Tom leaped down from the sill and landed lightly on his feet. Standing, he was a few inches shorter than Lucius. 'All this killing,' he said. 'Three wizards in three days. It has reminded me how alive I am, Lucius. Do I look alive to you?'
Lucius looked at him, at the feverishly flushed cheeks, the damply curling hair, the hard delicate mouth. 'I wanted to give you something,' he said.
'Just one thing?' Tom asked, his voice silky.
'I would give you everything,' said Lucius, 'If I had everything to give.
But I wanted you to have this,' he said, and held out his hand. There was a ring in it, the twin of the one he had once given his son: the griffin with its wings outstretched, the Malfoy sigil on its back. 'Twist the ring three times around your finger, and it will bring you to my side. If there is ever a time you need me…'
'Thank you, Lucius,' said Tom, taking the ring. 'Always the knight errant.
Like your son, or so I hear. Or is it that I remember?' His brow furrowed, a crease appearing between his blue eyes, and he slipped the ring on with a frown.
'My son is of no concern,' Lucius said. 'To either of us.'
Still thoughtful, Tom walked past him to the desk, and picked up one of Lucius' paperweights. It was a small glass frog, and it waved its translucent arms and legs as he gripped it. 'Yet you seem concerned, Lucius. What is it?'
'Well,' said Lucius, 'it had occurred to me that if you kill Francis Parkinson, we will be needing a new Minister.'
Tom frowned. 'Is that a problem?'
'It is inconvenient.'
'Vengeance does not wait upon convenience, Lucius.' Tom squeezed the paperweight tight in his fist and the frog let out a glassy screech; Tom smiled, like a little boy teasing a kitten. 'They are all so afraid of me, Lucius,' he murmured, letting his lids droop to veil the fierceness of his gaze, 'at the last moment, when they realize who I am. I feel their terror as it passes through them, into me. It feeds me, Lucius. It soothes the ache in my soul…'
Lucius looked up at that. In the time he had known Tom, in all his various stages and permutations, he had never gotten the impression that Tom spent much time thinking about his soul, whether it ached or not. 'You are discontented, my Lord?'
The frog was still struggling in Tom's grasp. He dropped it to the carpet.
There was a fretful expression on his face. 'I feel my heart,' he said. 'I feel its bitterness. Although it is not my heart but his, and the feelings his, still the pain remains with me like the ghost memory of a hand or arm that has been cut away. It is a phantom pain, but no less real for all that. I thought to kill this hunger by feeding it, but it is worse now that it was before.'
Lucius was bewildered. 'My Lord, I don't quite…'
'I cannot stop thinking of her, Lucius. She preys upon my thoughts. I am reminded of her everywhere I turn: a stranger's gesture on the street, a whispered word, the color of sunset that is very like her hair. It is like a disease.'
Lucius' felt his eyebrows disappearing up into his hairline. 'You're in love?'
'Certainly not,' Tom snapped, looking very teenaged for a moment. 'I am
— in hate, if such a thing is possible. Yes, Lucius,' he said, looking as if the phrase pleased him, 'I am in hate, and there is only one cure for what ails me.'
'You want her killed?' Lucius asked.
'No,' Tom said, and the heavy lids lifted, unveiling the eyes that burned like blue poison. 'Not killed. I want her broken.' His lip began to curl.
'And I know just how to do it.'
'You've barely left your room for three days, Ginny,' Charlie said. Sitting on her bed among the teddy bears and stuffed pillows, he regarded her with his elbows on his knees. 'Mum's worried. Are you all right?'
'I'm fine.' Ginny tried to keep the tense impatience out of her voice. She was sitting in front of her mirrored vanity table, brushing her hair. A hundred strokes on one side, a hundred on the other. She found the repetitive motion soothing, and certainly her hair wasn't suffering for the attention. It lay along her shoulders and down her back like a smooth sheet of copper. 'I just needed to sort my head out alone for a bit.'
'I understand, but this is a little extreme. You've barely come downstairs except to eat, you stay locked in here, you haven't owled any of your friends — '
'I owled Professor Snape,' Ginny muttered. This was true; she had. She'd sent him a sprig of the flora fortis Ben had given her, asking him if there was any chance it, or something like it, could be in the antidote for Draco's poison.
He'd owled her back almost immediately, a short message: Thank you but it is not what we are looking for. She'd gone to bed and pulled the covers over her head and stayed there for hours.
'I said friends, not professors you don't actually like,' Charlie said. 'Look, Ginny, It's not like I don't understand why you'd be even more upset than the rest of us — '
Ginny went still. 'About Ron, you mean?'
'Well, you were always the closest to him.' Charlie's voice sounded young, uncertain. 'It's always been like that — me and Bill, Fred and George, you and Ron…'
'Percy and Errol?'
'Percy is his own man,' Charlie said diplomatically, but he smiled a little.
'Charlie, I cry every night about Ron, you know that. But so do we all — '
'I know. It's just — look, Ginny, when I asked you to come back home it was with the understanding that you were going to be helping out Mum — '
Ginny whirled around on him, brush in hand. 'And why do I have to be the one who helps out Mum? What about Fred and George? All they do is hang about the kitchen making smart remarks. Is it because I'm a girl?
That's hardly fair, Charlie!'
'I didn't say that,' Charlie protested, surprised at her vehemence. 'Is there something else you'd prefer to do?'
'Couldn't I help out Sirius and Professor Lupin?'
Charlie expelled an exasperated breath. 'Ginny, what they're doing is dangerous. You know where they are this morning? Investigating a murder scene with Mad-Eye Moody.'
Ginny blinked. 'A murder? Who was murdered?'
'No one we know,' Charlie said. 'One of Voldemort's followers, a man called Avery. Probably just a Death Eater dispute. Still, hardly the sort of thing you should be — '
'I can take care of myself, Tom.'
Charlie froze, his hand halfway to her shoulder. 'What did you call me?'
Ginny could see them both in the mirror, frozen in tableau. Her brother's blue eyes were wide and astonished. 'Charlie,' she said in a small voice. 'I thought I said Charlie.'
Before he could respond, there was a knock on the bedroom door. It swung open, and Mrs. Weasley popped her red head around it. She smiled very faintly when she saw Charlie there. 'Ginny, love,' she said. 'There's someone here to see you, downstairs. One of your friends from school.'
Ginny dropped the brush and twisted around to look at her mother. 'Is it
— '
'It's not the Malfoy boy,' Mrs. Weasley said quickly. 'It's a red-headed girl with a rather peculiar name. Sounded like a boy's name — '
'Blaise,' Ginny said. 'Blaise Zabini.'
'Yes,' said Mrs. Weasley. 'A friend of yours?'
'Not exactly,' Ginny said. She looked at Charlie, who looked as surprised as she did. 'I wonder what on earth she wants?'
