'Bollocks,' Ginny muttered.
Harry looked at her curiously and seemed to notice her high color and agitated expression for the first time. 'Heard Draco's going to the wedding with Blaise, have you?' he said, without malice and addressing both of them, though his words seemed meant for Ginny. Ginny's color darkened.
Before she could say anything, Hermione got to her feet and grabbed Harry by the shoulders, pushing him out through the curtain and into the common room.
'Honestly, Harry,' she said, 'do have some sense, won't you? And leave me alone with Ginny, we need to talk.'
'I'll say,' he said, and dropped a kiss on the top of her head. 'See you at dinner, then?'
Her anger melted. 'Of course.'
'And if you wind up wearing some horribly unflattering meringue-type thing to the wedding, don't look at me. I tried to advise you.'
'At least it'll match your powder-blue tux,' she said, and let go of his shoulders. He dashed away upstairs as Hermione took a deep breath and returned to the window embrasure.
Ginny was hunched into the corner of the window, worrying at something that hung around her throat. She dropped her hand when Hermione appeared and glared at the other girl defiantly, her cheeks scarlet.
'All right, I didn't tell him anything,' said Hermione. 'But that's on the condition that you forget this stupid idea immediately. I mean, using a love potion on someone, it's — it's a violation. It robs them of their volition, their will. It's like Imperius, but worse in a way, because they don't even know what's happening.'
'It's not an Unforgivable,' Ginny said, her voice tight. 'And anyway, I happen to agree with you.'
'You — what do you mean, you agree?' Hermione stared at her. 'Do you hate Draco that much?'
Ginny was shaking her head slowly. Red curls of hair bounced against her cheek, startling against its whiteness. 'You really think I'd do that,' she said flatly. 'That I'd use a love potion on — on him?' She bit her lip. 'It's not for Draco.'
Hermione looked at her in astonishment. 'Not for Draco?' she echoed.
'Then for who?'
'I should think that would be more than obvious,' Ginny said. 'It's for me, of course.'
Harry had just reached the door of his room when he felt that tickling at the back of his mind — like a hiss or a whisper, but more insistent — that meant that Draco wanted to talk to him. He lowered his hand from the doorknob, letting his mind relax.
Potter?
Yes, I'm here.
You know how Weasley said Dumbledore needed to talk to us?
Yes. I know, I was just — The other boy sounded oddly constricted. Look, I think you'd better come here.
Harry felt suddenly cold all over. Are you all right?
Just get here.
Forgetting about his muddy sweater, Harry clattered back down the stairs
— as he passed the closed window curtains in the common room, he wondered just what it was that Hermione and Ginny were actually up to, he hadn't believed for a moment that they'd been talking about clothes — and ducked out through the portrait hole.
'Fizzwhanging snozzlefritters,' he muttered to the gargoyle that guarded Dumbledore's office, and it obligingly let him through. As he rode upward on the wooden staircase, he felt that chill again, now centered in his stomach. He hadn't heard Draco sound like that since — well, not since January.
January. Sometimes when he closed he eyes he saw the blasted landscape of Romania, the gray earth outside the towering stronghold, the long lines of mountains marching away in the distance like jagged black teeth. He felt the chill in his bones again, that seeping cold and exhaustion. He saw the castle corridors lit up like high noon, and Draco lying in Hermione's arms, silver blood trickling from the corner of his mouth.
Sometimes in dreams he remembered the ones he had killed: the guards, the men at Viktor's flat. He remembered the hot water he'd scalded his hands with afterward, but he could not remember their faces. He'd told Draco that once, a few days after he'd gotten the antidote but was still in the infirmary — Snape had insisted, though Draco already looked like a completely different person. Draco had looked up at him, tousle-haired in pajamas. 'Hell is murky,' he said.
'What's that supposed to mean?'
'Don't think about what you can't change, Potter.'
'I killed people, Malfoy.'
Draco's eyes were brilliant. 'You're the savior of the wizarding world,' he said. 'Let someone else be its bloody conscience.'
The stairs stopped rising; Harry was in front of Dumbledore's door. He pushed it open.
The moment he walked into the beautiful circular office, the chill in his stomach constricted into a hard lump of ice. Not just Dumbledore was there, but also Lupin and Snape, sitting in chairs on either side of the Headmaster's desk. Both looked somber. Draco sat opposite them, slouched into an armchair. He was expressionless, but the skin around his mouth looked pinched.
'Harry,' said Dumbledore — the light from the window reflected off his glasses, making it impossible to read his eyes — 'You'd better take a seat.'
Harry didn't move. 'What is it?' he said, rising panic sharpening his voice.
'Is it Sirius? Has something happened to him?'
'No,' Draco said, sitting forward, 'it's nothing like that, Potter. Nobody's died. '
Harry looked at Snape. 'It's not Malfoy's antidote, is it? It's not wearing off or something?'
'That would be impossible,' said Snape dryly.
'Come on, Potter,' said Draco. 'It was an antidote, not a contaminated Ecstasy tablet. No one's dying, no one's dead, no one's even come down with a suspicious cough. Relax.'
'That's true,' said Lupin in his gentle voice. 'I suggest you sit down, Harry, and listen to what the Headmaster has to tell you.'
'For you?' Hermione echoed, staring. 'Why would you want to take a love potion?'
Ginny raised her chin defiantly. 'So I can fall in love with Seamus.'
'Oh.' Hermione could feel her righteous indignation trickling away. 'Oh.'
'So it's not like Imperius,' Ginny went on, 'because it's a spell I'd be casting on myself. And I would be aware of it, but it wouldn't matter, because it's not taking away my choice. This is my choice. I'm so close already — really, I'm almost in love with him, I just need a little push.'
Hermione pushed her hair back out of her eyes, her mind working frantically. 'Ginny,' she said at last, as gently as she could, 'what if you just aren't meant to be in love with Seamus? Love potions, they're forever.
You won't be able to change your mind.'
'I don't want to be able to change my mind.'
'I'm sure he wouldn't want you to do this.'
Ginny set her jaw. 'Then don't tell him.'
'I wasn't going to, but — Ginny, you have to see that this idea is absolute madness. It'll illegal, it's immoral, it's dangerous — '
'You know why I came to you?' Ginny cut in, her voice shrill. 'Do you?'
'Because I'm good at Potions?' asked Hermione, not without sharpness.
Ginny looked at her as if she'd said something unbelievably stupid. 'No. I came to you because you're one of the few people that knows the truth.
That knows about what happened to Seamus, and how it was my fault.
