'He didn't do anything,' Ginny said, more fiercely that she'd intended.
Blaise flinched, her green eyes flashing.
'I should have known it was just Gryffindor self-flagellation,' she said sarcastically. 'Well, don't do us any favors. Hermione, especially: Pansy hated her. She didn't like any of you, except Ron. I was actually her friend.'
'You didn't like her either,' Ginny pointed out.
'What's that got to do with anything?' Blaise said, and then laughed. She had a surprisingly sweet laugh, considering, Ginny thought, though the bell-sound seemed out of place in the graveyard. Blaise turned and looked behind her, following Ginny's glance. The knot of people by Pansy's grave had begun to move down the hill, a marching column of black ants. 'I guess it's over,' she said. 'This is, like, the sixth funeral I've been to this week.'
'It won't be the last,' Ginny said, pushing her hair back from her face. She could see Ron's bright red head against the white winter sky. Hermione walked beside him, her arms folded.
'How is Draco?' Blaise said softly.
Ginny glanced down at her feet. 'He hasn't woken up. At all. Madam Pomfrey says he could wake up any time, but he could also…go any time.
We've been taking turns sitting with him, except Harry-'
Blaise looked surprised. 'Harry hasn't been sitting with him?'
'No, he has… I just mean he hasn't been taking it in turns-he's been there the whole time since Sirius and Professor Lupin brought us back from the castle. We've all been staying at school; Dumbledore thought he could be taken care of best there. Draco, I mean. Not Harry. Not that Harry doesn't need taking care of, too, but he won't even talk to anyone, he just… sits there.' The wind was kicking snow up in small sharp flurries; Ginny blinked flakes from her eyelashes. 'I know Hermione's worried sick about him.'
'Why did she come to the funeral?' Blaise wondered. 'She must have despised Pansy.'
'For Ron,' Ginny said. 'We all came for Ron. We thought it was important.'
Blaise blinked. 'Surely he can't have been that fond of Pansy, really…'
'No,' Ginny said, 'but sometimes you need to bury the past.'
'So to speak,' said Blaise, and turned; Hermione and Ron were nearly upon them. Ron was white-faced and tired-looking; one of the scattered petals had fallen on his shoe, and stuck there. Hermione's red-mittened hand was firm on his arm.
'Hello, Blaise,' she said, inclining her head.
Blaise muttered a reply, looking acutely uncomfortable.
'I had meant to thank you.' Hermione pushed her hood back so that her dark hair spilled out; something glittered among the curls. 'For the loan of your barrettes. They turned out to be useful.'
'Glad to hear it,' Blaise said, and added, looking almost nervous, 'Would it be all right if I came along?'
'Came where?' asked Hermione, pulling her hood back up. 'To school?'
'I want to see Draco, if I can,' Blaise said. 'I don't know if he can have visitors, but…'
'Of course you can come,' Ron said shortly, before anyone else had a chance to reply. 'You can ride in the carriage with us.'
Blaise turned to Ginny. 'Is that where you'll be?'
'I'm riding separately, with Seamus. You can come with us instead, if you like…'
Blaise backed away hastily, shaking her head. 'Er, no, that's all right….I'll just see you there, shall I?'
Ginny sighed.
Seamus was waiting for her by a black carriage with the Malfoy coat of arms etched in silver on the door. Narcissa had lent it to them for the journey, as neither Ron nor Seamus was considered strong enough to travel by Portkey.
Seamus was sketching something on a piece of paper, which he quickly stowed in a pocket as she approached. 'Are we leaving?'
Ginny nodded and swung herself up into the carriage; Seamus followed, pulling the door shut behind him. For several long minutes they sat in silence in the dark blue plush interior, the creak and rock as the carriage navigated the snowy road the only sound. Finally, Seamus said, 'I'm sorry.'
Ginny looked at him. 'What for?'
'Frightening Blaise.' He watched the countryside lurch by the windows in a monochromatic patchwork of black, white and gray. 'I don't think I've ever frightened anyone before.'
'Get used to it,' Ginny said wearily, and was immediately sorry, for Seamus winced as if she'd punched him. She leaned forward. 'I'm sorry, too. Look, just remember that it wasn't you. It was someone else wearing your face. You didn't do anything wrong.' How many times have I said this over the past three days? she thought. And it never seems to make any difference.
Seamus looked down at his hands. They were thin, flexible hands, tapering to square fingertips, freckled along the knuckles. 'When the coffin was being lowered,' he said, 'I remembered her running through the house to get away from me. Falling down and getting up again. I remember laughing at her — '
'Seamus,' Ginny pressed the backs of her hands against her eyes. 'It wasn't you.'
'But they're my memories,' he said softly. She lowered her hands and looked at him; his eyes were dark in the dimness of the carriage, the color of forget-me-nots. 'My dreams. How can I be sure he's left me entirely, Ginny? That there isn't some scrap of him left inside me, changing me, poisoning me?' His voice rose. 'How can I be sure?'
'He may never leave you, entirely, Seamus,' she said as gently as she could. 'But I trust the goodness in you to overcome that. You should, too.'
He took a long, shaky breath, then reached for her hand. He slipped her glove off, and wound their fingers together, her small fingers warming his cold ones. 'I don't know what I'd do without you, Ginny,' he said. 'You're the only thing that still makes sense to me.'
They drew up to the school just as the sun was setting: the early, light-blue sunset of deep winter. Ginny drew her yellow cloak tightly closed as she went up the front steps, Seamus beside her. The lamps were off in the turret that housed the Headmaster's office; Dumbledore had left the premises precipitously moments after their arrival, saying that he was going to fetch Narcissa to her dying son's bedside. She had appeared hours later, but Dumbledore had yet to return. In her more irrational moments Ginny wondered if he was avoiding her, knowing what she wanted to ask him.
Pleading exhaustion, Seamus kissed her goodbye in the entryway, and headed towards Gryffindor Tower. Ginny wasn't entirely sorry to see him go; being cheerful and optimistic for Seamus was something of a strain.
She found Blaise waiting at the foot of the steps that led to the infirmary.
She looked so woebegone that Ginny's heart skipped a beat. 'Is everything all right?' she asked, thinking, Please let it not have happened while I was gone, when I wasn't here to sit with him, to tell him goodbye.
'I feel so rude barging in.' Blaise confessed. 'I suppose I really hadn't thought about it, but his mum's there, and Harry, and Hermione, and what right have I got to be here? I wasn't anyone to him, really…'
Her voice trailed off. She sat, a disconsolate figure in her neat black outfit, her hair spilling cherry-red out from under her hat. Ginny had always thought of Blaise as tall and imposing; now she realized the other girl was her own height. 'Please come see him,' Ginny said. 'He cared for you, I know he did. He always said you were just like him.'
'Well, that's encouraging, since he loves himself more than anything else,'
Blaise said, looking as if she were only half joking.
'It meant a lot to him that you understood him,' Ginny said quietly. 'God knows, I never have.'
Blaise looked up, startled. Her eyes were the same unnerving glass-green as Harry's, but fringed with long copper lashes, where his were black.
