Кассандра Клэр - Draco Sinister

"You don´t know that," said Draco, half-desperately, and reached forward and knocked the sword out of Harryś hand. Harry made no effort to hold onto it, and it clattered to the ground between them.

"Look, it didn´t kill me the first time."

"And this makes you anxious to experience it again?"

"I want to know," said Harry. "Whatś wrong with me? I should be dead. That should have killed me. It didn´t. I want to see what happens if you do it again."

"You already saw it once," said Draco. "Look, I´m sorry if you got distracted and missed it. Once was enough for me. No repeat performances."

Harry just looked at him. His shirt had not yet dried and trails of blood like unraveling crimson threads stole down his right arm. And yet his face was full of color and life, his eyes bright — too bright. He looked like someone with a fever. This was not Harry, not calm sensible Harry who was as far from having a death wish as anyone Draco had ever met.

His next thought broke from him without any effort on his part to control or hold it back. Think about what you´re asking me to do.

It took a moment for Harry to react. He blinked, and seemed to be fighting something down — anger or disappointment or fear or even tears, it was impossible to tell. "I need to know," he said, his voice rasping through his throat. "If I can die."

"I can answer that for you without any messy sort of impalings," said a voice, silky but steel-spined, from the corner of the room.

"The answer is yes."

Draco whirled and stared. And felt his mouth fall open.

Ranged against the far wall were six tall figures in belted robes.

They had heads, arms, and legs, but were not human. Their skin was scaley, dark gray and patchy in places, their eyes red and whirling, their heads knobbed and lumpy. The tallest of them stood in front, and in its hand it held cupped a single flame, that flickered with an emerald fire. It seemed to be smiling, whether at him or at Harry it was hard to tell. He knew without knowing how that this was the one who had spoken, and his belief was confirmed when it spoke again, its voice like iron now. "You can die, Harry Potter. And if you let your friend stab you again, you will."

* * * * *

"I´m sorry," Ben said again.

Ginny barely heard him. She had her hands over her face and was staring at the darkness behind her lids, at nothingness. How could I have been so stupid? she thought.

"I could give you something to bring back with you," she heard him say, his voice tinged with pity and anxiety. "Weapons…?"

"Weapons aren´t any good without someone to use them," said Ginny, and took her hands away from her face. "Never mind. Itś not your fault." She took a deep breath and Benś face swam into focus. She couldn´t quite read his expression. Which wasn´t that surprising, considering that she didn´t, in fact, know him at all. His surface resemblance to Harry was so strong that she somehow felt that he could solve things for her, as Harry had always solved things for all of them. But he wasn´t Harry; he wasn´t even anyone she knew. She got to her feet, feeling suddenly miserable and desperate to get away. "Thereś nothing you can do, then. I should go back."

"Wait." Ben caught at her arm as she stood up from the table.

"Don´t tell me thereś nothing I can do. It sounds like you´re fighting a losing battle and — "

"Itś not your battle." Disappointment beat behind her eyes like a drumbeat.

"It is, though. Slytherin killed my father, remember."

Ben spoke very quietly, and Ginny glanced up at him. He had a bit of the expression that Harry got when he was talking about his parents. Closed off.

"There a reason I´m here," he said. "Waiting here. In front of this castle."

"I know…I´m sorry. How did…what about your mother?"

"I was so young when she died, I only know what people told me," said Ben. "It was right around the beginning of the war. The Snake Lord had just come to power and was wreaking havoc on the wizarding world. Recruiting giants and dragons to serve him, destroying whole armies, making them vanish — "

Vanish.

Ginny suddenly sat up so quickly that she knocked her chair over. It clattered on the floor behind her. She was hearing Fleurś voice in her head.

"Ben," she said hoarsely.

He looked up at her.

She was gripping the edge of the table so hard her hands hurt. "

Fleur — a friend of mine once told me that Slytherin had made an entire army vanish into thin air," she said. "Is that true? Was it more than once?"

Ben replied slowly, as if choosing his words carefully. "It was just once," he said. "It was when I was ten years old. An army was sent out from Ravenclaw, a company of about two hundred and fifty, men and warriors and beasts. They never arrived at their destination."

"Ben," said Ginny again. "What if the reason they never arrived wasn´t because Slytherin made them vanish. What if it was because we brought them forward into the future?"

Ben goggled at her. Really goggled. His eyes widened and his mouth fell open and she realized that she had, truly, astonished him. Amid the whirling chaos of her thoughts, she felt somewhat proud about this.

"But…" he began, still staring. "We can´t…go back…I mean…and…it would change history."

"No, it wouldn´t," said Ginny staunchly. "Itś already happened."

There was another long silence while Ben stared at her across the table. Rather like Harryś did, his hair was standing up around his head as if mirroring his surprise, like a crown of unruly black leaves. It was rather cute, just as it was cute on Harry.

"How old are you?" she said abruptly.

Ben found his voice. "That might work," he said, sounding stunned.

"Your idea. Itś totally insane. But also, brilliant. And I´m twenty-two."

"Thatś kind of old," she said, without thinking.

Ben looked at her quizzically. "Old for what?"

"I was just thinking…" she stammered. "That I really did miss my goal by quite a few years when I tried to come back here. At least ten. I´m going to have to be a lot more careful when we go back to get the army."

"When, not if?" Ben was smiling. "Confident, aren´t you?"

"I have to be," said Ginny. "This is really my only hope. And if I can´t be accurate enough with the Time Turner, it´ll never work."

"Magnifying a Time Turnerś accuracy isn´t so difficult if you have the right tools. All you have to do is accentuate the metamorphosis of the synchronicity between the temporal infrastructures."

Now it was Ginnyś turn to goggle.

"How do you know so much about time-travel?" asked Ginny.

"From Helga," he said, resting his chin in his hand. "She and Rowena really helped bring me up. My own mother died when I was a baby.

And Helga never had any sons, only daughters, so I think she felt a bit as if I was hers. In fact, I should show you something."

Ginny looked after him as he got up and went into another room of the tent. When he returned, he was carrying a stack of books. She watched curiously as he sat down, and opened the topmost of the books. It was much larger than almost any book Ginny had seen before, except a few that were kept in the Antiquities section of the library and which students were prevented from touching with powerful Security Charms. The cover was of dark gold leather, stamped with gold along the spine. "You do know about the prophecies, don´t you?" he asked.

"I know thereś a prophecy that the Heir of Slytherin will rise up and wreak havoc on the wizarding world," said Ginny reluctantly.

"So there is," said Ben. "Thereś also a prophecy that the Heir of Gryffindor will bring him to destruction, and that the Heir of Slytherin will help."

"Don´t those run in conflict with each other?"