lashes against the tops of his cheekbones, the blank, unseeing look in his eyes. She lowered the wand slowly. 'I think my wand must have broken when I dropped it,' she said, hearing the sound of her own voice as if from very far away. 'I can't — it isn't working.'
'Ah.' He sounded relieved. Her heart felt like it might crack inside her chest. She crawled towards him, and he jumped when she took hold of his shoulders and pulled him back against her. They leaned against the wall, her arms around him. She could feel the sharpness of his bones, the labored haste of his breathing. 'We should wait here,' she said. 'When Harry comes, he'll bring light.'
'I know,' Draco said.
'Is it over?' Ginny asked.
Rhysenn lifted her mouth from Tom's and looked sideways at Ginny, reminding the redheaded girl of nothing so much as a cat surprised in the middle of toying with a mouse. Her gray eyes seemed to glow, her thick, black hair, more lustrous than Ginny had ever seen it, fountaining down around her like black water. Her pale skin was absolutely radiant. Ginny half-expected to see blood around her mouth, as if she were a vampire, but her lips were only a little swollen from kissing. They curved into a smile. 'Sorry,' she said. 'I got a bit carried away.'
'I could tell,' Ginny muttered. She knelt down, and touched Tom's face.
He was breathing, soft and slow, and his skin was cool to the touch. 'Is he all right? Did you..take it?'
'He is missing a soul now,' Rhysenn said. 'Another man would be dead.
But he has a second soul, and should recover.'
A horrible thought occurred to Ginny and she turned to Rhysenn, her heart pounding. 'Are you sure you got the right soul?'
Rhysenn looked at her blankly. 'The right soul?'
Ginny almost screamed. 'Tom's soul! Not Seamus's!'
Rhysenn shrugged. 'Souls do not have names. They are merely souls.'
'Oh, God.' Ginny pressed her hand to her forehead. 'What if you took Seamus's soul? Then we've murdered him. And we'd better kill Tom before he wakes up, because if he does…'
'I do wish you'd decide whether you want him alive or not,' Rhysenn said plaintively. 'It's very confusing.' Ginny didn't reply. Seeming to take a sort of pity on her, Rhysenn added, 'It was an unusual soul, if that helps.'
'Unusual? Unusual how?'
'It tasted of paper and ink,' said Rhysenn.
Ginny expelled a long, shaky breath. 'All right. I think you got the right one.' She laid the back of her hand against Tom's — no, she told herself, no longer Tom, he's only Seamus now — face, stroking the soft, peach-fuzz curve of cheek into jaw. 'I guess you're free.'
Rhysenn gasped, so loudly that Ginny looked up. Her gray eyes were wide and full of wonder and amazement. 'Free? I am truly free?'
'Yes,' Ginny said.
'I need never answer to another Malfoy?'
'You need never answer to anyone,' Ginny said. 'You're free to go prance around half-naked wherever you like. Preferably far away from here.'
'Free,' Rhysenn breathed, and then she was up on her feet, and racing towards the window. She threw it open, and leaned out into the starry night. 'Free!' she screamed, and turned to look at Ginny. The cold air spilling through the open window whipped her black hair across her pale, unpretty face. 'Thank you,' she said.
'Don't thank me. Thank Draco. He's the one who freed you,' Ginny pointed out.
'That is true,' Rhysenn said, pausing like a bird hovering mid-flight. 'He can still be saved, you know,' she said.
Ginny's eyes flew open. 'He can? How? Do you know the antidote? Do you'
'Only you can do it,' Rhysenn said firmly. 'Only you,' and with that, she leaped lightly up onto the sill of the window, and vanished into the ice-spangled night.
Only me? What does that mean? Ginny wondered, her heart pounding, and then she heard a groan and glanced down to see Seamus stir, his eyes opening, fastening on her face. And they were blue, as they had always been, clear sky-blue, untainted by any darkness. 'Ginny?' he whispered.
'Is that you?'
Taking his hand in hers, she held it to her chest, winding her fingers with his. And now my penance begins. 'Welcome back, Seamus,' she said.
'Welcome back, my dear.'
'You're lying,' Harry said. His hand trembled, the sharp point of the sword pricking the base of Lucius' throat.
'I wish that I were,' Lucius said. There was bitterness in his voice, heavy as a black weight on Harry's soul. 'If there was any one thing I could go back and change — '
'Stop it,' Harry snapped, cutting him off. 'Besides, it's ludicrous, that you'd expect me to believe any of this. Thousand-year-old dragon's blood?
Why?'
'Both the poison and the antidote were the creation of Salazar Slytherin,'
Lucius said. 'Handed down through the generations of Malfoys ever since
— it is a perfect poison, traceless, tasteless, passed through the slightest wound or scratch into the blood. Instantly curable with the antidote, it also brings swift death.'
'No, it doesn't,' Harry said. 'Draco's been dying for weeks.'
'He is a Malfoy,' Lucius said, 'and great protections run in his blood. But even those protections must erode eventually, such is the poison's strength.'
'So if I had a time-turner,' Harry said, 'I could go back into the past, and get some of that dragon's blood — '
'Have you a Time-Turner?' Lucius asked, almost dryly. 'No Time-Turner can take you back to a time before the Time-Turner itself was created.
Even if you could find a Time-Turner that ancient, even if you could survive two thousand-year time journeys, even then, the antidote takes a hundred years to prepare. Draco doesn't have a hundred years left in him. I doubt he has a hundred hours.'
'Shut up!' Harry snarled, the sword jerking in his hands. A thin thread of blood ran down into Lucius' collar. 'What matters is that there's a chance.'
Lucius glanced down at the sword against his throat. Over his shoulder, Harry could see Ron, watching them both intently, a strange look in his eyes. 'At least I know,' Lucius said, 'that whatever torments of guilt I myself may suffer over Draco's death, your suffering will be greater.'
The urge to slam the sword through Lucius' throat throbbed at the back of Harry's temples. There was a dull roaring in his ears like the sound of the sea, but louder, more urgent. He wondered if it was the sound of his own rage. 'Why is that?'
'Because you allow yourself to hope,' Lucius said.
Harry shook his head slowly, the roaring behind his eyes, surging inside his head, growing louder and louder. Like a wall of black flood water, thundering towards him. 'And you don't,' he said, 'because you are too cowardly to risk it.'
Lucius gave a sharp little bark then, of anger and something else. 'If you came here to cut my throat, then cut my throat,' he said. 'I've told you what you wanted to know. There is nothing else I would be willing to tell you. So get on with it.'
Slowly, Harry lowered the sword. It rose higher, that blackness in the back of his mind, the surge and roar. Something was happening. He struggled to speak.
'
