And blinked, for a moment unable to grasp quite what it was that she was looking at. Here, there was more light — a faint, gray light almost blocked entirely by an enormous wall surrounding the castle, pushing against its outside walls. Ginny stared in surprise. She had no idea where the wall had come from: circular and huge, it seemed to stretch in all directions around the castle, and up, up, up as far as her eye could see, vanishing into dim nothingness against a smidgen of blue sky the size of a childs marble. As she slowly descended the stairs, she became aware that the wall was not smooth at all, but uneven and irregular, and starred with strange red blossoms…
Roses. It wasn?t a wall at all, but an enormous hedge of thorns. Like the brambles that had surrounded Sleeping Beautys castle she thought, almost giggling with the intensity of the nervousness she felt. The Prince had managed to cut his way through the brambles -
she thought very briefly of Draco, and his sword — but there was no Prince here, she was on her own.
Driven by an impulse she couldn?t quite identify, she reached out and gently touched the Time-Turner to the edge of a leaf.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then, with a loud sussuration, like the sound of many rushing waters, the branches began to curl away from her, bending themselves backward, opening a path to let her through. Through the gap in the hedge she glimpsed brilliant green grass, starred with white flowers. She stepped through quickly, and the hedge sealed itself up behind her as if there had never been a gap.
She glanced around wonderingly. She stood in a clearing, and in the distance she could see the dark line of trees where the forest began.
The forest that had grown up to the very edge of the castle in her own time. But now it was far back, and in front of it stretched a long and grassy clearing, in the midst of which were a number of multicolored tents. She was strongly reminded of the war camp she had visited with Ron and Hermione.
She set forth nearly at a run, suddenly filled with a desperation to see people — almost any people, she felt, would have done. The castle had been so silent, so eerie. She reached the center of the camp, and glanced around. There were tents in many colors: blue, bright green, orange, and to her left a tall scarlet-walled tent bearing on its closed flap the emblem of a golden lion.
Gryffindor.
She ran towards the tent, and paused at the entrance. There was nowhere to knock, that she could tell. Gingerly, she reached forward and drew back a corner of the tent flap, and peered into the darkness inside.
Like most wizarding tents, the inside bore no resemblance to the outside. On the inside, the walls were made of dark, panelled wood, there was a fireplace (empty-since the day was warm and bright) a number of small windows, without panes, and a large round mahogany table in the center of the room, which was embossed with patterns of stars and moons in gold. Leaning against one table leg, quite casually, was a long silver sword in a scabbard decorated with brilliant enameled leaves, flowers and animals.
A movement in the corner of the room caught her eyes. She turned, and stared.
And saw someone staring back. Sitting in the corner of the tent, on a wooden footstool, was a tall man with a shock of unruly black hair, and brilliant dark eyes. He looked as if he were about twenty, and more interestingly, was shirtless, wearing a pair of leather breeches, and apparently in the middle of doing up the laces on his boots.
He stared at Ginny.
Ginny stared at him.
He found his voice first. Letting his boot drop to the ground, he stood up, and in a voice several octaves deeper than it had been the last time she had heard it, said, 'Who the hell are you and what are you doing in my tent?'
Caught between shock and an insane desire to giggle, Ginny took her hand away from her mouth. 'Ben?' she said.
The dungeon was a dungeon. It bore a startling resemblance to other dungeons Sirius had been in. The Malfoy dungeon, for instance. Thick stone walls dripping with unpleasant moisture.
Thick gray cell-bars wound around with magical wards. The smell of moss, old sweat, and fear. Dungeons were all the same.
At least he had his clothes back. Raven had allowed him to have them back, along with all his possessions save his wand. He wondered how long it would be possible to survive on Every Flavor Beans. He wondered if he was going to find out.
The silence of the dungeon seemed to stretch on and on. To distract himself, Sirius reached into his pockets and began to spread their contents on the ground in front of him. V The Zonkos pencils. The letters from his old girlfriends. He picked one up and flipped it open randomly. Darling Sirius, I?m sitting here in History of Magic-
thinking about whether I should catch up on that sleep I missed last night while we were-um…watching the stars… Anyway, is it just me or is Professor Binns getting kind of dusty?
Sirius grinned and shoved the letter back into his pocket. Then there were other letters, addressed to James, in Lilys delicate handwriting, the sight of which made his throat close up and his chest tighten. James Potter, 30 Galloping Drive, Godrics Hollow, Wales. The sight of the address written there in Lilys hand brought up the memory of the house as even the sight of its blasted ruins had not, the memory of the house as he had last seen it, crawling through its rubble under a sky striped green and black.
He tightened his fist on the parchment, crumpling it in his hand.
James. They came now, the memories, thick and fast: the dark thoughts of ghosts. James. He hadn?t been able to find Lily at all, that night. She has been buried, gone, rubble had covered her. But James. He had not been crushed, or wounded in any visible way, but it was a lie, Sirius thought
<feeling the grit under his hands as he crawled over broken wood and stone, tasting bitter copper in his mouth where he had bitten his lip> that the dead resemble their living selves, only sleeping. He had known right away that James was dead. He lay where he had fallen, on his back, one hand flung out and clutching the wand that, at the end, had been no use to him, the other hand on his chest. His glasses were gone, had fallen off, smashed somewhere, and Sirius wanted to find them and give them back to him because of course James couldn ?t see properly at all without his glasses, he never could.
There in the broken house, choking on poisonous dust, Sirius put his face down on Jamesshoulder and cried, a crying too awful and too profound to produce any tears. He whispered under his breath as he cried, asked James to come back, to please come back. If James had lived, he would, however far away he might have been, have returned to Sirius had his friend so desperately called for him. But the dead are selfish and reluctant
