The Soul Keeper

Chapter 17: The Reviving Potion and the Disappearance

Monday seemed to take forever to come. Often over the weekend, Draco and Ginny would pass each other in the hall, but neither spoke to the other, opting to look away and hurry quickly past instead. This time, it wasn't because they were trying to keep up appearances either.

A certain uncomfortable atmosphere had descended on them since the last time they had spoke out by the Quidditch shed. Both suddenly found themselves more confused and agitated than they had ever thought possible. It didn't help that they knew exactly what caused it too.

But when Monday morning arrived, they both knew they had to do something.

And Draco decided he would rather make the first move as not. When Ginny entered the Great Hall for breakfast accompanied as usual by her brother and his friends, Draco was waiting to meet her.

"Weasley," he said, his tone calm and almost irritatingly smooth, with no sign of the unspoken strain between them visible on his face.

"Malfoy," Ginny greeted in almost the same voice but a bit less certain than Draco.

"I need to talk to you. In private," he added, glancing pointedly towards the other three who weren't making even the slightest effort to conceal the fact that they were eaves dropping.

"Hey, Malfoy, anything you say to my sister you can say in front of us," Ron told Draco with a glare, obviously not wanting to leave his little sister alone with him. "Right, Gin?"

Ginny grimaced at being forced to chose between the comfort of her brother's protectiveness or being alone with Draco, although she knew they really did need to talk.

As she glanced up, Draco caught her eye and she knew he could tell what she was thinking. She knew he could, because she could read just as well the expression in his eyes that stated "now", as firmly and decisively as if he had actually spoken.

Ginny looked over at Ron. "Actually, I think I'd better talk to Dr- Malfoy alone." Seeing Ron's look of surprise turning quickly to anger, she added hastily. "We're not supposed to talk about our challenge with other people, you know that."

Ginny held her breath as Ron considered. "Alright," he finally breathed, half sighing. "If that's all it's about."

He kept his gaze fastened on Draco the whole time he said the words, an unspoken threat hanging in the air between them. Hermione finally had to jerk on his arm to get him to move on towards the Gryffindor table.

Harry followed, casting an anxious glance back at Ginny as he did so.

Draco watched this exchange through narrowed eyes. Maybe that was what was wrong with Ginny. Maybe Potter had a previous claim on her affections. He didn't want to admit it, but the very thought made him feel sick with jealousy.

When he looked back at Ginny, it was obvious she had seen the effect Potter's last action had had on him. And she thought it was funny.

Great, this was getting better all the time. He quickly calmed his anger and smoothed out his expression, determined to play it cool. Yeah, right.

As soon as they had left the Hall for the privacy and relative quiet of the corridor Ginny burst out laughing, a small smirk teasing the corners of her mouth.

As much as he wished they wouldn't, Draco automatically found his eyes drawn there. But he was just as quickly forced to jerk his gaze back upwards to her eyes as she proceeded to tease him mercilessly.

"You were jealous, weren't you?" Her voice held something other than laughter, something that sounded vaguely like disbelief. As though she couldn't imagine his being jealous of anyone.

Which was exactly what Draco would have liked her to think. Too bad there was no way in hell that he could deny it.

He did make a valiant effort though. "I was not." His voice came out stiff, unnatural.

This time, Ginny didn't bother to contradict him; she just grinned and shrugged her shoulders as though to say "Okay, Draco, whatever".

After this, silence set in and the mood quickly became more sober. They couldn't meet each other's eyes, and after a tense five minutes, Ginny finally regained her voice enough to ask what it was he had wanted to talk to her about.

"I think you know what I wanted."

Ginny's breath caught in her throat. She just knew he wanted to talk about what had happened in the Rainbow Room. She didn't know what she would try to say to defend herself if he did. ' Sorry Draco, the reason I pushed you away after that wonderful kiss- and it had been wonderful, she was not fool enough the deny that- was that I was scared of becoming too attached to someone so quickly. I was scared.'

He'd probably think her the biggest coward on the face of the planet.

But Draco surprised her. He immediately began talking about who would present the token they had earned to Dumbledore. It seemed he had decided not to mention the kiss. Either that or he had decided to forget it completely. Ginny wasn't sure she liked this last option. It certainly wasn't something she would be forgetting anytime soon.

Trying not to look too relieved at his choice of topic, Ginny entered into the conversation a little too enthusiastically, smiling brightly and acting more excited about their accomplishment than she really felt. If Draco noticed, he said nothing, and by the time they had walked back into the Hall together it had been decided that they would walk up to Dumbledore together, but that Ginny would hand him the token, as Draco didn't feel at all inclined to get so close to the Headmaster.

So that was what they did. After breakfast, they joined the line to present proof of their accomplishments.

