'You saved my life,' said Draco, too wrung out to dissemble or pretend.
'I would have done that for anyone,' said Harry flatly.
There was a short, unpleasant silence. Then Draco began, 'But I — '
'Shut up, Malfoy,' interrupted Harry with such savagery that Draco did, in fact, shut up. 'I think you should just-' and then his eyes went wide and his jaw dropped open and Draco turned around to see what he was looking at, and got such a shock that he felt as if his stomach had caved in.
Fleur was standing only a few feet from them, a look of curious interest on her face. She was flanked by six tall hooded gray-clad men who could only be guards, their faced half-hidden by the hoods of their robes. And beside her stood Salazar Slytherin. He had one hand on her shoulder, and he was smiling.
Behind them, the door had reappeared in the wall.
Draco froze, then went for his sword, but it was too late. 'Ligatus,' said Slytherin swiftly, raising his hand, and Draco suddenly found his arms snapped behind his back, his wrists bound tightly together with what felt like metal bands. He turned his head and saw the same had happened to Harry; his wrists were bound tightly behind him, and from the blue-white gleam at his back, Draco suspected the cuffs were made of adamantine.
Having bound them, Slytherin appeared to briefly lose interest in the boys. He walked over to the dead body of the manticore and knelt down, seeming to study it, his eyes dark and unreadable.
Finally he raised his head, and looked at Harry and Draco. 'You killed it,' he said. 'Did you not?'
Neither of them replied.
'Have you no answer for me?' the Snake Lord demanded.
'Oh, I?ve got an answer for you all right,' said Draco, 'only you can?t see it, because my hands are tied behind my back.'
Then Harry spoke. His voice was flat with hatred. 'Yes, we killed your monster,' he said. 'We killed it, and it died horribly, and we are not sorry.'
'As well you should not be,' said Slytherin, standing up, a smile beginning on his face. 'I brought you here to kill it. Thank you both, very much.'
'I can?t believe you tried to use it without me.'
'Ginny…'
'You should have known it wouldn?t work. How thick are you?'
'Very thick,' said Ron fervently. He was sitting on the end of Ginnys bed, Hermione beside him, both of them looking abashed and sincere. 'Very, very thick. Especially Hermione.'
Hermione hit him on the shoulder. 'I am not thick.'
'Ow,' said Ron.
Ginny sat up and grinned. She hadn?t been all that surprised when Ron and Hermione had come into her room and woken her up, nor had she been all that surprised when they?d told her what they had tried to do. And she had been particularly unsurprised that it hadn?t worked. The Turner was hers, after all, she?d known that the moment she touched it. She held out her hand for it now, and Hermione placed the tiny sparkling hourglass in her palm. The light struck a sharp gold spark off the Turner that lanced into her eyes.
She shut them quickly, but not before the dark red afterimages had begun to form a picture against the back of her eyelids — she saw a huge field when men and beasts strove together, and smoke rising above it, and -
She opened her eyes with a start, feeling that she was beginning to understand exactly why Hermione thought her own dreams were so important. The man in the dream she had had earlier had looked so much like Harry, even down to the untidy hair so black that it seemed like it should leave marks, like paint or soot, on his face where it brushed his skin. But he hadn?t been Harry…he had been someone very different. She had felt about him the way she felt about her own brothers, her flesh and blood. And she had called him Godric.
She raised her eyes and smiled at Hermione and her brother.
'Thanks.' She looped the chain around her neck, and gestured that they should scoot towards her.
'Wait a second,' said Hermione, indicating Ginnys lacy white nightdress. 'Don?t you want to-change your clothes?'
Ron hopped up off the bed. 'I have to go get something anyway,' he said, and left the room. By the time he returned, Ginny was dressed in jeans and a pullover jumper? and she and Hermione were sitting on the bed, the gold chain of the Turner looped around their necks, looking at him expectantly.
'What did you go to get?' Hermione asked curiously as he sat down beside them on the bed.
'Nothing,' said Ron, waving his hand airily. 'Just something I thought we might need. You know,' he added, reaching over to loop the chain around his own neck as well, 'It occurs to me that Charlie is going to be furious when he wakes up and finds us gone.'
Hermione smiled. 'If it works properly, he?ll never know we were gone at all. We?ll be back when we left.'
'And if it doesn?t work properly?'
'Then we?ll have way bigger problems than Charlie. Like being stuck in the past forever.'
'It might not be so bad. We can invent the wheel and get rich.'
'Ron. Its a thousand years ago, not a million. They had the wheel.'
'I knew that.'
'As far as you?re concerned, history class is just something that happens to other people, isn?t it?'
'This from the girl whos still bitter than there are only seven years of school.'
'Quit bickering,' said Ginny firmly, 'and hold on,' and she flipped the Time-Turner over.
