me in the war, because I made you a better fighter. You needed me because you needed all the help you could get. But now's your chance to live a normal life, that's what you always wanted, isn't it? You want to tell me how a pureblooded, all-Slytherin, prone-to-assasination-attempts telepathically bonded stepbrother with a history of morally questionable behavior is going to help you do that?'
'It's really amazing,' said Harry, 'how much rot you can talk even when you're in the middle of doing something else.'
'Thank you,' said Draco, modestly, and forced Harry back another step.
'You're right,' Harry said. 'Maybe I don't need you the way I did before.'
Draco took a breath, a curt intake as sharp as the sound of breaking frost.
'At least you're honest.'
'But I don't see where it matters,' said Harry. 'Needing people because they can help you out in a war, well, help is a benefit of friendship, I suppose, but it isn't the reason for it. Need isn't the basis of friendship, or love, or-'
'Love,' said Draco, almost contemptuously, 'you do like to talk about it, don't you?'
Not really, Harry thought. 'No,' he said, 'I just don't spend my life avoiding the topic, unlike some people.'
Draco's sword made a sweeping sideways gesture that neatly cut away one of the buttons holding Harry's sweater cuffs closed. It clicked to the marble and rolled away underfoot. Cool air touched Harry's bare wrist.
'That's what girls do,' Draco said, 'talk on endlessly about love, as if they could pin it like a butterfly to a board. In the end, it doesn't matter, does it? It's not what you say, it's what you do.'
'Then you do love,' said Harry. 'I've seen it over and over in everything you do. It's not that you can't love, it's that you're afraid to admit that you do.'
Draco made an exasperated noise. 'Potter-' he began, but his hand trembled, and the tip of his sword dropped, slicing a clean cut along Harry's chest.
Ginny felt her heart soar-then drop. She exchanged a long glance of mutual understanding and regret with Snape-a first for the both of them, certainly.
'It's not the antidote,' she said to Blaise, as gently as she could, as if the other girl's heartache was the greatest at stake here. 'The antidote has to brew for a thousand years.'
If she'd expected Blaise to cry, it didn't happen. She just went very red, as if flushed with rage, and swallowed hard once. 'Then all this was for nothing?'
'Not nothing,' Ginny said. 'It can brew for a thousand years…if I take it back into the past and leave it somewhere. Somewhere where it'll still be undisturbed a thousand years in the future.'
'But you can't go back in the past again-' Blaise started, alarmed, but Ginny shot her such a furious look that she quailed.
'I just need to find somewhere I can leave the antidote where no one will find it-' Ginny began.
Blaise looked as if she were about to start in on Ginny again, but at that moment Snape exclaimed loudly. The runic band-the two shattered halves of it, anyway-was jerking in his hands. He set the pieces carefully down on the table. No sooner had he taken his hand back then they slid towards each other and joined, like two drops of water flowing into one.
'That's Harry's band,' said Ginny, with some certainty, and picked it up.
It thrummed once under her fingers, as if alive, then went quiet.
She slipped it onto her wrist. 'I need a vial of the antidote,' she said to Snape.
He looked at her out of hooded dark eyes, and she suspected he knew exactly what it was that Blaise would have said if Ginny had allowed her to speak. But all he said was, 'Indeed.'
With a wave of his wand, he lowered the flame under the cauldron and went to fetch an empty vial. Ginny stared down at the pale gold liquid inside the cauldron. It was a almost exactly the color of the yellow cloak her mother had given her, that she'd worn that day Draco had almost kissed her by the lake. The backs of her eyes stung, and to her surprise, two tears slipped down her cheeks and spilled into the cauldron.
She jumped back, wiping hastily at her face. 'Have I ruined it?' she demanded, staring at Snape in horror.
He merely looked at her, a peculiar expression on his face. 'Not at all,' he said, and handed her two vials. One was of red glass, stoppered with a yellowish stone, and the other was of clear glass, sealed with stones the color of wine. He measured the liquid out between them, sealed them, and handed them to Ginny with a brief set of instructions. She blinked and nodded, and then Blaise was tugging her arm again and they were back on the stairs, trudging upward and away from the dungeon with its steaming heat and smell of boiled leaves.
'I hate it down there,' Blaise said. 'It always reeks of cabbage. Where are we going, anyway?'
'Back to the library,' said Ginny. 'There's one last thing I want to look up.'
Hermione looked up as the door of the infirmary swung open. It was Ron, looking more than a little dazed. He made his way across the room and sank heavily into the chair between her and Harry.
She set her book aside; it wasn't as if she'd been reading it, anyway. 'Ron, are you all right?'
He glanced sideways at Harry before answering. 'Is he asleep?'
Hermione hesitated, then nodded. 'In a manner of speaking.' Harry was curled silently in the chair, one smudged, pale cheek resting on his arm.
His eyes were shut but his eyelashes, fluttering fitfully, showed the restless movement underneath. Hermione wanted to reach out and squeeze his hand but restrained herself; she didn't want to do anything to jeopardize the delicate half-dream he was trapped in.
'That's probably good.' Ron rubbed the back of his hand across tired eyes, then hunched forward to speak to Hermione under his breath.
'Ginny used Helga's Time-Turner.'
'I know. She told me she was going to.' Hermione fought to keep the hope out of her voice. 'Did she…find anything?'
'She brought the runic band back with her. She's with Snape now, figuring it out.'
The book slipped from Hermione's hands; Ron caught it deftly before it hit the floor and set it down at the foot of the bed. 'Ron, do you think-is it possible-'
He caught her hand and held it. She wondered if he could feel the pulse banging in her wrist. 'Hermione, I don't know. But what I do know is this-remember when I told you that I saw Draco dead and Harry crying over him?'
Hermione nodded.
'I was wrong. That wasn't what I saw at all. Hermione, I can't promise anything, but-'
Harry suddenly gasped, a sharp, stuttering gasp that cut Ron off in midsentence. They both looked over at him in astonishment, just in time to see a bright scarlet flower of blood bloom across his chest.
The fifth passage through time was even colder than she could have imagined. Ginny seemed to fall forever through Arctic space, her skin raked by icicles, her eyes, squeezed shut, burning and stinging against flung particles of glass-sharp ice.
The ground came up like an express train, slamming into her feet, and she swayed, falling forward with her arms curved protectively around the precious vials she carried. She lay still for a moment, weak as a kitten, too sick and dizzy even to open her eyes.
At last she sat up, gingerly, and opened her eyes. She was in the library, though the torches on the walls had burned out. It was nighttime, and the room was full of shadows. She got to her feet slowly, blinking to adjust her vision to the darkness. Her head felt as if someone were slicing at the inside of it with knives.
She heard a sound behind her and whirled. Light showed where the door of the library was swinging open.