Ginny was surprised to see that it was much shorter than she had been expecting. In fact, it looked almost shorter by half than the line to receive their challenges had been.

" Lots of people didn't make it," she observed in a low voice.

" Lots of people didn't get lucky and get their token by chance either."

Ginny glanced up at him hastily, her face flushing slightly at the remark. Was he joking or had that really been an insult? Either way, her feelings were hurt.

He was right of course. She had discovered the secret by accident. But what would he have done if she hadn't? He wouldn't have figured it out in time either. The thought that he would try to downplay her part in their accomplishment now, after almost praising her before, made her angry.

Her muscles tensed, and no matter what other comments he made on the way to the Headmaster she refused to answer.

When Draco saw the effect his ill-timed and undeserved words had on Ginny he immediately felt a twinge of regret. But it was too late to take them back now.

He tried to ease her anger by making funny little comments on the other students, or making fun of the professors, but nothing worked. She remained as angry and silent as she had been to start with. Draco could almost see the storm cloud hovering over her head.

With a sigh, he gave up the attempt at cheerfulness and remained broodingly silent as they reached the head of the line. Why should he try to make up for his comment anyway? It was true, wasn't it?

Dumbledore stood expectantly in front of them, his hand outstretched, waiting for their token. But Ginny's mind seemed to be elsewhere, and Draco had to give her a good nudge with his elbow before she realized where they were.

Shooting Draco a death glare, she handed over the hard-earned token.

Dumbledore took it with a slight smile, nodding his approval. "Well done, both of you. Here is your next task, I urge you to begin work on it immediately." Without further delay Ginny was handed another slip of paper, which she immediately put into her pocket as she walked away, not bothering to read it first. She would look at it later.

She hadn't counted on Draco actually following her all the way up the stairs to the entrance to the Gryffindor common room when she didn't heed his calls to stop.

Now, she was forced to. She had no doubts whatsoever that he wouldn't hesitate to walk through the portrait hole after her.

"What do you want?" she asked tiredly. All she wanted to do was get her books and go to class. She didn't know if she could take anymore of Draco's suddenly superior attitude and nasty remarks. And to think, she had actually liked him. Correction: like him, a little voice in the back of her mind screamed aggravatingly. She forced it to be quiet.

" I want to see our challenge." Draco's tone was emotionless, and from the shadow over his face Ginny knew he was being careful to conceal any of his feelings from her. It was like they had suddenly gone back to the way it used to be, back when they hated each other.

Ginny felt a pang inside her chest. She hadn't wanted this; it wasn't supposed to happen this way. But what could she do? The bond that had once been forming so quickly and securely between them was failing, and she felt powerless to stop it.

"We can look at it later."

They were both too stubborn, that was the problem. She wouldn't give in first, and neither would he.

"I would like to see it now please. You might not be very concerned about getting the job done in time, but I am."

Ginny's eyes narrowed at his hard tone. She couldn't even find it within herself to give him credit for saying please. He hadn't really meant it; it had been a formality.

She reached into her pocket and pulled out the piece of paper. Anything to get him gone; without a word she handed it over.

This time, Draco didn't even bother to say thank you. He just took the piece of paper and read it out loud. After she had clearly told him she didn't want to hear what it said just then.

But despite herself, as Draco read, she found she was captivated. This task seemed even harder than the last, but she also thought it sounded more interesting.

They were supposed to look up the ingredients to a certain healing potion, but were not given the name. All they were told were it's least common properties. Yes, least common, because then it would take more effort on their part to figure out exactly what it was. Then, when they knew the ingredients, they were supposed to find them and make the potion. All of them, they were assured, could be found somewhere around the castle.

"Sounds...interesting," Ginny voiced after Draco had finished.

His cold gray eyes flashed up at her. " Yes, it does."

That was it. No 'goodbye', no 'see you tomorrow'; nothing. He turned and walked back the way he had come, ignoring her completely.

And some part of her wondered whether she hadn't deserved it, just a little.

******************************

The next couple of weeks were spent in an unhappy state of studying for both of them. The easy comfort they had previously had vanished to be replaced with a strained silence that seemed always a part of them these days.

How fervently Ginny wished it could have been different, that she had said or acted differently at times so that things would not be the way they were now. She had no way of knowing if Draco felt the same way, but for the sake of having the comfort of not being alone in her misery she hoped so.

As much as she hated to admit it, she missed him. The soft way he had looked at her, and the expression his eyes had held when he smiled. He was so charming when he wanted to be.

Unfortunately, Ginny would probably not be on the receiving end of those grins anytime soon. Or later.

In fact, after their "unspoken argument" Ginny was irked to see him hanging around more and more with Pansy. She knew they had been considered as a couple for a while, but she hadn't even so much as seen him having a civil conversation with the girl here lately, let alone anything to make her remotely suspicious.

