Harry blinked at him, then turned back around. Draco looked back up at the sky: instead of individual stars, he saw only a flat field of darkness, hazed with brighter spots, the pinpricks of which hurt his eyes. He remembered Snape's voice, saying blindness, and thought with a faint despair of the antidote only Hermione could make, now seeping molecule by molecule out of his bloodstream. Soon there would be nothing standing between himself and the poison but his own failing strength.
He hoped it would be enough.
Tom lowered his hand from his throat, slowly. His eyes glittered at her, flat with malevolence, but he did not move towards her. 'What,' he said, and his voice was as raspy as if it had been his throat that was crushed, 'have you done to me?'
Ginny felt a wild urge to grin, to laugh, to shake him — 'I haven't done anything,' she said. 'I guessed it when you didn't kill me before. You knocked me out, left me lying there — you could have killed me, but you didn't. You couldn't hurt me. I bet you didn't know why, but you couldn't.
You probably put it down to being in Seamus' body, the weakness of being mortal again — '
'Not mortality,' Tom said. He coughed, swallowed, looked at her with hate. 'Love. That he loved you.'
'I know,' Ginny said. 'I know he did.' She felt a wave of sadness swamp her, looking at Tom and remembering Seamus. She had not expected him to love her. It had been an unexpected grace note, softening her sadness, dulling the edge of her sense of loss. But she had never really appreciated it, never loved him back, never let herself. She had been waiting, always waiting for Draco. 'But that's not why you couldn't hurt me.' She pushed her hair back behind her ears. Even her fingers hurt. 'It's the spell that brought you here. Sympathetic magic, you called it. My blood, my tears. I brought you back. It's because of me that you're here at all. I'm the chain you used to pull yourself into this world, and I am the anchor that keeps you here, and only I,' she finished, her voice tightening, 'only I can send you back.'
She took a step backward, then another. He was staring at her, breathing hard and furiously; she would almost have enjoyed the look in his eyes, trapped and snarling, if not for what she was about to do. Another step back, and the banister was against her back. She turned her head, looked down at the staircase beneath her, winding down into the darkness, then looked back at Tom and took a deep breath. His eyes narrowed — realizing, a second too late, he hurled himself towards her with a furious yell — and in one smooth motion she turned, seized hold of the banister, and flung herself over it.
When Hermione came back into the bedroom, her cold and dirty clothes sticking to her damp, clean skin, the sight that greeted her was a strange one. There was Rhysenn, sitting on the floor in a long white dress stained with blood, her black hair pouring down over her shoulders like smooth ink. Lying in her lap was Ron. She looked up as Hermione walked into the room, and smiled her predatory smile. 'Shh,' she said. 'You'll wake him up.'
And she tossed back the thick curtain of her black hair, and Hermione saw that Ron was asleep, or seemingly asleep, his dark red hair tousled, his arm thrown carelessly across his face. His chest rose and fell softly with his sleeping breath.
'Ron!' Hermione couldn't believe her eyes. She took a running step forward, paused, hands outstretched. 'Is he all right? What have you done to him?'
Rhysenn was still smiling. 'I was merely trying to obtain a bit of information,' she said, idly toying with a lock of Ron's hair.
Hermione felt her hand tighten into a fist. How she longed to lunch at Rhysenn and punch her in the face, blacken one of those grey eyes, wipe the smile off her red lips. 'You mean you tortured him?'
'Tortured him?' Rhysenn's laugh was like windchimes. 'No, I did not torture him — it is strictly forbidden to harm the Diviner, and that includes torture. His mind is too precious, its balance too delicate. No,' she repeated, 'all I did was give him a little…kiss.' She looked down at Ron, and her smile turned possessive. Her long fingers glided down his cheek to his throat, and stroked across the bare skin revealed by the open neck of his shirt. 'My kisses tend to have that effect on men. They certainly had that effect on your Harry.'
Hermione sucked in a breath so quickly that she heard the air whistle between her teeth. 'You — ' Hermione struggled to find a word bad enough to call Rhysenn. 'You lying bitch,' she finished, lamely.
Rhysenn chuckled. 'I wouldn't call names. You don't know what I truly am.'
'You're a succubus,' Hermione said shortly. 'You suck out men's souls while they're sleeping and leave them mindless shells,' she added, remembering her Dark Creatures textbooks.
'Not while they're sleeping. Where would the fun be in that?' Rhysenn's fingers stroked the pulse at the base of Ron's throat; he murmured, and turned his face into her gown. His bright hair was like another splash of blood against the white. 'Where were we? Oh, yes, your Harry. So charming. The way he closes his eyes when you kiss him — only halfway, with the lashes fluttering down — '
'Stop,' Hermione said, savagely. 'I know you're just trying to hurt me, make me jealous — '
'As if you've a right to be jealous,' Rhysenn said, her eyes darting swiftly up to Hermione's, 'when you can't choose between them.'
Hermione was so startled for a moment that she could only stare, at the ancient girl rising from the spread pool of her white skirts, the unconscious boy in her lap and her hair cascading down over both of them. Her pale, unpretty face was shut like a box.
'I don't know what you mean,' Hermione said. 'Choose between who?'
'Your Harry,' Rhysenn said, speaking very slowly, as if to a stupid child, 'and Draco, who is not yours, because you didn't want him — only you do want him. You never stopped wanting him, you simply told yourself you didn't anymore. And you stood between him and anyone else he might have or want, always telling him that you were still there — '
'I never said anything to him like that! Never!'
'I remember a night,' said the demon girl, 'a winter's night, when the sky was black and silver and the steps of your school were sugared in snow. I remember a boy standing on those steps and a girl running up them to catch his hands, leaving her cloak open, even though the night was cold, so that he could see her pretty new dress, and that she wore the gifts he had given her — '
'I couldn't bear how alone he looked.' Hermione's eyes were filling; she swiped at them with the back of her hand. 'That was all it was.'
'Alone,' Rhysenn sneered. 'You mean, alone without you.'
'No,' Hermione whispered.
'There's a girl who would have been happy to stay with him,' said Rhysenn, 'if you would have let her.'
'He doesn't love her.' Hermione lashed out sharply with her voice, beyond caring or pretending she didn't understand. 'He doesn't love Ginny. He told me so — '
'He said that? He said in so many words, I do not love her?'
'It was what he meant.' Hermione heard Draco's voice in her head, the lucid, emotionless tone, Is there any way to respond to I love you with anything but I love you, too?
'He loves you because he thinks you are unselfish,' said Rhysenn. 'If only he knew how selfish you really are.'
'I can't help it,' Hermione said. 'I can't help who I love. I don't want to love him, but I do — it's like he's part of me, a part I don't even like sometimes, but I need him and he needs me — '
'Because you have arranged it that way,' Rhysenn went on, her voice cold and inexorable. 'It is by your design that you are the only one who can make the antidote he needs to live — you could control his access to Harry, if you — '
'I could never do that. I would never do that.'
'But you've thought about it.'
Hermione stared blankly at Rhysenn. 'You're cruel.'
'Love is cruel,' said the demon girl, 'and so is desire and that, after all, is what I am. And you may look at me however you like, but at least I know my own nature. You mock my servitude, my captivity, but at least I do not keep others captive, especially those I profess to love. And I am truthful in my desires. Can you say the
