unseeing.
Relief washed over her, and then a feeling of guilt. Whoever this girl was, she had been murdered. She reached out, and lightly touched the girl's dead hand, which lay half-open on the rug — 'Oh, God,' Hermione said.
'Tom. It was Tom.'
'How do you know?' Draco asked.
She sat back. 'The charm you gave Ginny,' she said. 'That half a heart, cracked down the middle — '
'Yes? What about it?'
'This is the other half of it,' she said, and held out what had been in the girl's fist. The edges of the glass heart were dark, as if it had been scorched in a fire. 'He left it. So we'd know it was him.'
Draco just stared for a moment. Then he held out his hand, and let her put the glass charm in it. He was still pale, and there was a dark, considering look behind his eyes now; Hermione was not sure she liked it any better than the brittle look he had worn earlier.
'I don't understand,' Hermione said. 'Is he trying to send us some kind of message? Why kill her? Just because he hates Ginny?'
'Because he loves her,' Draco said.
Hermione blinked at him. 'What?'
'He loves her,' Draco said dully. 'I expect because Finnegan did. He loves her, and he hates that he loves her. Love isn't an emotion that would be any use to him. He can't use it; it won't make him stronger or smarter or more powerful. It would just make him weak. If he could cut it out of himself, like a cancer, he would — ' He broke off, and Hermione thought fleetingly of his bloody hand; he might have thought of it himself, because he closed his gloved fist around what he was holding. 'But he can't — and he doesn't know why he can't. He's angry and that makes him want to hurt her, break her in pieces. You only hate people like this when you loved them once.'
Hermione stared at him. 'You sound as if you're sorry for him,' she said.
'I'm sorry,' Draco said. 'But not for him.'
Before she could respond, the door burst open again, and Thorvald the security troll was suddenly there, Mr. Blackthorpe behind him, and several other men in dark cloaks. They swarmed into the room like bees and Hermione stood up and backed away from the body on the floor as they crowded around it, silent and grim-faced. Mr. Blackthorpe looked up first, his yellow cat's eyes narrowed to slits. He was staring straight at Draco and the expression on his face was as sour as curdled milk.
Hermione glanced quickly at Draco. For a moment she saw him as he actually was: exhausted and ill and too young to be doing what he was doing, nerves worn thin from multiple shocks. Then, like a cloak, he seemed to draw his arrogance, his Malfoy-ness, around himself. He stood up straighter, squared his shoulders, raised his chin at a disdainful angle, and when he spoke, his voice was strong and carrying.
'Next time,' he said, 'perhaps you'll believe me when I tell you that there is a problem with your security.'
'Oh, Tristan,' she whispered, tightly clasped to his broad, rigidly muscled chest. 'I always knew you would come for me. Even during the darkest of my hours, deep in the dungeons of Castle Plumeria, I never despaired.
Even when Sven held me down and ravished me…and ravished me…again…and again….and again….'
'Yes, well,' said Tristan. 'I think it would be best if we never spoke of that again, don't you?' He gazed at her, his eyes the color of impassioned hyacinths. 'Oh, my minx…at last you are with me…and happiness is mine!'
'Oh, Tristan!'
'Oh, Rhiannon!'
'Oh, for God's sake,' interupted Gareth. 'Isn't this bloody book over yet?'
'One more page,' said Ben, giving him a superior look. 'Fine. I'll read it to myself.'
If there was one thing you could certainly say about Ben, Ginny thought, it was that he knew his own mind. He raised the book to cover his face and continued reading, looking very incongruous sprawled amongst Ginny's teddy bears and heart-shaped pillows. Gareth, who was sitting on the floor by the foot of the bed, slumped back against the wall and commended twiddling his fingers in a bored, desultory fashion. The runic band around his wrist gleamed when he moved his arm.
Ginny got up off the desk and went over to sit down next to him. He looked at her, faintly surprised, but shifted aside to give her space to sit down. 'Gareth,' Ginny whispered, pitching her voice very low, 'your bracelet — it really won't come off before you die? There's no way to break that charm?'
He shook his head. 'Not that I know of. Why, is it not that way for Harry?'
She shook her head. 'No, he can take it off.'
'Hmm.' Gareth looked thoughtful. 'Well, that could be because it was made with some of the same blood that — '
'I can't believe it just ended there!' Ben interrupted, throwing the book into the air. 'I mean, she doesn't even realize that Tristan isn't actually Tristan, but is in reality Tristan's evil twin brother Sebastian, and Tristan himself has been taken prisoner by the evil Duke Scorpio — '
'That's why it has a sequel, Ben,' Ginny pointed out. 'Although, admittedly, you'll have to wait a thousand years for it to come out.'
Gareth jumped up from the floor. 'Meanwhile, we've been here for four hours, and I'm hungry again. Benjamin, can we head home?'
Ben got off the bed and put his arms around Gareth and hugged him hard. 'If you want to go, we can go.'
Gareth just turned his face into Ben's shoulder, and smiled. They stood like that for a moment, and then they drew apart.
Ginny looked up at them from the floor, and tugged thoughtfully on a braid. 'You probably had better go,' she said. 'I wouldn't put it past my mother to come back and break the door down if she sees my light's still on. But thank you — for coming, and for the flower, and everything.'
Gareth said something noncommittal, nodded at her, and, freeing himself from Ben's embrace, went to the window. He smiled at Ben. 'I'll see you down in the garden,' he said, and clambered back over the sill, dropping into the darkness outside.
Ginny looked up at Ben. 'Can't you just leave from here?'
'Our swords are downstairs. It's rude to bring edged weapons into someone else's house. Didn't you know that?'
Ginny shook her head. 'Must have slipped Mum's mind when she was teaching me manners.'
He reached out and touched her hair, and said something in the same language he had spoken to Gareth in earlier, that was soft and sweet-sounding and that she did not understand. Then he dropped his hand.
'You will see me again,' he said, 'but if I do not see you, then take care for yourself, and be well.'
'I will,' she said, and watched him walk away, and he was almost gone when she spoke again. 'Ben!' she called, and he turned at the window and looked at her. In the shadows, with the light behind him, she could see only the set of his shoulders and the outline of his black hair, and it was as if she looked at a vision of what Harry would be in ten years. If he lived ten more years.
'Yes?' he said.
'Why didn't you want Gareth to see my Founders book?' she asked. 'You looked so angry. Is there something in it?'
Ben sighed. 'Of course there's something in it,' he said. 'History.'
'You mean if you knew what was going to happen to you it might create a time paradox…?'
'Oh, sod time paradoxes,' Ben said sharply. 'I don't want to know when he dies, all right? I don't want to know when I die either, but Gareth — he's never careful — ' Ben paused. 'I know if it was you,' he said, 'you'd
