The Quick and the Dead

Harry's last owl had asked Ron if there was somewhere truly private they could meet, someplace that nobody could possibly find them or interrupt them, and it had thrown Ron for a bit of a loop. The taproom in the Leaky Cauldron wasn't an option for that, nor was the Three Broomsticks, and they'd all learned to their peril in fifth year that the Hog's Head wasn't a great place to discuss secrets. The Burrow was out, as was the Auror College, which was located in an old gymnasium in Vladivostok this week. If there had only been George to contend with, the rooms above the joke shop might have been the best possibility of all. But Fred would be like a Niffler on the trail of a gold mine if he caught the least hint of a secret Harry didn't want anyone else to know.

Finally, Ron had met with Luna and asked her if he and Harry could meet in the rooms she shared with Millicent on the second floor of the Leaky Cauldron. She had nodded at once, not even asking why he wanted privacy so much.

"Thanks, Luna," he said awkwardly. "And, er... it might be a good idea if you didn't tell Millicent Bulstrode."

"Oh, I won't. She's awfully nosy," Luna said dreamily. "So I won't give her even the least hint."

"Really? Seems like that would be an awful nuisance to live with." Ron kept his voice casual, but he was intensely curious about how and why the extremely odd couple of Millicent and Luna had become roommates in the first place, and he couldn't resist fishing for information a bit.

"No, not at all. I don't have any secrets, you see. And she finds out such interesting things that way, too. That's how I found out that Blaise Zabini wasn't gay. I'd always wondered about that back at Hogwarts, you know. So it was nice to finally know for sure, when Millicent told me that she knew for a fact he'd slept with Pansy Parkinson, and Daphne Greengrass, and Hannah Abbott, and Angelina Johnson, and Katie Bell, and Professor Sprout, although I was never too sure whether to believe that one, although otherwise I don't know how he passed Herbology, and that Hufflepuff girl with the frizzy black hair who always hummed Christmas carols all year long in the halls in such a nasal way--oh, well, it was ever such a long list. I certainly can't remember everyone who was on it. And Milla herself, of course."

"Millicent?" asked Ron in a sort of horrified fascination. "Wait, wait. Millicent and Zabini?"

"Oh, yes," said Luna. "Of course, that was before--" She shut her mouth with a pop.

"Before what?"

"Nothing. Never mind."

Luna Lovegood, Ron decided, was the worst liar he had ever seen. Probably because she doesn't do it often enough. And you know, Luna... Ron studied her as she gathered up her books and her bag of sheets and Professor Ollie's Extra-Strength, Heat-Resistant Massage Oil, and tapped her wand so that her massage table floated just ahead of her in its carrying case. She looked a bit flustered.

"I'll be back in a couple of hours, then," she said, pushing a strand of hair distractedly behind her ear and catching it on one of her rutabaga-shaped earrings. "I've got dragon massage practicums today... I do hope I've brought enough oil..."

"Bye then," said Ron. I think you were lying before, as well, he thought. I think you do have secrets, Luna. Wonder what they are?

***

Ron had last seen Harry less than two weeks ago, but he thought that his friend already looked thinner and paler, his green eyes larger, more haunted-looking. So different from Zabini's, even though his eyes are almost the same colour, thought Ron as Harry plodded wearily into the room that night, sinking into a chair and carefully placing a small black bag on the floor. He looks at you with a sort of arrogant confidence all the time, and Harry's never had that. No matter how much Zabini needs our help, he always manages to look like he's doing us a favour. And Harry... Harry just looks haunted.

Luna had left mint tea covered by a magical cozy on the table, and Ron poured it into cups, breathing in the sweet steam, grateful for her thoughtfulness. Harry laced his fingers around his cup and closed his eyes.

"Sorry about last week," he said. "When I couldn't come, I mean."

"That's all right," said Ron. He stole a glance at the little black bag by Harry's chair, wondering what was in it. He didn't know quite how to begin.

"George told me that you saw Zabini with him. Or, wait--that was Fred, I suppose. I still can't tell them apart, sometimes."

