He smiled a little, looking as if he were thinking of something. 'Come here,' he said, and held out a hand. The memory of another voice telling here, commanding her, come here, echoed in the back of her mind and for a moment she flinched away — but she reminded herself that this was Ben, who she knew, and who wouldn't touch her, and who had never been anything but kind to her, and she went over and stood in front of him.
'You don't look well,' he said. 'You're all right?' It was a question, not a statement. Up close, Ginny could see that the hem of his robes was damp, and so were the ends of his hair. So he had been outside, and not Apparated directly into her room.
'Are you all right?' she said, turning the question back on him. 'Is Gareth
— '
'He's waiting for me in the garden.' Ben smiled crookedly. 'He doesn't think you like him very much.'
Ginny pictured arrogant blond Gareth, Slytherin's First Heir, clomping around irritably in the potato patch, and smiled for the first time that day. 'He can come up if he wants,' she said. Of course I like him. He just reminds me of Draco, that's all.'
'Draco.' Ben's amused look faded. 'How is he?'
'Not that well,' Ginny said slowly. 'He's…'
'Dying,' Ben said. 'I know.'
Ginny's mouth opened. 'How do you know that?'
Ben put his elbows on his knees. As he leaned forward his cloak fell away and Ginny saw the gold glint of the scabbard at his waist with its elegant design of leaves and flowers; there was no sword in it. Harry's scabbard.
'Because,' he said. 'You told me.'
'Oh!' Ginny realized suddenly what he must mean and a small flame of hope suddenly crackled inside her. 'I came back in time, didn't I? I went to see you. That means I must get my Time Turner back again. Why did I go back in time? What did I want? Ben — '
He held up a hand to forestall her. 'Slowly,' he said. 'Let me explain. I can't tell you everything you said to me, because you asked me not to. I can tell you that — '
But he didn't finish his sentence, because at that moment there was a crash from the garden. Looking startled, Ben sprang to his feet and went over to her window. He pushed it open and leaned out into the night, and called something out into the cold dark air — it sounded like another language, Ginny didn't recognize it — and then a moment later the pop of displaced air sounded in the room and Gareth was standing there next to him, looking very ill-tempered and hopping on one foot.
'Something bit me,' he said, crossly, and glared at Ginny as if it were entirely her fault that he had been trespassing in her back garden in the middle of the night. He looked slightly different, just as Ben did — older, his face more sharply planed, still wide-cheekboned with the chin narrowing out like a cat's and the same unlikely green eyes and the same ghostly resemblance to Draco. He wore finer clothes than he had the last time she had seen him: a pale green heavy cloak over black robes, belted with silver. In his right hand was a chased silver dagger. 'Right in the ankle.'
'Oh, dear,' Ginny said. 'It was probably a garden gnome.'
Ben put a hand on Gareth's shoulder and leaned around him to peer at his ankle. 'Mortally wounded, are you?'
'No.' Gareth looked satisfied. 'I stepped on it and squashed it.'
'Good work,' said Ben, straight-faced. 'Those gnomes can be tricky.'
'It made a crunching sound,' said Gareth thoughtfully.
'Blech,' Ben said. 'Spare me the details of your victory.'
'Crunch,' repeated Gareth with morbid glee.
Ben glared at him.
Gareth winked, and moved to put his dagger away. As he did so, Ginny, who had remained silent while they talked, suddenly gasped so audibly that both men looked up — Ben with concern, Gareth with his hand tightening on the dagger. Ginny simply stared at Gareth — not at Gareth, precisely, but at his wrist. As he had moved his arm his sleeve had fallen back and she had seen a bright flash of scarlet that struck her like a blow, for around his right wrist she could now see plainly that Gareth wore a dark red glass-like band, its edges scratched with runes, that was the twin of Harry's own.
Once upon a time, said the demon girl, there was a wizard, and he was a Malfoy, although they might have been called something slightly different then. Malfoy: a name they had not given to themselves, for all they wore it as a badge of pride. Bad deeds, bad faith, how could anyone bearing a name like that be expected to be anything but the darkest of Dark wizards?
I'm sorry. You're bored. No? Irritated, then. You don't like the Malfoys.
They get under your skin. I see how you twitch when I say his name. Your eyes going black. No, not Lucius. You know who I mean.
Anyway, to get back to my story. There was a wizard once, who lived in a southern city. He was, for all practical purposes, a Malfoy, and like all Malfoys, his pride exceeded his wisdom. He fancied himself a sorcerer, a doer of great black deeds. He liked to call up storms that would destroy all the ships in the harbor. He cast a yellow plague over his city, and when that did not satisfy him, he cast a red plague of fever. On Tuesdays he summoned volleys of flaming arrows and on Wednesdays he made the city river run with blood. This was very bad for local property values, but the wizard did not care. He had made his reputation on grand and showy dark magics, and besides, he had no plans to sell his mountaintop castle any time soon.
Comeuppance for his behavior came to him, as comeuppance often does, in the form of a woman. A beauty with long black hair, a handspan waist, and eyes like black coals. He glimpsed her dancing amid a crowd of nobles, and when he inquired after her, he was told she was the daughter of a prosperous wizarding family. He determined that he would marry her, and sent a message to the family ordering them to deliver up their daughter speedily. They did so, which did not surprise him — it is never wise to say no to a wizard.
Had he made his inquiries more closely, he would have found, to his great perturbation, that in fact that family had never had a daughter.
Are you cold? You're shivering. The tips of your fingers are nearly as blue as your eyes. Come here. I'll give you a bit of my robe to wrap around you. Now where was I?
When Draco came out of the bathroom at Hogsmeade station, it took Hermione a moment to realize why it was that he looked different. Then she clapped a hand over her mouth in surprise. 'Oh!' she said, around her fingers. 'Draco. Your hair.'
He looked, for a moment, mildly self-conscious. 'You hate it?'
'No, it's…' She made a helpless little gesture with her hand, staring at him. He was dressed in what, for Draco, probably passed as low-key undercover gear. Worn-looking dark hooded jumper, Quidditch cords, and boots. 'It's just different,' she said.
She supposed she shouldn't be surprised. He'd been complaining it was too long for weeks, and had always been pushing it back out of his eyes. It wasn't that he'd never had hair this short before — it was that it looked like he'd taken a pair of Muggle scissors and lopped off the parts he felt were too long, without much regard for evenness or regularity. All the looping tendrils were gone, and instead his hair, no longer weighted down by its length, curled and stuck up and out and was, well, generally…
'It's a bit untidy,' she said.
He shrugged. 'Shearing Charm. Bit hard to do properly without a real mirror — '
'Draco!' she interrupted him, aghast. 'You're not supposed to be doing any magic at all!'
He was saved reply by the sudden activation of the station's Sonorous Charm. 'Midnight Train — King's Cross! Platform Two!'
Over her protests, Draco grabbed her bag on the way to the train, and Hermione stalked after him, irritably. 'You're only supposed to be doing magic in emergencies,' she reminded him as he held out a hand to help her up
