remember?'
'Not at all,' said Harry, looking fidgety.
'You wrecked my bedroom?' said Draco, looking at Harry in shock.
'It wanted redecorating,' replied Harry airily.
'I do believe we?re wandering from the topic,' said Sirius, quietly.
'The topic of escape. All we have left of the pencils are these little nubs here, and I'm not even sure it will work in all this adamantine.'
'What have we got to lose?' asked Hermione, plucking the pencil from Sirius' fingers and handing it to Ron. Draco and Harry exchanged a look and Hermione was sure from Harry's expression that he was defending Ron to Draco yet again. To stave off an argument, she left Ron to draw a simple door, and explained to Harry and Draco about the Zonko's pencils and the maps.
Sirius joined them as she was finishing, and said, 'Harry, I want you four to get out of the castle as soon as possible. I'll find Remus and we can get the Orb and bring it to you outside the castle walls.
'But I'm the only one who knows where the Orb is,' Draco interrupted.
'And I have the Lycanthe, and that's the only thing that can lead us to Ginny,' Hermione added.
'Well, I'm not letting you go off on your own again,' Harry said to her.
'I wasn't on my own,' she countered.
'You're never alone with Ron Weasley, but you might as well be for all the good he does,' Draco said scathingly.
Ron said something that sounded a lot like 'plucking faster', and made a move towards Draco. Harry grabbed the back of his shirt.
Sirius sighed. 'So to bring us back to the issue of the moment, when we get out of here, where are we going to go?'
'Draco and Hermione and I should get the Orb,' Harry suggested.
'Sirius, will you take Ron and go find Lupin? Then, when Ginny gets back, we can deal with the opening issues.'
'I want to stay with you guys,' Ron protested, looking back over his shoulder. 'While you lot of Heirs are opening that Orb, you need someone to watch your back, protect you from evil. Important stuff.
Besides — I might not be an Heir, but I do have Hufflepuff blood.'
Draco scoffed. Hermione nudged him with her elbow, to make him be quiet.
'All right, you lot go together,' Sirius said. 'With the Heir of Slytherin is probably the safest place to be, and I'll likely have an easier time sneaking around the castle on my own.' He looked at Draco. 'And when you have the Orb, guard it with your life.'
'Certainly not,' said Draco, with the ghost of a mocking smile. 'I plan to guard it with my really big sword.'
'All right, then,' said Harry. 'Lets go.'
* * * * *
It was sunset, and the sky was golden streaked with silver threads like the threads in a tapestry. Ginny sat by the fire that Ben had made that afternoon, shivering very slightly. It was autumn in the time they were in currently. In the distance, she could see many small campfires burning around an assortment of tents. Clouds like dark red roses scudded high across the amber sky. The air smelled of oncoming frost, and rather strongly of dragons. Actually, dragon, as in the one that Gareth had lent them earlier that day, or what she thought of as that day, even though it had actually been on a day over a decade later than the one she was now reaching the end of.
His name was Feroluce, he was a Common Welsh Green, and he smelled distressingly of sheep, even when he was tethered many yards away as he was now.
She squinted slightly, and saw a figure coming towards her from the camp. She hoped it was Ben. He had been gone most of the day, talking to the army, and here they had come across an obstacle she hadn?t been expecting: she couldn?t talk to the soldiers, and they couldn?t talk to her. It appeared that her ability to communicate in the past was limited to speaking with Heirs, since both Ben and Gareth had understood her perfectly, and when they spoke, she had heard perfectly sensible English. But when she tried to converse with anyone else, she heard a gabble with an occasionally understandable English word salted in. She had eventually given up in high dudgeon, and, she was sure, to Bens amusement. She had gone to wait for Ben and read Helgas book on Time-Turners, while Ben used all his charm and his Heir of Gryffindor status to try to convince the army of his objective, and to assure them that if they didn?t come to the future, they were sure to be vaporized by Slytherin anyway.
'Its destiny,' he told them, looking very serious and important in his full Gryffindor regalia: red cloak lined in gold, scarlet tunic sewed with the emblem of a dragon, and, of course, the sword and the in a scabbard that was woven all over with flowers and leaves.
Ginny thought it was rather cute. She wondered if this was what Harry would look like when he grew up. Then she remembered why she?d had such a terrific crush on him in the first place.
The figure coming towards her resolved its shape as it neared. It was Ben. He waved, looking exhausted, and collapsed by the other side of the fire. 'Success,' he announced. Then he made a face. 'That dragon smells,' he observed gloomily.
'Don?t I know it,' agreed Ginny.
'Have you been here all this time?'
'I haven?t had much else to do. And I didn?t think it was a good idea to mangle time by inventing Quidditch or something.' Ben looked at her blankly. 'After your time,' she added, smiling.
'No, I think I know that word. It reminds me of your brother somehow.' Ben shivered, probably from the cold, and moved closer to the fire.
