shoulders.
'Almost there,' he said.
They continued on in silence, the only sound the crackle of ice snapping underfoot as they walked. Harry was in front now, and Ginny watched him covertly through her hair. The look on his face back at the mausoleum had frightened her. He seemed lost in thought, but not so much so that he was no longer tense — his shoulders were rigid and his hands clenched and unclenched at his sides.
He paused at the gate and glanced back at Draco. The gate loomed over them with its intertwined, wrought serpents throwing black shadows against the snow. The bronze bolt that held it shut was as thick as one of Harrys arms.
Draco stepped forward. 'Let me do it,' he said. 'Its best if only I touch things around here,' and he reached out and drew back the bolt. The gate creaked open without a sound and they slipped through it: Harry first, then Ginny, and Draco last. He closed the gate behind them and Ginny heard the sound of the bolt drawing itself shut on the other side.
Draco exhaled a breath of relief. 'Now — ' he began.
He never finished his sentence. An unearthly wailing voice suddenly split the night: it sounded like a thousand angry pixies screaming all at once -
and it was coming directly from the pocket of Ginnys robes.
'I belong to Malfoy Manor!' the wailing voice announced, increasing in pitch and volume with every word. 'I belong to Malfoy Manor! I BELONG
TO MALFOY MANOR!'
Draco clapped his hands over his ears and mouthed something at her furiously. Half-fainting with shock, Ginny dug into her pocket — which was dancing and vibrating against her leg as if it had a live cat in it — and pulled out the second book she had taken from the library, the one she had used to hide the diary in. Freed from the confines of her robes, it shrieked even louder: 'I BELONG TO MALFOY MANOR! BRING ME BACK TO
MALFOY MANOR!'
Not knowing what else to do, she threw the book at Draco. White-faced with shock, he caught it and threw it on the ground, bringing his booted foot down on it again and again until the spine splintered in half and the voice broke off abruptly, leaving Ginnys ears still ringing in the sudden silence.
For a moment, Draco stood staring down at the book and panting, his thin shoulders heaving under his cloak as if he had been running full tilt. Then he bent down and picked it up, and glanced at the cover.
'I don?t suppose,' he said flatly, 'you want to tell us why you decided to steal a copy of something called the Liber-Damnatis from my fathers study?'
'I–I?m sorry,' Ginny said in a whisper. 'I didn?t realize it was important enough to be charmed — '
'Well, apparently it is.' Draco thrust the book at her suddenly; she took it, terrified at his expression — it was set, blank and furious. His skin seemed to be pressing back against the bones of his face. 'Take it,' he hissed.
'You unbelievable, blithering little idiot — you stole it, so take it, if you wanted it so badly — '
'She didn?t know.' Harrys cool voice cut across Dracos tirade.
'I didn?t want it,' Ginny whispered. 'I just picked it up to — to have something to carry — in case I needed a, a weapon — and I forgot I had it.
I?m sorry…'
'Its all right, Gin.' Harry looked acutely uncomfortable. 'You rescued us
— no need to — '
'And how did she manage that, exactly?' Draco said loudly. His eyes were narrowed; his soft mouth twisted into a hard line. 'Eh, Ginny? How did you manage to stay behind in the Manor when everyone else was flung out? You never did tell us that.'
Ginny set her chin. 'Are you accusing me of something?'
'Malfoy,' Harry said sharply, 'Don?t you think we should…' Harry broke off then, a perplexed look on his face. 'What was that?'
Ginny paused and listened. At first she heard nothing but the faint rustle of leafless branches. She was about to say so when a sound so faint she might have mistaken it for the sigh of the wind caught the edge of her hearing: a low ululating cry, rising in pitch. It was not a human noise at all; it was the sound of a baying dog. No sooner had she thought that than it was joined by other, similar cries: not a dog but a pack of them…or a pack of wolves?
She turned quickly and looked at Harry and Draco. Harry looked confused, but Draco did not: he looked merely horrified, and so pale that the thin scar high on his smooth cheekbone looked like a livid thread of silver.
'Oh, God,' he said. 'They?ve let loose the hellhounds.'
In the dream, she was at the seaside. It was a curious dream, because she knew she was dreaming, and at the same time it also seemed more real than any other dream she had ever had.
Hermione had been to the beach enough times to know that she was not standing on any beach that actually existed. The sand was too white and fine, the sea too blue and unmoving. There were no clouds and the sun was high in the sky yet the view seemed shaded with a peculiar twilight feeling. She shivered as she walked along the perimeter of the water towards two figures she could see in the distance.
As she approached them they became suddenly clear, as if she were focusing the lens of a camera. One was a small dark-haired child, sitting among the ruins of a half-built sandcastle; the other was an older boy, blond, kneeling beside him and watching him intently. As she drew closer they raised their heads and looked at her. She realized without any sense of surprise that she knew them both.
The childs face was thin and haunted, his eyes a vivid piercing green.
The scar that slashed across his forehead was a livid scarlet. He could not have been more than eight years old and in his small hands he clutched a red plastic bucket. Around the rim of the bucket were a number of peculiar symbols that looked as if they had been scratched into the plastic with a knife.
Harry, she thought. Oh, Harry.
The older boy had glanced at her once and then away. He looked to be the age he really was: if her dream-Draco was any different than Draco in life, it was simply that his face was more transparently readable, more like Harrys. He wore pajamas, and his arms were crossed in front of him as if he were cold.
The boy who was Harry spoke first. 'Have you come to help me?' he asked her, raising his small face to hers. 'My mother built me a castle but I knocked it down. Will you help me build it back up?'
She looked down the beach, then back at Harry. 'Even if we build it up, the tide will wash it away,' she said.
'No.' Harrys tone was positive. 'The tides here run backwards.
Everything does.'
She looked at the blond boy who was Draco, and wasn?t. 'Is he telling the truth?' she asked.
He frowned at the question. 'Don?t you believe him?' he said. 'Love is faith, I always thought.'
'Then maybe you should help him,' she said.
He uncrossed his arms slowly and held them out to her, palms-up: she saw that across his wrists two jagged incisions gaped, deep and empty. 'I gave all I had already,' he said. 'I haven?t got any more.'
She could not stop staring at the cuts: she thought they must go down to his very bones, and yet they were clean and bloodless. 'Doesn?t it hurt?'
'Everything hurts,' said Harry, and tipped his bucket towards her. Silver fluid spilled out of it and soaked into the sand at her feet. And then she realized what it was: it was blood. It spilled and spilled and she stepped away from the widening pool; surely such a small container could not hold much more blood. Surely no person could hold that much blood. But it continued to spread, moving towards her in a slow tide, and the gray-eyed boy with the cut wrists watched her, unmoved and unmoving, as she backed away and backed away and -
She tripped and went down, tumbling backward. She was awake before she even struck the ground.
…