Now she saw them together all the time. If she was as vain as Draco seemed to be, she would probably have immediately assumed he was doing it to make her mad. But even after everything, Ginny couldn't quite bring herself to hope that might be the reason. She had her suspicions, but that was all she had. And there was no way she was going to confront him with it.

She tried to convince herself that she didn't care, and at first she thought she had succeeded. But the more she saw them together, the madder she got, and in a sudden revelation she realized that this must have been how Draco felt when Harry had acted concerned for her. Of course, in that case, she hadn't been deliberately provoking him.

Somehow, despite all this, they actually did manage to find the potion they were looking for. And it turned out that even it's most common properties weren't that common.

The Rehabilitation and Life Giving Potion, more commonly known as the Reviving Potion, was one that neither of them had ever even heard of to begin with. According to the book they found on it, it's most common use was to revive someone who had been stunned or knocked unconscious. Then, as their note had told them, it was also used to make small animals sleep for a certain amount of time depending on its specific size and body weight and to make fairies unable to fly. It could also be used to "coat" emblems of power, whatever that meant.

" In other words, it's completely useless," Draco remarked, a hint of irony in his voice. It had taken them two weeks to locate a potion that did nothing except minute things they already had spells for. And they were quicker.

He was so disgusted; he almost slammed the book closed without reading the rest of the paragraph once he had gotten the necessary list of ingredients.

Ginny stopped him with a hand. " Wait. Let's go ahead and read the rest of it, just in case.

Rolling his eyes, Draco conceded, lowering his head to read the remaining sentences. That was when they found out that the potion did something more interesting than they had thought. The very last paragraph stated this particular use almost reluctantly, as though the author hadn't really wanted anyone to find out about it.

Ginny's eyes had grown as wide as saucers during the reading of this paragraph, and when she finished she felt a chill run down her spine. A potion that gave the drinker the ability to walk through death; it was unbelievable.

Draco didn't seem to have the same problem coming to terms with the information the book had revealed, and when he closed the cover, there was nothing more than an expression of boredom on his face.

"Can we look for these ingredients now?"

Ginny stared at him, awed in spite of herself. Was that all he had to say? Didn't he feel the importance of the discovery they had made?

"What about that last property? Isn't it incredible?" she asked him.

"No."

Apparently not.

"Why?" Ginny demanded crossly.

Draco sent her a scathing look, and Ginny knew that she was being silently warned to drop the subject. "It's not real. It was some made up rumor that spread and when this guy heard it he probably insisted on taking it as truth. No one can walk through death."

And that was the end of the subject. Ginny lifted her head high and walked out of the library in front of him. Though she badly wanted to, she refused to get into another argument with him.

As Draco followed her out the door, his thoughts had taken a decidedly different track. He was thinking back to that paragraph they had read. Though he had denied it, it had interested him extremely, but not for the reasons Ginny would have thought it should. No, it interested him because he was comparing it to another enchantment, one that seemed to be very similar.

The Soul Keeper. What if it was kind of like this in-between world, but the people in it were actually just spirits. Actually, there was only one person, he reminded himself. Slytherin. He was trapped there, obviously, but what if, like with the in-between world, there was a way to release him? Wouldn't that be better for everyone? His soul could travel onto the fate in the underworld that it deserved, and the necklace that still hung around Draco's neck would become nothing more than an ordinary, though old, pendant.

What if the way to ease his troubles was easier than he thought?

Draco had never considered it in this light, but he realized that it was something he would have to think on. If he did find a way to release Salazar, something even worse could possibly happen. Draco wasn't inclined to trust an idea that so very closely resembled the one that Slytherin had wanted him to participate in anyway. Freeing him.

But still, maybe there was something in this after all. Draco would have to do some more research. But not now; later, on his own.

The last thing he wanted was to make Ginny suspicious. She would probably come waltzing in, insisting on helping him no matter how much Draco told her he didn't need it. She'd done it before, hadn't she?

And that was when they had begun to get close. Draco didn't want to go through that again. He didn't think he could bear it if she was snatched away from him again, by her own will at that. Ever since that day, when he thought of what she had done and how she might actually have something going on with Potter his nerves had tingled and he felt as though he could have strangled her. Or Potter. Or better yet, both of them.

That was why he had brought in Pansy. Ginny's suspicions were right; it had been precisely Draco's objective to make her jealous. Unfortunately for him, if Ginny noticed, she wasn't talking, and so far had made no move to dissuade him from it.

Which was pretty horrible, as far as Draco was concerned, because it meant he was putting up with Pansy for nothing. He had dropped her like a hot pan after Ginny had come along, refusing to go out with her and hardly speaking with her at all. He hadn't wanted to.