Ron grinned. "I should tell them to wear T-shirts with names on when you're around."

"It might help," Harry smiled faintly, toying with his cup. "So what did Zabini say?"

Ron felt a little easier on this sort of ground, the simple passing on of information, and he spent a considerable amount of time in outlining exactly what Zabini had said, adding a bit more about how Millicent and Luna had promised to help before that. "You know, Luna's sort of grown on me," he said. "I mean, she's absolutely mad, but it's a good kind of madness. She just seems- trustworthy."

"And Bulstrode?" asked Harry.

"Well, she does too. And if Luna trusts her, that counts for a lot anyway."

"Yes--I think so too." Harry sipped at his tea, his eyes veiled. "I saw Luna going into Magical Massage Supplies on my way in--that shop down the street, you know? She was getting dragon-hide gloves. And she said that Bulstrode was supposed to meet with Parkinson this week."

"Oh. Yeah. Luna might've said something about that to me, I suppose." Ron shifted in his chair.

"You don't think that Parkinson had anything to do with it, though. Do you?"

Ron squirmed under Harry's gaze. He didn't used to be this perceptive, did he? he thought uncomfortably. Harry used to be downright thick when it came to trying to figure out what people were thinking, or why. It wasn't his strong point in school, Merlin knows. But he's changed, though, hasn't he... and so have I... although I wouldn't have done if I could've helped it, and probably neither would he.

"I don't know," said Ron honestly. "I don't know anymore. It makes sense that Pansy Parkinson might have, I know it does. But still... I don't know, I can't get the idea of Malfoy out of my head. Even though I know, everybody's right, I don't see how it can be possible. I mean, he might have had something to do with what happened to Ginny, that's still true. He could've helped Pansy. But that's not really what keeps bothering me... the part I can't get past is this feeling that he has Ginny now. And he can't. There was never any reason to think he did... except for the feeling."

Harry did not reply. He picked up the little black bag and put it on the table, rolling his palm around something in it.

"What's in that bag?" Ron asked. "Is that what you've been working on?"

"Yeah," said Harry.

Harry's hand seemed to be outlining the shape of something round, Ron thought. "What is it?" he asked.

"I was working on it with Hermione a bit, hoping it might help with finding the last Horcrux. We never have found it, you know."

Ron nodded.

"It didn't work, so I abandoned it. But then... a couple of months ago... I started working on it again."

"Yeah, okay, but what is it?"

Harry pulled out a large crystal ball and a little ebony stand. "I don't think I have it right yet," he said. "But it's ready to show you, anyway. And I think I have to, or I'm not going to get any further with it."

"A crystal ball?" asked Ron dubiously. He refrained from mentioning anything about Sybil Trelawney and nutty old frauds, but with effort.

"I know what you're thinking," said Harry. "But this one is different... you remember that sixth-year Potions textbook I had, the one that said it was the property of the Half-Blood Prince?"

"How could I forget?" Ron smiled a little at the memory. "Hermione never forgave you for being better at Potions than she was that year. What, did you finally find out who the Prince was?"

"No," shrugged Harry, "and anyway, it's not important. "But..." He leaned forward. "At the very back of the book, there was a handwritten note about how to lend special powers to a crystal ball, so that the viewer could see things from the past to help him solve mysteries of the present. I'd never noticed that page before, but one night a few weeks ago... when I couldn't sleep... I was leafing through the book, and I saw it. And I've been working on it ever since."

Ron peered into the ball. It didn't look any different to him than his memories of fruitless crystal-gazing in Trelawney's class. The surface was wavy and watery. There was a dark shadow in the ball's depths, but Ron was pretty sure that was the reflection of the hanging lamp over the table. There was what looked like a length of blonde hair whipping around, but surely that was only the flickering light of the candle. There was a little square shape, but that had to be the reflection of the kitchen cabinets behind them...

