hands at his sides were fists, and he was staring at Seamus across the room.
Seamus barely seemed to notice. 'That's all right, then,' he said, and walked out of the infirmary, letting the door swing shut behind him.
Madam Pomfrey looked after him distractedly. 'What…an…odd…boy,' she said, slowly. 'I don't recall him being quite so odd.'
'Oh, he's odd all right,' said Draco.
Sirius looked at him. 'You should be pleased,' he said. 'He saved Ginny's life.' He took a step forward, put a hand under Draco's arm. 'You look like you're going to drop where you stand,' he said. 'Let's get you back to bed.'
Draco looked hesitant, but Blaise moved to take his other arm, and he let them lead him back to his cot. It seemed an oddly docile move for him, but Hermione saw his face as he passed, and there was no docility in it, only a sharp light behind his eyes as if he'd realized something not entirely pleasant.
Something touched Hermione's arm. It was Harry, looking at her with a somber gaze-but despite the seriousness in his eyes, she saw, he was Harry again, not the empty specter he'd been for these past few days, but her Harry, alive and warm and real.
She squeezed his hand and let it drop. She saw the flicker of uncertainty in his eyes as she knelt, and began to gather up the shattered bits of the Time-Turner. They lay like scattered diamonds among the grains of white hourglass sand and bent bits of gold chain. Hermione picked up the clasp, warped out of shape by the heel of Seamus' boot. It blurred as, finally, the tears came, slow and hot and delayed.
Harry knelt down beside her. 'Hermione, what is it? What's wrong?'
'It's broken,' she said, showing him the destroyed bits of the once-powerful Time-Turner, the Hufflepuff Founder's gift to her Heir. 'It'll never work again.'
'That's all right,' Harry said gently, drawing her towards him.'We don't need it anymore, Hermione. We'll never need it again,' he said, and she laid her head down on his shoulder and let the tears come.
Ginny woke slowly, released reluctantly by the soft darkness that held her. She opened her eyes on more darkness, pierced here and there by shafts of pallid light. Slowly she realized where she was-the smell of soap and medicine, the hard cot under her, the starched sheets. She was in the infirmary, and night had fallen. Her mouth felt dry as burnt toast. Draco, she thought, in a sudden panic. She remembered collapsing in the library, desperately trying to tell Blaise where the antidote was-had they found it?
Suddenly, something cool was against her dry mouth, and smooth, cold liquid trickled in between her cracked lips. Water. She swallowed gratefully. 'Not too fast,' said a familiar voice, 'or you'll choke.'
Ginny choked. The glass was withdrawn and she struggled to sit up.
'Draco?' she demanded, or tried to-her voice came on as a rasping whisper.
'Shh,' he said, unnecessarily. 'You'll wake your brother, and I don't much fancy being pulled back from the brink of death just to be slaughtered by a Weasley for lurking at your bedside.'
Ginny stared at him, though all she could see in the darkness was a vague shadow, and turned to look at where Charlie slept, looking worn-out, in an armchair pulled up to the bed. 'The others?' she rasped. 'Ron—'
'Everyone's fine,' said Draco. 'Including yours truly, in a remarkable change of pace.' He moved to set the water glass on the window sill, and Ginny could see him clearly: the bright hair, the flushed cheeks, the black sweater pulled on over pajamas, the incongruously vulnerable bare feet.
'The one we were all worried about was you.'
'But I'm all right,' Ginny said. 'Aren't I?'
'Yes, you are.' Draco looked at her, uncharacteristically somber. 'If you ever,' he said, 'almost get yourself killed like that again on my behalf, I'll murder you. Do you understand?'
'Not really.' Ginny put her hand up to her aching head and felt her hair matted with dried blood. 'Did I very nearly die?'
'Very nearly,' said Draco, and paused. 'It was Finnigan who saved you.'
'Seamus? Really?'
'Really,' Draco said. He paused again. 'Is he…'
'What?'
'Your boyfriend? Madam Pomfrey said…'
'I don't know,' Ginny said, honestly. Was he? She supposed he was.
Certainly they'd both been behaving as if he was. And she owed it to him, didn't she? 'My head,' she whispered. 'It aches so.'
Draco nodded. 'I'll get Madam Pomfrey to give you something.' He stood up. 'It's amazing what a chap misses while he's in a brink-of-death coma,' he added, half to himself.
'Draco,' Ginny said. 'Wait. There's one thing—'
He turned to look at her. 'Yes?'
'Remember when I fell off my broom in that Quidditch match?' He nodded. 'Later, when I was in the infirmary, someone came in and kissed me. Was that you?'
There was a long pause, during which Draco made some minute and unnecessary adjustments to his cuffs. Finally he said, 'Yes, it was.'
'Why?' Ginny said, with all the pent-up emotion she could muster, in her exhausted, filthy, worn-out state. 'What were you doing?'
Draco left his cuffs alone. 'I was confusing the issue,' he said.
'Draco…' She wanted to say more, but her eyes were fluttering shut with exhaustion. Dizzy images passed before her eyelids-Ben kneeling down beside Gareth and weeping, the antidote sparking as her tears touched it, her own blood pooled on the library floor. 'Will you really be all right?' she whispered.
The last thing she heard before sleep took her was his voice. 'All right is relative,' he said, 'but I'll still be here in the morning, thanks to you.' She felt his hand against her forehead then as he brushed her hair back with gentle fingers, light as a butterfly's touch. 'In the meantime, close your eyes, Ginny Weasley. You've done enough and it's time to rest now. Close your eyes, pretty girl. Close your eyes…'
I thought my dear must her own soul destroy — Yeats
Slowly, Ginny closed her copy of Trousers, Arise! and set it down on the windowsill beside her bed. It was the last of the three books in the Trousers series that Draco had given her for Christmas. She'd stretched out reading them as long as she could, but it was May now and she'd just turned the last page of the last book. That's all there is, she thought, bringing her knees up to her chest and hugging them with her arms. She felt indistinctly morose, unsettled even, as she often did when she'd finished a favorite novel. Even when the ending was happy, it was like a death or at least a going-away for a long time, this having to say goodbye to characters she'd come to know and love.
In fact, she wasn't sure if the happy ending didn't simply make her feel worse. It was the sort of happy ending that tied up everything neatly and never actually turned up in real life, where endings, if they happened at all, were messy, and love wasn't always rewarded or punished: sometimes it just faded away into the background, part of the great clamoring mass of unanswered questions that eventually you just had to learn to live with if you wanted to grow up.
Feeling sad and perhaps a trifle wise, Ginny leaned a little way out the window: it was a gorgeous early summer day, cool and breezy, the sky like a hollowed bowl of blue porcelain. Students were out on the lawns, lying on blankets spread out over the grass, savoring the first warm days of the year. She could see figures down by the lake, the black-clad silhouettes of strolling students, mostly boys and girls walking together, hand in hand.
She hadn't been down to the lake herself since the winter; it brought up too many memories that were better avoided.