Now, with what Pansy considered as a revival of his interest, she was convinced that he was all hers again and she was being as insufferable as always. Hanging all over him, mooning ridiculously, and just flat out irritating him.

And for what? Nothing.

Draco considered dropping her again, telling her it was over. Sure, she would mope and pout for a while, but it would work out better in the end for him. He didn't think he could take it anymore. Especially not while he had so much more on his mind now.

*****************************

Disagreements and all, the two partners began work on finding the ingredients as soon as possible. Most of them, they were relieved to find, were in relatively normal places: the greenhouses, the ingredients room, Snape's office ( they had only gotten those after Ginny was able to convince Harry to let her use his invisibility cloak to sneak in, she refused to steal it from him again. When he hadn't even asked any questions she had felt even more guilty for having done it before.), and the Grounds.

The remaining three were a bit harder to come by. The fly wings and lizard tail, though hard to get for the fact that they actually had to catch the animals, proved to be easier than the last ingredient. Carconigen Daludolphe, a flowering plant that could only be found on certain days of the year, in certain places, and at certain times of day.

This, they soon discovered, must obviously have been the real task assigned to them. It made all the rest of what they had done look easy.

Day after day they poured through star charts, trying to fix the exact day and time with the little information the book had given them, as well as searching through all the plant books they could get there hands on to discover exactly where the plant grew.

The end result of their research told them that the needed day would arrive just in time for them to hand in their assignment. If they didn't manage to find it the night of the 14^th of November, they were done for. The challenge was supposed to be handed in the 15^th. That meant they had exactly one night to find the last ingredient and prepare the potion.

It was a good thing that all you had to do was mix in the ingredients while the potion boiled. Some substances would have had to be prepared days in advance. Still, they would be hard pressed for time.

Luckily, they had been given two weeks longer for this challenge than the previous, on account of the break for Christmas. It was decided to make the deadline the day before the holidays so that people would not have to work on their projects in parts, before and then after Christmas.

When the day finally came, Draco and Ginny already had everything else they needed ready. The other ingredients were lying on a worktable together, and Draco's caldron (they had decided to use his because it was clearly better made) stood ready beside them.

All they were missing was the Carconigen Daludolphe. And if all went well, they would soon have it.

Ironically, they had discovered that it grew on only one place, the south side of boulders. Which meant there was only one place to look for it, the small boulder by the lake that Draco called his own.

And it was also the one place that Ginny had never wanted to go back to again.

But when they met in front of the castle, she knew she had no choice. There was a look of determination in Draco's eye, and she became absolutely resolved on matching it with her own.

No words were exchanged, but Draco led the way and Ginny followed him silently. When they got to the boulder, Ginny immediately began searching. The action had more to do with staying busy and doing something so that she wouldn't be so nervous than it did with actually knowing it was time. From their calculations, the plant shouldn't even be visible for another five minutes. But something was making her anxious. And it wasn't just from being alone outside with Draco that brought the feeling on. It was...something else.

A feeling she couldn't place, but that affected her all the same. Something was going to happen.

Draco sensed Ginny's apprehension, but took no share in it. What was there to be worried about? The moon would rise to just the right spot, they would find the flower, and then they would get out of here. What could be so hard about that?

He wondered whether it was something else bothering her, and for a moment he almost decided to ask her. But no, he held himself back. He'd been playing the disinterested party this long; he could keep it up until she caved first. That was what all this pretending was about anyway wasn't it? Who would win the war of wills and who would break down first? Well if nothing else, Draco intended to win.

Which meant that it was absolutely necessary to keep up the 'I don't care' charade for as long as it took. And that's all it was. A charade. He realized that now.

The whole month he'd been torturing himself, trying to insist that he had firmly stamped out any feeling other than dislike that he might have had for the youngest Weasley, but in the end, he had fallen pray to common sense. If she was so firmly erased from his mind and out of his system, why did he think about her constantly?

He looked down at his watch then, noting with a slight smile that the time had come. Now he could find that plant.

And look, there it was. He reached down and plucked it from the side of the boulder in front of him. Almost too easy, he decided with a smile. Now it was time to get Ginny and get out of here.

He walked confidently around the boulder, glad that everything was going smoothly. That was when he noticed it.

Ginny wasn't there.

But after making five more trips around the boulder, each time calling Ginny's name a little louder than before.

He was finally forced to admit that she just wasn't there. She wasn't anywhere.

And that was when Draco knew that something was very, very wrong.

A/N: Hah, here's a longer chapter. This one was also pretty fun to write, so I hope you enjoy it. And don't worry; while the story is obviously getting closer to the climax, it's still likes quite a bit from being over. A chapter with Malfoy Manor will most likely be next, though I'm not completely sure about that. What I do know, however, is that next chapter we will discover what happened to Ginny and how Draco breaks the news about her disappearance.