Tiny words were printed on the box. Weasley's Wizard Wheezes. Other boxes came into focus, and two beds, one of them rumpled. It was Fred and George's room, and as Ron stared in disbelief, he realized that he really did see a length of blonde hair. Fleur Delacour was entering the room, her hair long and loose the way it had been the summer before sixth year... and the room looked the same as it had then, too. A tiny Harry sat up in the rumpled bed, rubbing his eyes. With a shock, Ron realized that he was looking at himself in the little room as well, and Hermione, and there was Ginny.... Then the scene winked out and went dark.

"Harry," Ron whispered. "I just saw..." He fumbled to put it into words, afraid that he was going to sound absolutely mad. "I think I just saw something that happened the summer before sixth year, at the Burrow. Only a bit of it, though. It was the day you came to stay in Fred and George's room, and Fleur was there--it was the year before she married Bill."

Harry's eyes lit up, and for a moment, Ron remembered the way he'd always looked when he'd figured out a particularly difficult Quidditch move. "I thought you would, mate! And I hoped you could."

"So I really did?" asked Ron.

"Yeah, I think so. That's the way it's supposed to work. I've never succeeded in seeing even that much by myself, just flashes."

"But why me, then?"

"I think it's because you want to find out what happened to Ginny--I mean, I do too--but you're the one who has a blood connection to her. That's how the book said it would work."

Ron swallowed hard, excitement rising in him. This could be a way to learn the truth, then! But how? It doesn't seem to make much sense. "I don't understand, though," he said, as calmly as he could. "What good does it do to see what I saw? What could Fleur have to do with anything? What did that day have to do with Ginny, anyway?"

"I don't know. There's a lot I don't know about this," admitted Harry. "Such as exactly how it works, or why it seems to keep showing scenes only from our sixth year, or why some of them don't even include Ginny--"

"Everything, in other words," said Ron. "What does Hermione think about it?"

"Um-" Harry looked uncomfortable. "She doesn't exactly know anything about it at all. That's why I didn't want her here."

Ron raised his eyebrows.

"Look, she'd probably just tell me how dangerous it is, or something," Harry said defensively. "You know what she always thought of that book. She never stopped saying I should get rid of it. I wanted to figure it out on my own, okay?"

"Okay--okay-" Ron held up his hands. "As long as we can figure it out by ourselves, yeah, I don't care. I reckon we can tell her once we've really got it working." He wondered if Harry and Hermione had been arguing about something else. Merlin knows, I haven't spent enough time around them to know if they had. For a fleeting moment, he wondered if they should tell Hermione now. He remembered the feel of her fingers on his hand in the foyer of the Leaky Cauldron, their coldness and then their warmth. That sensation was somehow tied up with the way Luna's hair looked with the winter sun behind it, but in a way that made him feel vaguely ashamed, and to want to think about something else. He leaned closer to the ball, which had gone dark. "I want to try again."

He concentrated on the glassy surface as hard he could, willing images to float up from its depths. He tried desperately to think of events from sixth year that might have been important, and that might contain clues to who could have wanted to harm Ginny. But the ball remained stubbornly blank. Ron thought briefly of throwing it out the window. Probably not a good idea.

"Ron--" began Harry.

"Don't talk to me, " snapped Ron. "I'm trying to--"

"The Half-Blood Prince wrote that wasn't the best way to do it."

"Well, what is the best way then?" asked Ron, trying hard to keep the snarl out of his voice. Harry, of all people, knew how important this was to him.

"You have to relax. To empty your mind of thought."

"Well, how do I do that?"

"I'm the worst person you could ask, I imagine," admitted Harry. "That's why I could never do Occlumency. But it said...I wrote it down..." He flipped through a sheaf of notes from his pocket. "Some herbs can help. Rosemary is one, I think. Um--I don't have any with me, though." Harry looked a bit abashed. "Sorry."

The door opened at that moment, which, Ron would later think, was very opportune. Luna came in, her hair tied up in a ponytail. Its end was slightly singed, and she was stripping off large, blackened gloves. "Rosemary," she said thoughtfully. "That's for remembrance. Hi, Ron. Hi, Harry."

