The wand in Ginny’s hand trembled. She could feel herself breathing hard, too hard; she was getting lightheaded. “And?” she prompted.
“And I remember when I knew you were that girl, the one I remembered,” he said. His voice had a tone she’d never heard in it before: defeated but not unhappy. “We were in Slytherin’s castle, and you were shouting at me about something. I knew you then. Something about how you looked when you were angry did it, I think. Or it might just have been the fire — there was a fire in the library that day, when I was twelve.”
Because Lucius was burning the diary, Ginny thought, but she was remembering that room in the castle, the fire in the grate and Draco looking at her with sleepy, deadly eyes; their kiss had tasted like salt and brandy. “I remember,” she said.
“Perhaps that’s why I’ve always thought of fire, when I think of you,” he said. “Perhaps that’s why the red dress. Or perhaps it was because I knew there was something between us that, if we gave ourselves up to it, would burn us up and leave nothing behind.”
The wand wavered in Ginny’s hand. “I don’t know what you mean.”
He was looking at her thoughtfully now, the wry smile gone. “Perhaps you could survive it,” he said. “But that which is hollow burns easily. I couldn’t give you what you wanted — not without running the risk of being consumed myself. I had so little of me to go on…” He shook his head, as if snapping himself out of a daydream. “I put what roadblocks I could in our path — to keep me from disappointing you. And I knew I was disappointing you as I did it, but I imagined it was an easier disappointment than you would face if I let myself love you.”
“But you wouldn’t cut me off completely. You would push me away and then pull me back — why?” she cried, lowering the wand.
“Because I’m selfish,” he said. “Haven’t you been listening? And cowardly, too. And I made my actions seem mysterious, I suppose, so you wouldn’t know just how selfish and how cowardly —“
She shook her head so vehemently at that that he broke off with a choked laugh.
“You deserve better,” he told her, gravely.
“You told me love can’t grow in a dying heart,” she said, her mouth dry.
“You said you would love me if you could.”
“With all my rags of heart are capable of,” he said, “I remember, Ginny.
You don’t have to quote me to myself.”
“You aren’t dying any more,” she said.
“I know,” he said. “And I was so good at it, too. I’m not nearly as good at knowing how to live.” He searched her face for a moment with steady grey eyes. She could tell he was nerving himself up for something; he had that look about him, contained but kinetic. “Dying would have been the easy way never to have to answer your question,” he said, “or any questions, and if there is one thing that has always been true about you, it’s that you make me question myself — and questioning myself inevitably proves to me how little of myself exists to sustain that sort of interrogation. I know you, Ginny, better than I know myself. You are whole and entire — loyal and honest and stupidly, amazingly stubborn and beautiful as you are — and I’m shadows and the ghost of old lies held together by good intentions and hope.”
She dropped her wand. It landed with a click on the floor and rolled under a small night table. “Say you don’t love me,” she said.
He took a step towards her. “Ginny —“
“As a favor to me, please, just say it. I’m asking you —“
“Do you really want the answer?” He was standing in front of her suddenly, close enough to touch, and his face was very white but his grey eyes burned with a sharp clear light, like transparent crystals.
“Yes,” she whispered, “yes, I want it, yes.”
He caught her wrist, she knew it was with his left hand because she felt the light scrape of his scar against her skin. “I can’t say I don’t love you,” he said in measured tones, “because it would be a lie. I love you. I think I have for longer than I’ve known it. I tried not to love you. I didn’t want to love you. I did all I could to push you away, but in some way, somehow, I have found that you are — to me — essential.”
Her breath caught. It was suddenly very quiet in the room between them, Draco looking down at her, his mouth a flat hard line. She could hear the ticking of the clock on the bedside table, the rustle of branches hitting the window. The uneven sound of his breathing. He was looking down at their joined hands, where his fingers wrapped her wrist. As suddenly as he had taken hold of her, he let go.
“And there you have it,” he said. “The truth. I take it by your astonished expression that you had expected something different?”
She said nothing. She couldn’t find her voice; she had imagined this moment so many times, imagined his voice, saying those words, but she had never imagined her own response, what it might be. Her dreams had ended with him. They always did.
He put his hand against the wall as if to steady himself. “I suppose I deserve that,” he said, “your silence.”
She still said nothing, and he looked away from her, towards the window.
The stars were just visible through the thick glass, like faint blurs of light.
She could see herself in the dark glass as if it were a mirror; see her own white face, the bright flame-color of her dress, the metallic shine of the clasps that held up the straps. She lifted her hand to the clasps and undid them, one by one. The dress slid with a whisper of silk to the floor at her feet; she stepped out of it, and walked across the room to Draco, and put her hand on his arm.
He looked at her with what was, for that moment, the purest astonishment she had ever seen or imagined on his face. “Ginny…”
“That dress comes off more easily than any other piece of clothing I’ve ever owned,” she said. “Did you think of that when you bought it?”
“Perhaps,” he said, slowly, his eyes never leaving her face. “Ginny, you don’t have to—“
She put her hands, flat, on his chest. She could feel his heartbeat against the palm of her right hand,
