Ginny suddenly sat up so quickly that she knocked her chair over. It clattered on the floor behind her. She was hearing Fleurs voice in her head.
'Ben,' she said hoarsely.
He looked up at her.
She was gripping the edge of the table so hard her hands hurt. '
Fleur — a friend of mine once told me that Slytherin had made an entire army vanish into thin air,' she said. 'Is that true? Was it more than once?'
Ben replied slowly, as if choosing his words carefully. 'It was just once,' he said. 'It was when I was ten years old. An army was sent out from Ravenclaw, a company of about two hundred and fifty, men and warriors and beasts. They never arrived at their destination.'
'Ben,' said Ginny again. 'What if the reason they never arrived wasn?t because Slytherin made them vanish. What if it was because we brought them forward into the future?'
Ben goggled at her. Really goggled. His eyes widened and his mouth fell open and she realized that she had, truly, astonished him. Amid the whirling chaos of her thoughts, she felt somewhat proud about this.
'But…' he began, still staring. 'We can?t…go back…I mean…and…it would change history.'
'No, it wouldn?t,' said Ginny staunchly. 'Its already happened.'
There was another long silence while Ben stared at her across the table. Rather like Harrys did, his hair was standing up around his head as if mirroring his surprise, like a crown of unruly black leaves. It was rather cute, just as it was cute on Harry.
'How old are you?' she said abruptly.
Ben found his voice. 'That might work,' he said, sounding stunned.
'Your idea. Its totally insane. But also, brilliant. And I?m twenty-two.'
'Thats kind of old,' she said, without thinking.
Ben looked at her quizzically. 'Old for what?'
'I was just thinking…' she stammered. 'That I really did miss my goal by quite a few years when I tried to come back here. At least ten. I?m going to have to be a lot more careful when we go back to get the army.'
'When, not if?' Ben was smiling. 'Confident, aren?t you?'
'I have to be,' said Ginny. 'This is really my only hope. And if I can?t be accurate enough with the Time Turner, it?ll never work.'
'Magnifying a Time Turners accuracy isn?t so difficult if you have the right tools. All you have to do is accentuate the metamorphosis of the synchronicity between the temporal infrastructures.'
Now it was Ginnys turn to goggle.
'How do you know so much about time-travel?' asked Ginny.
'From Helga,' he said, resting his chin in his hand. 'She and Rowena really helped bring me up. My own mother died when I was a baby.
And Helga never had any sons, only daughters, so I think she felt a bit as if I was hers. In fact, I should show you something.'
Ginny looked after him as he got up and went into another room of the tent. When he returned, he was carrying a stack of books. She watched curiously as he sat down, and opened the topmost of the books. It was much larger than almost any book Ginny had seen before, except a few that were kept in the Antiquities section of the library and which students were prevented from touching with powerful Security Charms. The cover was of dark gold leather, stamped with gold along the spine. 'You do know about the prophecies, don?t you?' he asked.
'I know theres a prophecy that the Heir of Slytherin will rise up and wreak havoc on the wizarding world,' said Ginny reluctantly.
'So there is,' said Ben. 'Theres also a prophecy that the Heir of Gryffindor will bring him to destruction, and that the Heir of Slytherin will help.'
'Don?t those run in conflict with each other?'
Ben nodded. 'That usually means that theres some event, some kind of turning point, that could go either way. The outcome of that moment determines which prophecy is correct for your reality. It might have already happened, and it might not have. You wouldn?t know.'
'And maybe the Heir of Gryffindor that brings him to destruction isn?t Harry,' said Ginny. 'Maybe its you.'
Ben blinked, as if this had not occurred to him. 'When my father died,' he said slowly, 'he cursed his murderer. The death-curse of a wizard with Slytherin blood is a powerful thing and they often come to pass.'
'What was the curse?'
Ben shook his head. He had that closed look again. It was almost like seeing Dracos expression on Harrys face. 'I don?t know — I don't think anybody is sure what his words were.'
Ginny thought it best to change the subject. Over the years, she had certainly learned that Heirs of Gryffindor tended to be very closed-mouthed when discussing how their parents were killed by wizards from the house of Slytherin. 'So you can show me how to modify the Time Turner, or whatever it was you said before?'
'That,' he said, looking at the table, 'is probably not the best approach.' Ginnys heart sunk again. The plan she?d been forming in her head since Ben first mentioned what needed to be done to the Time Turner crumbled to the ground as she watched him and then he lifted us lift his hand and snapped his fingers once, hard. There was a rustle of wings, and a small apricot-colored horned owl lifted off its perch near the door with a soft whoo, and came to rest on his arm. He took a roll of parchment from the owls leg, smoothed it out, picked a quill up off
