'That's thoughtful of you,' Ginny said grudgingly. She thought of the wedding, which she had rather been looking forward to — one last celebration with all her friends before they scattered across the world, only one of them to return to Hogwarts in September. Herself. Now she thought of the shimmering ballroom at Malfoy Manor, and Blaise laughing in Draco's arms as they spun together under the floating chandeliers, and felt a sense of impending dread.
Blaise grinned. 'It's not a question of thoughtful. I know what a temper you've got, I don't want you hurling a punchbowl at me in the middle of the vows.'
'No, I wouldn't do that anyway,' Ginny said. 'Look, I've got a boyfriend.
I'm not still carrying a torch for Draco Malfoy.'
Blaise raised an eyebrow. 'You went through hell to save his life,' she remarked. 'That's more than a torch, it's a bloody bonfire.'
Ginny shrugged. 'That was months ago. If anything was going to happen between us after, it would have happened already. But I'm with Seamus. I told you.'
'Yes, but do you love him? Seamus, I mean.'
Unbidden, Tom's words rose in Ginny's mind. I am her love, I am her hatred. I am her joy and I am her loathing and her abhorrence. I am her unrequited passions. I am her guilt and her remembrance. I am her beautiful despair. I am the futility of all her wishes. Out of blood and tears and ink, she made me. And I will never leave her.
But he had been wrong, she thought, it was she who could not leave.
'Sure, I love him.'
Blaise's lip quirked up at the corner. 'Hey, do you remember that time in the Great Hall when Seamus just went totally mad and Draco — '
'No,' Ginny said firmly.
Blaise looked dubious. 'If you say so.'
Ginny was lying, of course, she did remember. Quite well.
Once she'd been sure, quite sure, that Draco was going to live, she set about ignoring him as completely as possible. One school started again, she avoided him in corridors and after Quidditch matches, tried not to be around Harry or Hermione if they were going to see him, ducked behind pillars in the courtyard if she caught a glimpse of silvery hair or heard the sound of familiar laughter.
At least it was nearly impossible to bump into him alone. Other Slytherins always surrounded him. While the Gryffindors had tiptoed around Harry since they'd all come back to school — as Ron pointed out, it's a little hard to brag about your winter trip to Ibiza with a bloke who spent his Christmas holidays locked in a fatal confrontation with Voldemort — the Slytherins were sucking up to Draco like they'd just invented the fine art of sycophancy.
'A lot of them,' Blaise explained to Ginny one evening in the library, 'feel like they made maybe the wrong choice, you know, siding with the Death Eaters and that lot. Not because they were evil, mind you, but because they lost, and Draco's practically the only one in our House who's in really good books with the Ministry's current power players. Everyone thinks he just played it perfectly, you know, and no one wants to be on his bad side. He might sic Harry on them.' She grinned.
'As if Harry could be bothered with them,' said Ginny coldly, and meant it. Harry had reacclimated to normal life at school better than they'd all been worried he would, after what had happened, and the fallout of what had happened — Dumbledore had done a good job of keeping the Ministry away, forbidding them from holding a ceremony in which they bestowed the Order of Merlin on Harry until after school was over, canceling several tickertape parades through Hogsmeade, and forbidding all reporters from the Daily Prophet from setting foot on Hogwarts grounds on pain of being eaten by Fang. People still stared at Harry in the hallway, of course. But people had always stared at Harry in the hallway. That wasn't new.
What was new, perhaps, was the way he looked back — neither defensive nor challenging nor resentful nor shy. I know who I am, that look said, and if you don't, you're welcome to look — it doesn't matter to me either way. Ginny remembered the Harry of years ago, who ducked stares and bit his lip in furious pain at the appearance of POTTER STINKS badges.
That Harry was gone. 'He's grown up so,' said Hermione, in the sort of sad-happy voice that only someone who'd known Harry since he was eleven might be permitted to reasonably use.
Oh, I don't know. He doesn't look any taller to me. It wasn't Draco saying it, but Draco's voice in Ginny's head: sometimes she heard him whispering to her even when he wasn't there, and though she knew it was only her own unruly imagination conjuring up what he might say, it still made her uncomfortable enough to flee Hermione's presence without answering.
That night, in the Great Hall over supper, Dumbledore announced that there was to be a memorial service for Pansy Parkinson and for the other victims of what had come to be known as the Christmas Killings. Ginny knew that Dumbledore was perfectly aware of Pansy's role in Ron's abduction and the rest of the whole sorry business, but she also knew he would never say anything about it publicly, and let those who had known Pansy come to terms with her death as they saw fit. All the blame for the killings had been laid at Voldemort's door, of course, which in a way was true, but still left Ginny with a sick, guilty feeling inside.
She was sitting next to Seamus as Dumbledore spoke, and she saw his shoulders tense as Dumbledore talked of the Christmas Killings.
Dumbledore spoke of the need to come to terms with death, to understand it as a part of life, and yet he said also that he understood the urge to rage against it, especially when the victim was so young and the act of murder was so senseless. 'As we did when Cedric Diggory was killed three years ago,' he said, 'we must face that which is the ugly result of bigotry taken to its farthest extreme, of the sort of intolerance even the best of us can sometimes harbor-'
A ringing in Ginny's ears blotted out his next words. '-of evil,'
Dumbledore went on, 'the sort of evil the Ministry thought you should never know about, because you are children. But if we do not admit to the existence of evil, we cannot recognize it. And if we do not recognize it, how can we see it within ourselves?'
The chiming in Ginny's ears grew louder; she realized it was not actually intangible guilt but rather the sound of Seamus' fork hitting the edge of his plate as his hand shook. She reached out and took the fork away from him. 'Seamus — '
He pulled back from her and staggered to his feet. Lurching a little, as if he were drunk or blind, he staggered from the Hall. A confused murmur of voices rose like the hum of bees in summertime, and Ginny saw Draco, all the way across the room at the Slytherin table, chin on hand, looking at her.
She got to her feet and raced after Seamus.
She found him in one of the corridors off the Hall, leaning against a wall, his head in his hands. He was murmuring into his fingers. She caught only a few words — 'My hands — not my hands — ' before she pulled his hands away from his face and held them tightly in hers, fighting the urge to shake him.
'Seamus,' she said, 'what's going on? What's wrong?'
He looked at her bleakly through a fall of light hair, from eyes a little too dark a blue. 'Take heed,' he said, ' for I hold vengeance in my hand, to hurl upon their heads that break My law.'
She took a step back. 'What's that from?'
'I don't know,' he said. 'But I hear it when I close my eyes.'
'Why did you leave the Hall?' she asked.
'Dumbledore was talking about me,' he said. 'I could feel everyone staring. Recognizing evil.' He gave a short laugh.
'No one was looking at you,' Ginny said, trying to hide the anger in her voice. 'No one thinks of you that way.'
