still had his entire face. 'How did I get here?' she demanded, trying to keep her voice firm.
'Wormtail brought you to me,' said the buzzing voice at her left.
'He is a very faithful servant.'
'Not that faithful,' said Hermione to Wormtail in a shaking voice.
'Considering that two weeks ago he was serving the Dark Lord!'
'Now I serve the Master of my Master,' said Wormtail. 'The greatest of the Hogwarts Four, the most fearsome wizard ever to hold a wand.' He grinned emptily at her. 'Do you know who I am talking about? Hogwarts has gone sadly downhill if they no longer even teach their students a proper understanding of history.'
Hermione shut her eyes. 'Salazar Slytherin is dead,' she said. 'And the dead can't come back.'
'It hurts me to hear you say that, my love,' said the buzzing voice in her ear. Salazar Slytherin's voice — her mind didn't want to accept it, couldn't accept it. Something this horrible couldn't be happening to her. His black- gloved hand closed on her arm, and the shock of his grip was the single most unpleasant sensation Hermione had ever experienced. He hauled her upright on her wobbly legs, and turned her so that she faced him. 'After so many years wandering the gray spaces,' he said. 'You brought me back to the world.'
'I did what?' Hermione gasped.
'It was you who created the spell that broke the charm that held me captive,' said Slytherin. 'Surely you did it on purpose?'
She looked desperately away from him, and saw Wormtail gazing at her. 'Your Whirlwind Charm,' he said. 'Very clever, that. But perhaps not entirely sensible. It may have had,' he leered coldly, 'unintended consequences.'
'I don?t understand,' she panted, looking from one of them to the other.
'Don?t you remember?' said Slytherin, gazing at her out of his empty eyes. 'When I told you that I would never truly die?'
'No!' said Hermione sharply. 'I don?t remember, because I?m not who you think I am.' She looked desperately at the skeletal face before her. 'Rowena Ravenclaw is dead,' she said. 'Shes been dead a thousand years.'
In reponse, one of his gloved hands shot out and seized at her neck.
For a moment, she thought he was going to choke her. Then she realized, with horror, that he had seized the Epicyclical Charm and was holding it in his fist. 'You wear my descendants life around your neck,' he said. 'As once, Rowena wore mine. When I awoke, the first thing I saw was your face, through his eyes. And I saw that he loved you, just as once I had loved her. History repeating itself. I saw Godric, too, through his eyes,' Slytherin said, with a snarl.
'When she left me for Godric, it destroyed everything that I had worked for, everything I had nearly achieved. I won?t let that happen again, my love.'
'I?m not your love,' said Hermione, with desperate fury.
'Maybe not yet,' said Salazar Slytherin. 'But you will be.'
Ginny was sitting in the kitchen listening to the wall clock tick when the door opened and Harry, Ron and Draco walked in, carrying their brooms and looking utterly exhausted. At least, Draco and Ron looked exhausted. Harry looked a degree worse than exhausted, as if he'd been wrung out by some terrible ordeal.
Ron and Draco tossed their brooms into the corner; Harry leaned his carefully on the wall next to the door. Ginny watched him from the kitchen, her heart aching with the suppressed desire to run over and put her arms around him; he looked so unhappy.
Ron walked over to her and put his hand on her shoulder.
'Anything?' he said quietly.
Ginny shook her head. 'No word from her.'
None of them looked particularly surprised. 'Thanks for waiting, Ginny,' said Harry in a deadly tired voice.
'Did you — learn anything?' asked Ginny anxiously.
Harry shrugged. 'Yes and no.'
'Is she all right?'
The answer to this question was a dead silence. Harry said, 'I'm going to go wash up. I'll be right back,' turned, and went upstairs.
Ginny looked miserably at Ron. 'What happened?'
Ron sighed. He looked over at Draco, who was leaning against the kitchen wall. 'We talked to Krum,' he said, and told Ginny exactly what had happened. 'I guess we were pretty lucky,' he said, after he had finished telling the story. 'Nobody caught us, and when I took the spell off Viktor, he seemed fine. Couldn't remember anything he'd told us under the Veritas curse. Couldn't even remember why we were there.'
'I had to get his autograph,' said Draco, trying to sound light. 'It was very embarrassing.'
'Is Harry okay?' asked Ginny, looking up at her brother. She tried to read his eyes, as she had been able to do when she was younger.
Right now they said Harry's not all right and I wish you didn't care.
'He needs to sleep,' said Ginny. 'You all need to sleep.'
'Good luck convincing Harry of that,' said Ron.
'He's really upset about Hermione, isn't he?' said Ginny.
'He's upset about Viktor,' said Draco. 'He's upset by the thought of what he's capable of when he's pushed.'
Ron looked at Draco bitterly. 'What do you know?' he said.
