Кассандра Клэр - Draco Veritas

I mean, of course it is. It was very brave and clever of her, and if anyone could do this…"

Her voice trailed off.

Blaise looked at her expectantly. "Draco used to say," she said, "that there were the kind of people who would fight for you until all hope was gone.

And then there were the kind of people who would fight for you even beyond that. I know he thought Ginny was one of that kind."

Hermione burst into tears and sat down on the stairs with a thump.

Blaise looked horrified. She glanced down at herself, but her sleek outfit didn't include any pockets, much less one big enough to hide a handkerchief in. At last she slipped a glove off her hand and held it out reluctantly to Hermione.

"What am I supposed to do with that?" Hermione demanded wetly, choking back sniffles.

"I don't know," Blaise admitted. "Look, I didn't mean to set you off crying.

Whatever I said, I take it back."

Hermione snatched the glove out of Blaise's hand and wiped her face with it, though she stopped short of blowing her nose. The suede absorbed her tears nicely. Blaise tried not to look distressed about the glove, which was good of her, Hermione thought. "It's not you," Hermione said. "I just realized something, is all."

Blaise lifted an eyebrow. "What?"

"That he deserves better than me giving up on him," Hermione said in a squashed voice. "All the time I was holding him, when I thought he was dying — when he was dying — I kept telling him to hold on and to fight and not to give up. And then when he shut his eyes and stopped…stopped breathing…" She blew her nose into the glove. "I'm sorry. I'll buy you another pair."

"I doubt you could afford them," said Blaise.

Hermione ignored this. She was on a roll, choking out words through her tears. "Then Harry showed up, and then Sirius and Remus-and Remus got him to breathe again- but I think I knew in that moment that he was dead anyway, that I'd lost him. But he isn't…that is, maybe there is hope…and I'm just afraid, I'm so afraid to let myself hope in case it all goes wrong. I can't lose him twice. I just can't."

Blaise narrowed her eyes. "I didn't think you were in love with him."

Hermione went red. "I — "

"What are you two doing?"

They both jumped and looked up. Ginny stood at the top of the stairs. She came down a step or two, holding something that caught the light, glinting. Hermione gasped.

"The Time-Turner! Dumbledore gave it to you?"

Ginny hesitated just the barest fraction of a second. "Yes," she said. "And I know what you're going to say — "

"No," Hermione interrupted, scrambling to her feet. "You don't. Ginny, listen — "

"Stop!" Ginny flung out a hand, as if to ward the older girl off. "I can't listen to you, Hermione, I just can't. I know you're right, and if I listen to you, you'll just wind up convincing me, because you are…so always…right." She looped the chain of the Time-Turner over her head, dropping the small hourglass into the neck of her robes. "And I'm all wrong, I know it, I always have known it. I think that's why Tom wanted me, because he knew it, too."

"Ginny," Hermione said, appalled, but Ginny went on speaking, white-faced but steady. "I want your blessing for this, Hermione, but if I don't get it, I'm going to do it anyway. I know you'll remind me of what happened last time I did something like this-and I know you think reasons aren't important, only actions are, but I think reasons mean something, I think they matter. And when I went back in time to get the Diary, I did it for all the wrong reasons. I did it because I wanted to be respected, I wanted all your approval, I wanted Draco to-to admire me, thank me, even. But this is different."

"Of course it's different-"

"Dumbledore let you go back in the past, in third year," Ginny said urgently, "to save a life, and that's what this is for-to save a life. If he were already dead, it would be different, but he's still alive, and he's dying because of all of us, you know that? He told Harry to choose the world or choose him and Harry chose him, but Draco wouldn't let him. He made him choose the world, and now it's time for someone to choose him, to choose to save him. I don't care if he ever knows it was me, I don't want anything for it, I just want him alive. And you and Harry have kept him alive so far, and now it's my turn, this is the one thing I can do, the one thing I can give that no one else can give. And I'm telling you this because I want you to know it, but not because I want your permission. I'll do it anyway, whether you like it or not, and there's nothing you can do to stop me."

"All right," Hermione said.

"I knew you-" Ginny stopped, almost falling down a stair. "What?"

"I said all right," Hermione said, eager in her turn. "I wasn't going to forbid you in the first place. I was only going to tell you to go to the library first. It might help you to aim for some specific dates-the children of the Founders weren't always in the castle, right? So you might want to find a time when you know they'll be here. I suggest the updated Lives of the Founders; it has an appendix that follows the activities of their immediate heirs. If not that, then A History of the House of Gryffindor might help, but skip right to volume three; volumes one and two cover the period before your Time-Turner was even created."

"The library would be a good point of departure, too," Blaise added thoughtfully. "It's one of the oldest parts of the castle, and hasn't been changed or added to over the years."

Hermione looked at her in surprise, while Ginny, her knees suddenly weak, sat down quickly on the stairs. "Don't tell me you've read Hogwarts: A History."

"Of course," Blaise said mildly. "Who hasn't?"

It had begun to snow outside the castle, a thick blanket of white settling like a sinking curtain over the fields. Seamus, sitting in the window embrasure of the Gryffindor boys' dormitory, pressed the back of his hand to the cold glass. He liked the touch of cold things now; they soothed him, quieted the burning in his blood.

His parents had wanted him to come home, but he'd insisted that he was fine, and wasn't dating Dean Thomas either. (He wondered vaguely where they'd come up with that one.) It wasn't that he didn't want to see them, though he had found it hard at first to conjure up an exact memory of their faces and in the end had had to refer to a book of photographsHe wanted to be around Ginny.

In a world of flickering haze and unexpected, sudden mists, where familiar faces seemed strange and ordinary English phrases dropped suddenly into gibberish, Ginny was the only constant, the only element that remained unchanged from his life before. She did not flinch from the sometimes bleak expression in his eyes, which he could not yet hide; she did not turn away in disgust when he told her his dreams of washing and washing his hands, unable to remove the sticky film of blood. She understood. Tom had been inside her, too, had made her a part of him; she knew what it was like. What it was like to be forced to commit unspeakable acts you could never have imagined, much less imagined yourself performing. What it was like to feel that hate always inside you, hate for the world, burning away at your heart like an acid. What it was like to feel that pride, that unstinting arrogance. The lightness that came with loss of conscience.

That clean sense of superiority.

He remembered the prostitute who had looked like Ginny, with her long red hair in braids, the short mock-schoolgirl outfit, the same brown eyes.

When he had kissed her, at first she had kissed him back, more expertly than Ginny and with a simulated passion that-no, he thought, she hadn't kissed him, she had kissed Tom, and she'd been paid to do it, or thought she would be paid before Tom broke her neck the way a small child might snap a stick of rock candy in half. He remembered how Tom had stroked his fingers through the long red hair as she died. Ginny, he'd said. Ginny.