that you planned to do some harm to young Tom Riddle and thus prevent him from ever becoming Voldemort.
Am I correct?'
Ginny shook her head. 'I'm not that stupid,' she said. Her voice sounded flat to her own ears. 'I know you can't change the past like that.' She turned her face and looked at the window that gave out onto the Quidditch pitch. Outside the sun was beginning to set, turning the pitch and the sky behind it the green-gold of tarnished copper. 'I went back to when he made the diary he used on me because I knew he'd need to use a piece of himself to make it. Blood…a bit of his hair…whatever it was, I thought I could get it and make an Epicyclical Charm out of it. Like the one Harry has, that's got a chip from Draco's baby tooth in it. I've made one before. I could do it again. You can find someone with their Charm.
We could have used it to find Voldemort with. Or if we destroyed it — he might even die…'
Ginny let her voice trail off, and sat in silence, not looking at Dumbledore.
Having said the plan aloud for the first time, she realized how utterly ridiculous it sounded and could barely stand to listen to her own voice.
When Dumbledore spoke, his voice was dry. 'An interesting plan, lacking in exactly one particular. Do you know what that particular is?'
Mutely, not looking at him, Ginny shook her head.
'You cannot make an Epicyclical Charm for the Dark Lord.' Dumbledore's voice was terrible in its truthfulness. 'Because the Epicyclical Charm holds a piece of the soul of its object. What Harry wears around his neck is a bit of young Master Malfoy's soul; the spiritual energy that makes Draco who he is. But the Dark Lord has no soul. He bartered it away years ago for power. Should you attempt to make an Epicyclical Charm for him, it would melt and slip through your fingers like water.'
Ginny raised her head. She looked at Dumbledore. She was sure her stricken realization must be written all across her face. But he did not look as if he pitied her. His face was full of the most terrible severity.
'I cannot guess at your motive for what you have done,' Dumbledore said. 'Perhaps, like your older brother, you desired glory and the adulation of your friends. Perhaps your hate for Tom Riddle is actually simply so great that it deprived you, if momentarily, of your reason.
Perhaps you truly wished to aid in the fight against Voldemort. But I doubt that, for if that had been the case, there would have been no need for the secrecy which you employed. You put us all in danger with your thoughtless actions.'
A long silence followed this. Ginny found she could think of no rebuttal at all, nor did she even wish to. She found herself thinking of Tom again, the real Tom this time, the blue-eyed demon who had thought nothing of breaking the bones in her hand to get her to tell him her secrets. Years later he would break down the walls of her heart and mind for the same purpose, and those, unlike her hand, would never be repaired. I'm broken, she thought, broken and useless, everything I do turns out wrong…
'I think, perhaps,' Dumbledore said, more quietly, 'that it might be time for you to return to your dormitory. For the rest of the holiday period, please consider yourself confined to the castle.'
Ginny rose to her feet. There was a harsh pressure behind her eyes. 'I'm sorry, Professor,' she said.
'So am I,' said Dumbledore. 'You might think that because I allowed you to take the Time-Turner, it means that I tacitly approved of your actions. I did not. Time is a complicated entity, full of paradox and contradiction.
But that does not mean you are not responsible for your actions. You very much are.'
'I know,' Ginny said. She felt suddenly exhausted. She reached for the door knob, then paused, and turned back to the Headmaster.
'Professor,' she said quietly. 'There's one thing…'
He raised his eyebrows. 'Yes?'
'When you saw me in the library…when I was with Tom…you called me Miss Weasley.'
Dumbledore said nothing.
'That's how he knew who I was, later, isn't it? I mean — was it an accident?
Why did you say my name in front of Tom?'
Dumbledore was silent. In the leaping light of the flames, his eyes were shadowed and his face seemed scored with a thousand lines. He looked old, tired and old. 'Everything happens for a reason, Ginny,' he said at last. 'Everything.'
Fragmented. That was how she felt. As if she had to walk very carefully as she made her way up the tower stairs because otherwise a yawning gap might open up in the floor beneath her feet, and she would tumble into it without warning.
She kept her hand against the wall, guiding her upwards. The portraits stared at her as she went by.
At the top of the stairs it took Ginny a moment to remember the Gryffindor password. The Fat Lady looked at her oddly when she finally recollected it.
'Shrivelfigs.'
The portrait door swung wide.
Ginny stepped through, and into the common room. It took her a moment to realize what she was looking at. She saw Harry first, sitting on the edge of the sofa, and then she saw that he had his arms around Hermione.
Hermione's face was against Harry's shoulder. She sprang away from him when the portrait door closed behind Ginny, and their two white faces turned towards her at once like the white pages of a book fluttering open.
'Ginny,' Hermione breathed. Her eyes were large and dark. 'Oh…Ginny.'
Ginny stood still and stared at them. They seemed to her to be actors in a play, rehearsing some dramatic moment in which she had little interest.
She was aware that Hermione had stood up and come over to her and that Harry had followed.
He looked pale and strangely shellshocked. He said to Hermione, 'I'd better go and talk to Snape about the Memory Charm…'
Hermione nodded at him and he was gone without looking at Ginny. It was Hermione who turned back to her and began to speak, haltingly at first. Ginny felt as if she were drowning in the words that flooded from Hermione's mouth. Chess pieces, Memory Charms, the necessity of a Diviner's blood for Voldemort's spell. Somewhere inside her Ginny knew she was crying out but the cries seemed muffled in cotton wool. It was not until Hermione said her own name that the shaft of her words pierced the numbness surrounding Ginny.
'Ginny, I'm so sorry I was angry with you before about taking that book from the Manor,' she was saying, her hand on Ginny's shoulder. 'Without the copy I made of it, we'd never have found out any of these things. I'd never know how the ritual of the Four Worthy Objects works or that it needs the blood of a Diviner. I doubt there's another book in the world with all that information in it…and I was so nasty to you about it. I'm really sorry, Ginny. And I'm sorry I got after you about returning it to the Manor, too — did you send it back already?'
Ginny's hand went automatically to the pocket of her robe. She slipped her hand in and felt around for the Liber-Damnatis.
The pocket was empty.
Very slowly she removed her hand. When she spoke, her voice was calm.
'I sent it off this afternoon,' she said.
She remembered taking the things she had brought with her out of her pocket. Setting the Liber-Damnatis down on the library table, the diary on top of it.
'Oh.' Hermione gave her a woebegone smile. 'I was just worried.'
'I understand,' Ginny said.
She remembered picking the diary up, dropping it. Kneeling down to get it. And then Tom, coming into the wards, driving all other thoughts from her head.
'Well, don't worry, Hermione,' she said calmly. 'I took care of it.'
She remembered running out of the library, not stopping to look back to see Tom. Or to see the book she