"Luna," said Harry. "Ron said you weren't getting back until-"

"My dragon just didn't want a relaxing massage today. I heard you out in the hall," Luna said. "You were talking rather loudly."

"Er--" said Ron.

"You might want to use a Silencing charm," she said serenely. "Modifications to crystal balls are strictly forbidden under Ministry Decree 4,376.4."

"We were just--" said Harry.

"I have some in the kitchen," said Luna. "Tincture, or tea?" Without waiting for a response, she disappeared into the small kitchen and started rummaging through cupboards. Harry looked at Ron as if he didn't quite know what to say.

"She really hasn't changed, has she?" Harry finally asked, and even through his frustration, Ron had to smile.

"It's tea after all," said Luna, returning with a steaming teapot painted in pink roses. The brown earthenware teapot already on the table gave a tragic little sniff.

"Aren't I good enough all by myself?" it asked plaintively. "Don't I measure up?

Why do you have to bring her around here?" Upon, hearing this, the rose teapot turned up its snout.

"Of course you're good enough, dear," said Luna soothingly. "The teapots at the Leaky Cauldron all tend to have self-image issues," she whispered to Ron, in an aside.

He sipped at the greenish tea she gave him, and a strange calm seemed to come over him. Luna was leaning over the table to unabashedly watch what was going on and Harry kept looking at her nervously, but Ron didn't mind; it didn't matter, and he knew it. He drained the tea to its dregs and looked at the pattern of needle-like rosemary leaves at the bottom.

There's rosemary, that's for remembrance - pray you, love, remember...

The crystal ball was swirling with light and colour. Ron felt himself falling into its depths as if he was hurtling down Alice's rabbit hole, and he wondered dizzily if he would ever hit bottom. Harry had described what it was like to use a Pensieve many times, but Ron had never really understood what his friend was talking about. This is what it must be like... And at last he came to rest in a large, echoing space.

The mermaid in the painting on the wall was fast asleep, curled up on her rock, snoring lightly. The low lights glimmered off the water in the pool with its golden taps. Although there was no window or any other way to see natural light, Ron thought that it felt like very early morning. It's the prefects' bathroom, Ron realized. He heard the soft sound of padding footsteps. Ginny came around the corner, wrapped in a long cotton robe. Her hands went to the tie. Ron groaned. Oh, no! This is really not something I needed to see...

The robe dropped to the floor. Ron tried desperately to look anywhere but at his naked sixteen-year-old sister, and yet he didn't quite dare to look away entirely. He knew that this scene must contain some kind of important clue to what had happened to Ginny.

"That must be awfully disturbing," said a glumly satisfied voice in his left ear. He jumped.

"Myrtle? Is that you?"

"In the flesh," said Myrtle. "Or not, as the case may be." She surveyed him from behind her round, black-rimmed glasses. "What are you doing here, Ronald? Did you die and become a ghost? It must have happened dreadfully fast." She sounded quite hopeful at the thought. Ron shuddered.

"No, nothing like that," he said, deciding that he really needed to be civil to Myrtle. After all, she might be able to help him a lot. "Sorry to disappoint you."

"You're not a ghost?" asked Myrtle sadly. "I was hoping for some company. How'd you get here, then?"

"What do you mean?" asked Ron guardedly.

"I know it's not really you--I mean, not the physical you. You look all transparent. See?" Myrtle pointed down at Ron's hand. He looked through it to the tiled floor.

"And she--" the ghost pointed at Ginny. "--can't see you, no more than she can see me, unless I want her to. So I know that you're here, but not really here. How'd you manage it?"

Ron thought about how to answer that. "I'm here in a sort of--well, I don't really know what it is. It's like I'm looking into a Pensieve memory, I suppose. The real me's sitting at a table with Harry upstairs in the Leaky Cauldron, and it's the year 2000."

"Oh." Myrtle seemed to blush, if such a thing were even possible for a ghost. "How's Harry?"

"Fine--he's fine. But tell me Myrtle, here, now-- is it my seventh year? 1997, or early 1998?"

Myrtle nodded. "February 1998."

