“Interesting,” said Seamus. “And even more interesting that you seem to have changed your mind.”
“I thought you weren’t coming back,” she whispered.
“But I am back.” In the moonlight, his blue eyes looked almost blue-black, the color of dark pansies. “So what are you going to do now?”
She lowered her head. The sense of guilt and gnawing defeat was like a pain in her chest. “Whatever you want me to,” she said. “I can get more love potion — or if you don’t want that, maybe we could try something else. We could go away together. Maybe if it was just us —“
“Is it that you could never have loved me?” he asked, flatly, “or is it that you can’t love me as I am now?”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I made you as you are now.”
“If I told you to pack your things and come with me, would you do it?”
“Right now? Tonight?” She stared at him.
“Yes. Tonight.”
“And go where?”
“Does that matter?” he demanded.
“No,” Ginny said numbly. “I suppose not.” She glanced down at herself; her bare arms were bumpy with gooseflesh. “I’d need to get my clothes — and write a note to my parents.”
Seamus shook his head slowly. “All this just for guilt, Ginny?”
Her head came up quickly. “I told you. I care about you.”
“But you don’t love me,” he said, and took a step towards her, and another, and now she was pinned against the rose bush, the thorns catching in the material of her dress. “And you never did. It was always Malfoy. You would have done anything he told you to, because you loved him. Me, you only pity.”
“I don’t pity you, Seamus,” she said, struggling to keep her voice even.
“Not at the moment,” he said. “At the moment, you’re afraid of me.” She saw his mouth twist into a bitter line. “I suppose we’ll never know now, will we?”
“Know what?”
“If it ever could have worked out. You, and me the way I was. I won’t be that way again. I still have some of him in me. Like a residue left behind.
His soul is gone, but the shadow it cast is still there, inside me.”
“Seamus —“
“No. Let me finish,” he said, so sharply that she tightened her grip on the flask. “I know him, Ginny, better than probably anyone other than you ever did know him. And he loved you. In his twisted, backward way — something about the way you brought him back, your tears mixed with his blood, you were part of him. He couldn’t get free of you. He killed shadows of you to try to burn you out of his head, but it didn’t work. You obsessed him.”
“But you’re not him — we were together before any of that happened —“
“That doesn’t matter,” said Seamus. “He took my love for you and fed it into himself. He couldn’t escape it, so he transformed it. He was in hate with you. He dreamed of killing you the way I might have dreamed of kissing you. Once.”
“Once?” Ginny said faintly. “You don’t want to kiss me … any more?”
Looking down at her, he shook his head slowly. “How do you think it feels,” he said, “to look at the one person you love most in the world, and dream about killing her? Not because you want to, because you can’t help it. I used to think about how beautiful the curve of your shoulder into your neck was. Tom just thinks how your neck would look with blood splashed all over it.”
Ginny made a faint, sickly sound. If she brought her hand up quickly enough she could catch him on the temple, and —
“I know you’re thinking about hitting me with that flask,” said Seamus.
“Don’t bother. My reflexes are better than yours.”
“I could scream,” she said. “They’d come running.”
“Probably,” said Seamus, sounding suddenly tired. “But I wouldn’t bother.
I’m not going to hurt you, Ginny. I came here to let you go.”
“Let me go?” she echoed, puzzled.
“You stay with me out of guilt,” said Seamus. “Don’t bother arguing, I know it already. I appreciated that in the beginning. I did. It was a help to have you with me. But as time went on I started to realize that being around you was keeping that part of me that was Tom Riddle still alive.
He feeds on your proximity. I need to not be near you, Ginny, for that part of me to die forever. You think you’re being kind by staying with me, but actually, your presence tortures me. I’m sorry, but I need to be away from you. Do you understand?”
“Seamus,” she whispered. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“I didn’t really understand it myself,” he said. “Hermione made me understand it — she said she could tell from watching me what I was going through, that you’d never understand it because you couldn’t see how I was when you weren’t there, how different I was. And she said you’d bleed yourself out trying to help me when all along being away from you was the only thing that would help us both. I mean, I thought it was just that I was never going to get rid of that part of me that was Riddle, but when I talked to her I realized that when you weren’t around, I didn’t have those thoughts.”
“If I’d taken the love potion—“ Ginny began, suddenly transfixed with horror at the thought.
