Ron shot her a blistering look. 'Shut up, Blaise.'
She smiled at him-one of Draco's bland, withering smiles. 'You seem different these days,' she remarked. 'More like your brother.'
Ron seemed momentarily nonplussed. 'Which brother?'
'Charlie,' said Blaise, airily.
'Oh, for goodness sake,' said Ginny in frustration. 'Ron, this is something I have to do. It's Draco's only chance. I know you don't like him, but he's a human being, he's got as much right to a chance at life as anyone else does. And think of Harry.'
'I do think of Harry,' said Ron, gratingly. 'I think of him all the time.' He knelt down then, and looked up at her. 'Ginny,' he said. 'I went back in time with you once before. Bring me with you again. That way I can be with you if there's any danger.'
Touched, Ginny squeezed his shoulder. 'All right. But let me do the talking, all right?'
He nodded. Blaise cleared her throat. 'Gareth Malfoy,' she said, reading aloud from the book she held open in her arms. 'Dead of a fever caused by wounds sustained in battle.' She added the date, and Ginny frowned.
'But that's only about five years after the last time I was there!' she exclaimed.
'He died young,' said Blaise. 'It was a long time ago.'
'Not for Ben,' said Ginny, and looped the chain of the Time-Turner over Ron's neck.
Harry moved quickly to block Draco's way. 'Oh, no you don't,' he said.
Draco looked at him coolly. There was only a little emotion on the finely honed face, a sort of distant curiosity. 'I don't think you understand,' he said. 'This is something I have to do.'
'No, it isn't.'
'Death comes for us all, Harry.' Not Potter, not this time. Harry. 'You can't battle it like you battled Voldemort.'
'I know that.' Harry thought of Cedric, dead between one instant and the next, and set his jaw stubbornly. 'But it's not your time.'
Draco laughed shortly. 'Who are you to say when my time is? Who am I to say it? We don't get to choose, any of us. And what do you know of death anyway, Boy Who Lived?'
Harry looked away, fighting a despair that threatened to rip him out of this dream, return him to the grim reality of the infirmary, the smell of death and sickness and medicine, the white of ice and snow and sickbed linens, and everywhere hopelessness and pain. 'Why are you angry at me?' he ground at last, between his teeth.
There was a silence, and then he felt a touch on his shoulder-looking, he saw Draco's hand laid there, thin and brown, scarred white along the palm and the curve of the thumb. 'Maybe because it is easier to leave you angry,' Draco said. 'But-'
'Then don't leave.'
'I have no choice,' Draco said, tightening his grip on Harry's shoulder.
'How do you think that is for me, to have no choice? I am a Malfoy-I cannot bear being forced. Even my father-'
'Took his own life out of guilt,' said Harry harshly. 'You don't bear that sort of guilt. Maybe once, but not now.'
'I'm not killing myself, Harry. I am accepting the inevitable.'
'Nothing is inevitable,' Harry said.
'Not for you, perhaps.' Draco sounded weary. Harry chanced a look at him. He could see the exhaustion in him, under the false glamor of wellness, the pallor that seemed to lurk under the brown skin, flushed with healthy blood along the cheekbones, the lips curved in a half-smile, no longer gray and bitten, the thin chest rising and falling rapidly with his breath… 'I am not like you,' Draco said. 'And perhaps you think I am owed something for my redemption, but I never thought of it that way. I have always done just as I wanted. I wanted to fight with you and for you, and if I changed myself it was so I might have that-everything I have done has been for selfish reasons. Don't mourn me, Harry. I haven't changed as much as all that.'
'Now you're lying,' Harry said, stung into anger-but it was the wrong thing to say. Draco's mouth set.
'I don't lie,' he said, coldly, and before Harry could move to stop him, pushed past him and out the door of the library.
The third trip, thanks to Ron's presence, was less cold than the previous two. His hands were comfortingly warm in her own as the freezing blackness ebbed and flowed around them, an inky tide of nothingness.
When it receded, they were standing again in the library. It was much as it had been the previous time Ginny had been there, only it was dark now, all the candles unlit, the torches guttered, and there were no parchments on the bare wooden tables.
She let go of Ron's hands. He looked around wonderingly. 'This is the school? A thousand years ago?'
She nodded. 'Last time I was here they were fixing the place back up after it was damaged in the last battle of the Founders. There weren't any students there then. I don't know if there are now. It hasn't been that long.'
'Yeah.' He looked around and shivered. 'It's cold.'
'I know. I wonder…' She sighed. 'My guess is there probably aren't students here now. They'd never let it get so freezing if there were.'
Without answering, Ron went to the library door and swung it open. He peered into the hallway beyond. 'There aren't any torches lit out here either,' he called back.
'Shhhh.' Ginny took her wand out, lit it with a quick Lumos, and joined Ron at the door. The corridor beyond the library stretched away into darkness, all the torches unlit. 'This can't be good. Oh, poor Ben. Poor Gareth.'
'You said that already.' Ron stepped out into the hall and gestured for her to follow. 'Let's go this way.'
'Why that way?'
'Just a feeling I have.'
'Well, you are the Diviner.' She shrugged, falling into step beside him.
They were taking a route that, in their own time, would have led them to Dumbledore's office. The corridors of the castle looked much the same now as they would in the future. Perhaps the floors were less scuffed and worn, she thought, though it was difficult to tell in the dimness.
'There,' Ron said quietly. He pointed. At the very end of the corridor, Ginny could make out a flickering light, delicate as a will-o-the-wisp. She squinted, then hurried forward, Ron trailing behind her.
As they moved along the corridor, she glanced down, for some reason, at the scar on her right hand, where Tom had burned it in the Gryffindor common room fire. It stood out still against her brown and freckled skin, a veiling of irregular white lines, as if she wore a lace glove.
Nearing the light, she saw that it was the tip of a lit wand, held by someone who was sitting on the floor, his legs drawn up, his face buried on his crossed arms. Black robes puddled around him like spilled ink. He looked up as Ginny came to stand beside him, and slowly knelt to touch his arm. 'Ben?' she said.
He did not smile. He looked not much older than he had the last time she'd seen him, though there were hard lines on his face that had not been there before, lines of grief marked close to his mouth and eyes. He smelled of liquor, medicine and metal. 'You,' he said, 'like the Angel of Death, you come just as promised, just on time…'
Harry stood frozen for a moment, then rushed out into the hallway after Draco.
He found him standing in the corridor, looking around with a bemused expression. 'I thought you said there was death out here,' he said. 'All I see is some rather appalling Victorian-era wallpaper. Place needs brightening up a little, doesn't it?'
'It's a horrible old pile,' Harry opined, slightly out of breath. 'I've told you that before.'
'Yes, but your taste is bad,' Draco noted. 'Mine, on the other hand…' He half-closed his eyes. 'It's that tugging again,' he added. 'I have to get to the front door. There's something there-'