"Harry was right, then," said Ron. "But still--I'm a bit confused. Why can you see me, if my sister can't? And if this is a memory from the past anyway, why could a ghost or anything else see me at all?"

Myrtle shrugged. "To ghosts, it's all the same. We see everything. There's ever so much that mortals don't see--even wizards. Oh, look! She can do a back flip in the water. I could never do that when I was alive..."

Silently, the two of them watched Ginny swimming in the pool. She floated on her back for a long time, her hair spread out behind her like water weeds, and Ron was very grateful for all of the purple, lavender-scented foam that shielded the rest of her body from view. This isn't real, he reminded himself. It's just a sort of memory. Still, he hadn't seen his sister in over two years, and he devoured the sight of even this memory of her. He'd forgotten how dark her hair looked when it was wet, and how straight her nose was, and how stubborn her little chin. He looked at the fine line where her jaw met her neck for a very long time. Then she got out of the water quite unexpectedly, and he jumped back, passing through Myrtle, who began to cry.

"Sorry--sorry--" he said hastily. I'd better at least try to stay in her good graces, in case I have to come back!

"That feels absolutely dreadful, you know," she sniffed.

"Myrtle, I really am sorry--"

"Not that you do know, because you're still alive. You've got a body waiting for you at the Leaky Cauldron!" she wailed.

"Uh--right. Listen, I think I've seen all I need to see. I'm pretty sure I'd better go now," said Ron, backing away. It was astonishingly easy to slip around corners and even through walls in his current state--a little too easy, he realized to his chagrin. He had somehow ended up in a tiny, dark closet. He floated around in a disoriented way until he saw a crack of light from the door, and peered through it. It opened onto the pool room, and Ginny was tying her robe around her. Ron breathed a sigh of relief.

Then, he realized that he was not alone in the little room. A boy crouched next to the door, watching Ginny.

Fury lanced through Ron. "Get the fuck out of there!" he snarled, trying to drag the other boy up by the collar of his robes. "Don't you dare look at my sister like that!" But his hands slipped through the material, and the boy didn't even seem to notice that he was there.

Ginny's robe slipped off her shoulder, baring her chest. She made a little noise of annoyance and pulled it back up. The boy groaned softly, and his tongue snaked out to moisten his lips. Ginny glanced at the clock on the wall, gave a little start, and hurried out of the pool room and back to the changing rooms. The boy collapsed back against the floor to sit on his haunches, swallowing hard and breathing heavily.

"Ginny," he murmured. "Ginny, Ginny, oh, Ginny..."

Ron decided quite calmly that he would find out who this boy was, take note of his name, hunt him down two years in the future, and kill him.

With this goal firmly in mind, Ron floated around to the front. The closet was so dim that it was impossible to tell the other boy's identity, and then he moved further back, making it impossible. Ron grabbed at the hanging cord for the little witchlight in the ceiling, and his hands went uselessly through it. He cursed impotently, balling his fists in useless rage.

"Who are you?" he asked the other boy through clenched teeth. "Who are you?"

As if he had heard Ron's question, the boy paused. Then he swung open the door of the closet and stepped into the empty pool room, hurrying along the wall to the main door that led into the hall. The sudden light seemed to dazzle Ron's eyes as if his physical form actually were in the prefects' bathroom in the late winter of his sixth year, and for an instant he could see nothing but a blaze of silvery white. Then his vision cleared, and he realized he was looking at a head of hair. Even before he saw the pale, pointed face, the tall, slender, graceful form, and the hooded grey eyes, Ron knew who it was he looked at. He knew who had hidden in a closet and groaned with lust as he watched Ginny Weasley swim naked in the prefects' bath, only a few months before she disappeared.

Draco Malfoy.

"Ron! Ron, are you all right?"

"I don't know what happened--he sort of went all funny--"

"I think he's stopped breathing--Ron!"

And then, hands were dragging him up to the surface, through layers and layers of fog and mist, back to Luna's bright little room at the Leaky Cauldron, back to his own body and his own time.