The tension went out of her shoulders.
'Ben,' she said.
He came closer to her and she stifled a sound of surprise. He was still Ben, still tall and with the same broad shoulders, but his hair was white now and his face lined. He said, 'I knew it was you.'
She smiled a little. 'How?'
'After the last time I saw you, I put Time Distortion Wards up around the rooms in the castle. I thought it would alert me if you ever came back.'
His voice was different too, rougher, almost an old man's voice. 'Did you succeed?'
'Yes,' Ginny said, and held the two vials out to him. 'These must rest undisturbed for a thousand years,' she said. 'You must take this one-' and she proffered the vial with the wine-colored stones- 'and give it to the heir of Slytherin, whoever has succeeded Gareth, and tell him it must be passed down through the generations of his family. And this one-' she held out the one with the golden stones-'has to be hidden in the walls of Hogwarts, somewhere where I can find it again in a thousand years.'
Ben took the vials in gnarled hands, and set the golden one down on top of a library table. 'You're sure about all this?'
Ginny nodded. 'I'm sure.'
'There's a stone Gareth and I used to hide notes behind- let me see if it's still loose.' He went over to the wall and began to work one of the stones free.
Ginny followed him. 'Ben, can I ask you something?'
He nodded without looking up.
'All those years ago when you and Gareth came to see me at the Burrow,' she said. 'You gave me a yellow flower. A willpower flower. I was wondering…'
Ben was smiling. He stood up, and set the loose stone- it was about the size of two fists, square and uneven at the edges- on the sill of a window high in the wall. He said, 'It was just a flower. It didn't make you strong, Ginny. That was all your own strength, all this time.'
'Then why…?'
'Come back and see you at all? Let's just say a certain someone asked me to.' He set the vial in the far recess of the hole in the wall, and picked the stone up again. The effort of bending and lifting was making him breathe heavily.
'Dumbledore?'
Ben chuckled, and stood back to admire his handiwork. The stone stuck a few inches out of the wall, so he tapped it with his right hand. The excess stone crumbled away into dust and it seemed to sit flush. 'Five up from the floor, ten over from the wall,' he said. 'Can you remember that for the next thousand years?'
She nodded, and glanced around, steeling herself for the journey back to the present. 'So there are students here now?'
He nodded. 'I'm the Headmaster. It's good to be surrounded by people all the time. Less lonely.'
'So you haven't…' she began, before she realized this was probably personal and none of her business, and shut her mouth.
He just looked at her- not like a little boy, the way he'd been when she first met him, or a boy just a little older than her, but like a kindly uncle.
'For some of us, there is only ever one person,' he said, and touched her hair lightly with a gnarled hand. 'I think you might be that way yourself.'
'Er,' said Ginny, who wasn't sure if she was, or if she wasn't.
'He is a lucky young man,' said Ben, and took his hand back. 'I won't see you again, will I?'
'I doubt it,' Ginny said, thinking of the long cold journey between times that awaited her. 'I wish I would- I wish you could live another thousand years,' she added, impulsively, and smiled at him.
He didn't smile back, just hunched his shoulders inside his robes as if he were cold. She knew he was thinking about Gareth. 'But I do not,' he said.
The sudden, startling pain made Harry stumble, and he half-fell down the last step to the marble floor of the Manor entryway. When he looked down, he saw the bright blossom of blood that colored his white shirt, spreading like a stain. He touched it, wonderingly, and the blood came off, slicking his fingertips with scarlet.
It was the first time he'd ever felt pain in a dream, and he realized, looking at his own blood, that this vision was more than a dream, and the consequences carried by his actions here were very real. He looked up from his bloody hand at Draco, who stood frozen on the steps, ashen-faced. His voice was thin with horror. 'Harry-'
With his free hand, Harry pulled his shirt up and looked down at himself: he saw a shallow cut across the skin of his chest just above his heart, blood threading slowly from it. He let go of the shirt. 'It's all right,' he said. 'You haven't killed me.'
Draco put out a shaking hand and gripped the banister. The sword hung at his side, but he did not let go of it. His eyes were half-closed; Harry could see the shadow of his lashes cast down across his cheek like a fringe of silvery thread. There was color in his cheeks, a dark flush along the cheekbones: he looked like a marble statue that had been slapped with red paint.
'I could have,' he said. 'I could have-'
Harry! It was a voice they both recognized, high and thin now with panic, rattling the windows like a heavy blast of wind. Harry, wake up!
'Hermione,' Harry said, spinning, though she was nowhere to be seen.
'She's calling me back-'
'Then go back,' said Draco, with a harshness that, Harry suspected, was not intentional.
'Not without you,' said Harry. 'No.'
Draco shook his head, hard. 'Don't you see you're torturing me?' he said, in the same harsh voice. 'I can't go with you. I can't.'
'Then I'll stay here until-'
'There is no until. I'm dying-the poison's burned me up, I'm just bones and char, can't you see that?'
'I just see you,' said Harry, simply. The blood running down his stomach felt sticky and strangely cold. The voice came again: Harry, wake up! Harry, it's Hermione, can you hear me?
'I kissed her,' Draco said, so abruptly that Harry stared at him, taken off-guard.
'Kissed who?' he said.
'Hermione. I kissed her.'
'Yes, well,' said Harry, wondering where this was going, 'if memory serves, you've kissed her multiple times in the past.'
'This wasn't the past,' said Draco, looking almost desperate. 'This was last week, maybe a bit before, after you'd gone off and left us, right after I saw you in the Midnight Club. When you Portkeyed off. Remember that?'
Harry nodded, too bewildered to speak.
'Well, I went back to the hotel and we kissed-and more than that besides-'
'Did you sleep with her?' Harry was appalled.
'No-God, no,' Draco said, even more ashen than before, though still with the same odd determination. 'She was wearing that ring you gave her and I stopped when I saw it-we both did-but that doesn't matter, does it?' He gave a short laugh, almost like a curse, and glanced away. 'There,' he said. 'I told you I hadn't changed as much as all that. Are you still so sure you want to stay?'
The sixth journey was not cold, but hot. Ginny fell down and down through rings of fire, each hotter than the last, and the stench of smoke stung her eyes and nose with acrid pain. Falling and burning like an angel cast down out of Heaven, Ginny thought of Tom as she fell, the cool blue of his eyes and the ice of his touch.
The ground struck her, not her feet but her side. She lay curled up on the ground, coughing, her lungs seared with pain.
