyance from place to place was not the sort that left footprints behind.  

It seemed to loom up in the center of the room, like an iceberg looming up out of frozen water. The windows shed light but not warmth; Draco shivered as he moved through a visible rain of dust motes towards the Mirror, kicking up grey puffs of more dust with every step. Dust to dust, he thought as he reached the Mirror. Its smooth reflective front was unsmirched by any grime. Standing at an angle from which the Mirror did not reflect himself, Draco saw that it gave back simply a reflection of the empty room, a clear and perfect likeness down to each crack in the floorboards. 

He moved to stand in front of it and dropped his gaze immediately, his heart pounding. He wanted to look, and not to look; for it all to be over, and for him never to have had this thought, which had nagged at him subtly until he mentioned it to Dumbledore. Who am I? What am I, really? Perhaps he had been wrong, perhaps desire was not the way to know himself as the Oracle instructed, perhaps it would only leave him chasing impossible dreams.  

The Mirror is not a game, Harry had said, but then he had withstood looking in it, not once but several times. It was because of Harry that he knew that desire changed with the desirer, that one might outgrow one's yearnings and put them away, as one put away childish things. For now we see as through a glass, darkly; then we will see face to face. There was nothing to be afraid of here, he told himself; after all, the truth about himself would still be the truth whether he acknowledged it or not. And surely it was better to know the truth than not know it? And lastly, he told himself sternly, he was a Malfoy, and Malfoys were not afraid. 

He raised his head and looked into the Mirror, quickly, before he could stop himself. For a moment his vision blurred, then it resolved, and he saw what was reflected in the silvered surface of the Mirror: saw his own pale and startled face, oddly vulnerable, and the white line of the scar under his eye, bright as silver wire. He stared at the reflection for a long time, not moving, until he realized that his face felt weirdly, peculiarly cold; and when he raised his hand to touch the back of it to his cheek, it came away wet, and salt-tasting as the sea. 

*** 

When he pulled the door of the room open he found Harry sitting on the floor in the corridor, idly playing with a feather that must have drifted down from the Owlery. Harry looked up in surprise when the door opened, and scrambled to his feet. "You're all right?" he said breathlessly, making it more a question than a statement. 

"O ye of little faith," said Draco. "I'm fine, thank you." 

Harry looked at him hard. "Your face looks a bit strange --" 

"Lots of dust," said Draco. "Made my eyes water." 

Harry raised an eyebrow. "So?" 

"So we should probably head out," said Draco, squinting down the corridor, "We're burning daylight here, Potter." 

"You're not going to tell me what you saw?" Harry looked so dismayed that Draco nearly laughed. 

"Oh, I saw myself," he said casually. "Just as I am." 

"Bloody hell -- you can't be serious. Just as you are?" 

"Maybe a few inches taller." 

Harry shook his head slowly. "Jammy bastard," he said, and grinned. "I meant to ask you before, is that a girl's barette you've got clipped onto your sleeve?" 

Draco glanced down at the butterfly clip he'd found on his floor the day after Ginny had left. "What of it?" 

"Bit peculiar, don't you think?" 

"Not really," said Draco, with the air of one whose good humor could not be ruined. 

"I suppose as long as you don't take to wearing it in your hair," Harry said with a shrug. "You know, maybe I should have a crack at that Mirror. I mean, if it worked out for you --" 

"No," said Draco firmly. "I don't think Dumbledore's lenience is going to extend quite that far."  

"All right, all right." Harry looked at Draco with some amusement. "I guess what you told Snape was the truth." 

"What do you mean?" 

"That you're content. You must be." 

"I suppose I am," said Draco, as if this were still something of a revelation. 

Harry grinned. "You don't even mind being my shadow?" 

He said it as a joke, but to his surprise Draco looked at him long and steadily, without humor or annoyance or anger, only with a sort of level consideration. If I am the shadow, he said, silently and at last, it is only because you are the light. And the one cannot exist without the other.  

He said it without affect, as if it were simply and obviously true, and Harry thought that after all, perhaps it was. "It's a good thing we don't have to, then, isn't it?" he said. He glanced around, as if noticing the fading light for the first time. "If we don't head out, we'll miss the boat," he observed, heading towards the stairs. 

"I'm not the one who's trying to get another crack at the Mirror," Draco pointed out, falling into step beside Harry. "I said we should leave ten minutes ago." 

"It was not ten minutes. It was more like five. And how would you know? You won't even wear a watch." 

"I refuse to be constrained by someone else's idea of what time it is," Draco said, but his mind was not really on their good-natured arguing, which was, as usual, about nothing in particular. They had reached the ground floor now, and the sun was streaming in through the open double doorway that led outside, laying a glinting path along the worn flagstone floors. And as Draco set his feet on that path, he thought for a moment that he could see the shape of his life stretching out before him like a shining line, and for the first time, he knew with surety that it would be a life that was well worthy of living.

THE END.

REFERENCES: 

Last Buffy quote ever: "So you tripped and fell on his lips."  

Flamingo Croquet: Alice in Wonderland 

"Love is kind, etc" -- the Bible, 1 Corinthians  

"Not that there's anything wrong with that" -- Seinfeld 

"One-track and dirty" -- an old joke 

The Chimney Sweep Song is by Rave.  

"the shadow" "the light" -- Roethke's " In a Dark Time"  

Deleted Scenes