Draco stared at him, honestly befuddled. 'Do what again?'
Harry looked determined. His eyes burned with a green and stellar intensity. 'I want to see what happens.'
'What happens if….' Dracos voice trailed off as he gazed at Harry.
'You?re not serious.'
'I am. Run me through again.'
'No,' said Draco, backing away. He couldn?t retreat very far though, because there was a wall behind him. He felt it against his back, holding him up, with a certain relief.
'Come on. If it didn?t kill me once…'
'No. You?ve lost a lot of blood, you?re not rational.' Draco remembered being in the infirmary at Hogwarts after Buckbeak had slashed him with his talons, the sleeve of his robe soaking wet with blood and Madam Pomfrey looking at him with weary concern. Do you feel tired? Weak? Are you seeing spots in front of your eyes?
Hallucinations? 'Harry….you should sit down.'
Harrys chest was rising and falling as if he had been running. 'I don?t want to sit down. I feel like I could run twenty miles without stopping. I don?t feel weak at all.' He raised his head, and looked at Draco with the same dazed and slightly drunken look. 'Nothing can hurt me.'
'You don?t know that,' said Draco, half-desperately, and reached forward and knocked the sword out of Harrys hand. Harry made no effort to hold onto it, and it clattered to the ground between them.
'Look, it didn?t kill me the first time.'
'And this makes you anxious to experience it again?'
'I want to know,' said Harry. 'Whats wrong with me? I should be dead. That should have killed me. It didn?t. I want to see what happens if you do it again.'
'You already saw it once,' said Draco. 'Look, I?m sorry if you got distracted and missed it. Once was enough for me. No repeat performances.'
Harry just looked at him. His shirt had not yet dried and trails of blood like unraveling crimson threads stole down his right arm. And yet his face was full of color and life, his eyes bright — too bright. He looked like someone with a fever. This was not Harry, not calm sensible Harry who was as far from having a death wish as anyone Draco had ever met.
His next thought broke from him without any effort on his part to control or hold it back. Think about what you?re asking me to do.
It took a moment for Harry to react. He blinked, and seemed to be fighting something down — anger or disappointment or fear or even tears, it was impossible to tell. 'I need to know,' he said, his voice rasping through his throat. 'If I can die.'
'I can answer that for you without any messy sort of impalings,' said a voice, silky but steel-spined, from the corner of the room.
'The answer is yes.'
Draco whirled and stared. And felt his mouth fall open.
Ranged against the far wall were six tall figures in belted robes.
They had heads, arms, and legs, but were not human. Their skin was scaley, dark gray and patchy in places, their eyes red and whirling, their heads knobbed and lumpy. The tallest of them stood in front, and in its hand it held cupped a single flame, that flickered with an emerald fire. It seemed to be smiling, whether at him or at Harry it was hard to tell. He knew without knowing how that this was the one who had spoken, and his belief was confirmed when it spoke again, its voice like iron now. 'You can die, Harry Potter. And if you let your friend stab you again, you will.'
* * * * *
'I?m sorry,' Ben said again.
Ginny barely heard him. She had her hands over her face and was staring at the darkness behind her lids, at nothingness. How could I have been so stupid? she thought.
'I could give you something to bring back with you,' she heard him say, his voice tinged with pity and anxiety. 'Weapons…?'
'Weapons aren?t any good without someone to use them,' said Ginny, and took her hands away from her face. 'Never mind. Its not your fault.' She took a deep breath and Bens face swam into focus. She couldn?t quite read his expression. Which wasn?t that surprising, considering that she didn?t, in fact, know him at all. His surface resemblance to Harry was so strong that she somehow felt that he could solve things for her, as Harry had always solved things for all of them. But he wasn?t Harry; he wasn?t even anyone she knew. She got to her feet, feeling suddenly miserable and desperate to get away. 'Theres nothing you can do, then. I should go back.'
'Wait.' Ben caught at her arm as she stood up from the table.
'Don?t tell me theres nothing I can do. It sounds like you?re fighting a losing battle and — '
'Its not your battle.' Disappointment beat behind her eyes like a drumbeat.
'It is, though. Slytherin killed my father, remember.'
Ben spoke very quietly, and Ginny glanced up at him. He had a bit of the expression that Harry got when he was talking about his parents. Closed off.
'There a reason I?m here,' he said. 'Waiting here. In front of this castle.'
'I know…I?m sorry. How did…what about your mother?'
'I was so young when she died, I only know what people told me,' said Ben. 'It was right around the beginning of the war. The Snake Lord had just come to power and was wreaking havoc on the wizarding world. Recruiting giants and dragons to serve him, destroying whole armies, making them vanish — '
Vanish.
