such a thing as an injury which magic could not help.
He looked down at Ginny. The rising wind took her hair and her cloak and blew them out behind her like banners of fire: gold and red. There was an intent look on her small pale face. You could not set someone free when you had never had them, but he could tell that was what she was doing anyway, cutting the ties that bound her to him, such as they were. He had wanted her to do this and now that she was he recognized the irony of it; it would almost have been amusing, had everything not been so bleak.
He reached out to touch the edge of her red hair. He had not lied when he said he had a weakness for it. He had a weakness for all beautiful things, sunsets and expensive clothes and beautiful places. In the faded light her hair was nearly the exact color of blood, edged with fainter gold where the light outlined it.
She pulled away. 'Don't,' she said. 'You think it's kind, but it's not kindness.'
'I'm not kind,' he said. 'Never that.'
She stepped away from him, backwards down the stairs. 'Then what are you?' she said. 'Do you even know?'
He did not reply, just put his hands in his pockets and looked down at her. She raised her eyes to his, briefly. Then she turned and was running away back down the steps towards the carriage and her brother waiting next to it.
Harry ducked and swore under his breath as a copy of Who's Who In the Wizarding World tumbled down from an upper bookshelf, almost making a dent in his head. He grabbed at the ladder he was standing on to steady himself and leaned back, looking up at the innumerable shelves disappearing into the air above him — he'd never been in this section of Flourish and Blotts, and in fact the clerk behind the front counter had looked at him quite oddly when he'd come into the shop and asked for the Travel section — although perhaps he was just trying to place the slight, nervous-looking boy with tangled black hair and no glasses, who ducked away from the light as if he were shy of it.
'You look a bit like Harry Potter,' the clerk said, directing Harry towards the back of the store.
'People always say that,' Harry had replied nervously, pulling his cloak closer around himself. 'I don't see it, myself.'
Harry bit his lip now, gaze skidding over the travel book titles — Let's Floo Europe 1997, The Lonely Broomstick Guide to Eastern Europe, A Wizard's Guide to Muggle Europe, Culture Shock: The Carpathians, The Wizarding Rough Guides. Harry reached out a hand and pulled a few of the more helpful-looking volumes off the shelf. Jumping down from the ladder, he made a beeline for an overstuffed chair in one of the more hidden corners of the shop. He sank down into it, expelling a small sigh of relief — it had been hours since he'd sat down, and his sleep on the train had not been exactly restful.
The books turned out to be something of a disappointment. They failed to contain any information on how to get from one place to another — which was what Harry really wanted to know — and instead were full of what wizards no doubt considered helpful tips on how to get along in the Muggle world. Harry read the tips with increasing disbelief and a sense of incredulous amusement.
According to Let's Floo:
Muggle trains, unlike their wizarding equivalent, are unequipped with Sounding Charms which alert the passenger when the train draws near a station. Therefore the traveler must remain vigilant. You may wish to stick your head out the window and keep an eye on the surrounding countryside to ensure that you do not miss your stop. The farther you stick your head out, the better your view will be.
Harry choked on a muffled laugh, and looked up and around, the book sliding onto his lap. He couldn't remember the last time he'd read something so ridiculous and he could only imagine what snide comment Draco would have to make about it — Harry sobered quickly, subsiding back into his chair. He'd forgotten for a moment that Draco wasn't there. They'd been anchored to each other's sides so constantly for the past eight months, in near-constant mental contact when they were not actually physically proximate, that having him suddenly not there was like opening his eyes on darkness and realizing he could see nothing because he was blind.
He tried to return to reading, but the words washed together on the page.
The sudden recollection of Draco's absence had been a physical sort of shock, as if someone had walked up and, without warning, slid a very cold, very thin dagger sharply home between two of his ribs. He could only imagine how much worse it was going to get as the days and weeks wore on and on. He remembered being told about amputees who still felt pain in the limbs they'd lost long ago, the mind's map recalling as whole those places which had been burned or cut away.
He thought about reaching out to Draco just once, unblocking his own mind and looking for his friend's. He knew he could do it at this distance.
It would be difficult but possible; that past summer Harry had managed to find Draco over the distance between the Burrow and the Manor. Lying on his back in the sunshine one afternoon, in the grass out by the quarry, an arm over his face, he had thought of an amusing observation, and wished Draco were there to share it with him. Having suddenly missed him, he as quickly sought him through the space between them, reaching out as if he searched for a light in the darkness. There you are, he'd thought, smiling as he found him. Is the sun shining at the Manor, too?
And the reply, drawling, sarcastic, almost instant. No, Potter, the sun only shines on you.
Harry had laughed. What are you doing?
I'm flying. Draco's inner voice had sounded like summer: lazy as a slow river under the hot sun. See?
And he had unlocked his mind to Harry, as if he had thrown a window wide open. Harry, his gasp hitching on a laugh, had caught with one hand at the grass underneath him as in his mind he left the ground and soared up into the hot blue air, the earth dropping rapidly away below. He had seen the fountains and gardens of the Manor spread out beneath him, a riot of blue water and apricot roses, had seen the dark rise of the forest in the distance, Malfoy Park held cupped in the curve of the trees, a shimmering ribbon of river — before Ron's voice calling to him from the house had snapped the cord that held him and he'd tumbled down and back into himself and sat up gasping, his heart pounding and his eyes wide. Magic was something he'd grown used to, it was a part of his daily life, but for a moment, sprawled on his back in the grass as if he'd actually fallen from a great height, he felt like someone who'd never heard of electricity before and had just now switched on his first lamp.
That was gone now, though, and he'd better get used to it. And unblocking his mind to Draco's was not a good idea — Harry knew, without false modesty, that his will was strong enough to withstand almost any enchantment brought to bear against it, but he also knew that Draco was cleverer that he was, that he was brilliantly manipulative, and that while he couldn't lie to Harry, he could certainly artfully present the facts. Draco would break his resolve down in two seconds flat. No, it was better to do what he had been doing, and keep the contact closed, much as it hurt him, much as he was already desperate for news of his friends.
In the end, this decision would keep them alive and that was what mattered.
Wasn't it?
Harry got to his feet, slowly, looking at the pile of books on the armchair.
Finally he selected The Lonely Broomstick Guide to the Continent almost at random and dragged himself over to the front counter to pay.
Exhaustion hung over him like a second cloak. He was so tired he stepped on a round-faced witch's outstretched foot and nearly knocked over a hooded wizard carrying an enormous pile of history books.
Flustered from apologizing, Harry was halfway through paying the clerk behind the counter when a thought occurred to him. 'Excuse me,' he began, a bit nervously, 'But I was wondering if there's a way out of Diagon Alley that won't take me back through the Leaky Cauldron?'
The clerk looked up at him sharply, and once again Harry had the feeling that the man was trying to place him. 'What's wrong with the Leaky Cauldron, lad?'
'I…' said Harry, swallowing hard. 'I'm trying to avoid an old girlfriend.
You know how these things are.'
'Ah. Yes.' The clerk wrinkled his narrow face in thought. 'I don't know as there's a better way…'
'There is another way,' said the hooded wizard with the history books, who had been silently standing
