Part 1


"We must go back."

All eyes turned to River. She seemed perfectly lucid, but her head was cocked to the side as though she was listening to something no one else could hear. She hadn't done such a thing in months, and it sent an uneasy feeling through the others.

"Mei mei?" Simon asked, brow furrowed.

"We must go back now, or else she will die." River stood abruptly, face eerily blank. "I will go to plot the course now."

Mal's jaw twitched. "Who's dyin' and where's my ship going?"

"Ginevra must return to the castle," River said gently. "She will die if we do not assist."

"That don't explain nothin'," Jayne said as Mal stood. He frowned at River. "Did you miss them mornin' meds?"

"Irrelevant. Ginevra will arrive regardless, and the delay may be fatal." She ran to the cockpit, her bare feet making no sound. Mal followed, but wasn't quick enough. River had already plotted the course and locked it in on autopilot.

"Where you takin' my ship?" he asked gruffly.

"To the castle."

"What castle?" Mal asked, annoyed.

"Mr. Universe," River replied softly. "He bought the stones and assembled a well. It is all that remains of the castle. A mistake was made, and Ginevra will arrive at this castle."

"What go se are you talking about? There's nothing left on his moon but metal."

River shook her head, hair flying. "No. The castle is there. You have not seen it or known of it, but that does not deny its existence. The castle is there, and Ginevra is being sent forward. If we do not return, she will die and the mission will fail. We cannot let the mission fail!"

Mal wanted to reach out and shake her. By the wild look in her eyes, he could tell it was a bad idea. "What mission?"

Zoe thundered into the room. "I sent the others away," she said, voice harsh. "Sir?"

Mal knew what she was thinking. If River had gone insane or was threatening the ship in any way, it was better that the others not see Zoe shoot her down. Good thinking on her part, but not necessary. "We're headed to Mr. Universe's, it seems like. Seems to be a girl on a mission there we need to save."

"You're mocking Ginevra," River said, frowning. "That's not right. There's no need to mock her. She receives it enough from the ones that she loves."

"Who is she?" Mal asked. "Some other Academy girl? Are you off to save them now?"

"No. Not us, not our kind. Not like us." River's gaze turned inward. "Magic."

Zoe snorted. The magic in her life was all gone now, and in the past few months she had become nothing but hard edges and bitter spite. "Ain't no magic out here but the open black. Where in all that moon do you think we need to be? We need to get to Persephone and pick up work, not go sifting around through le se left on that hunk of rock." Her voice was harsh, brooking no argument. But River was shaking her head, and Zoe's grip on her gun tightened. They had done everything to set the girl's secret free, and now Zoe had an empty bunk to show for it. She hardly slept anymore.

"Time and space are fluid, they bend and twist according to specific rules. When the force of will can open up a singularity, it no longer follows those selfsame rules."

Zoe wanted to knock her down, place her gun into River's face and force her to make sense. But she did not. She kept her gun in hand, her jaw clenched tight. "Sir?" Your orders, her tone implied. Do I shoot?

"Stand down," Mal said, voice tight. "Our little albatross has this way of knowing things sometimes, doesn't she? We'll play this out, see what there is to see. If that girl we're off to save is a problem we don't like, we leave her there and fly. But if she's truly about to die out there, it's worth a look." He turned to River. "But if it costs us anyone else..." he warned.

"No. We just draw her from the castle well..."

"You fly this boat and you get her out. What happens next is up to her."

Unsatisfied, Zoe holstered her gun and stalked off the bridge without a word.

"You better be right," Mal warned River.

She nodded serenely. The other Ginevras could leave her alone now; their possible realities now were rendered irrelevant and collapsed in on itself. They no longer existed, no longer screamed in the back of her mind. Her thoughts crystallized; she knew where to find Ginevra now.

River settled into the pilot's chair. Wash's ghost settled in as well. "You made my lamby-toes a mite upset."

"No ground beneath her feet, no soul to her sky."

"Don't make her so mad," Wash pleaded. "She's having a rough time of it."

"But Ginevra could not wait. She would join you if they did not allow the journey."

Wash sighed. "River, you're playing with fire there. You're going to get burnt."

River shook her head. "The captain would not allow such a thing."

"She'll snap," Wash said gently.

"I will not break," River assured him. "I will know when that happens."

"Be careful," Wash cautioned.

River didn't answer him, and he drifted away. She knew the probabilities; math and physics were easy. That wasn't hard at all.

Mr. Universe's moon awaited.

***

The spell had been complex, and Ginny hadn't even understood all of it. But its strands wove around her tightly, and the magic mesh pressed into her skin. It pushed, pushed, pushed into her, as if trying to compress her into a tiny speck. She couldn't breathe, couldn't do anything. It hurt, and Ginny opened her mouth to scream in pain.

Water rushed in. Ginny began to choke.

Dear Merlin, she thought suddenly. I'm going to die.

Ginny flailed, panic burning in her chest.

Just before she passed out, hands closed over hers and pulled her out of the water and into safety.

***

River cradled the redheaded girl in the Infirmary. They had waited until Simon had declared her fit to move before bringing her aboard. "She dreams," River murmured. "Green sparks, red eyes and a slit nose bring her the same fear as the dark-eyed boy from before her time."

"River, let her sleep," Simon said, gently disentangling her limbs. "She needs rest."

"She needs calm and understanding."

"Let her sleep," Simon said. "Come on."

Reluctantly, River let her go. "Her dreams are most interesting. Her world is so different."

"Let her tell us on her own."

River crept back to the infirmary later, when Simon and Kaylee were occupied in their bunk. River held onto the girl's wand and swished it about playfully. She perched on the edge of the counter as she did so. The girl's meager belongings had been fished out of the well at River's insistence. The pack had been dried, and was currently on the floor. River swung her legs back and forth playfully, swishing the wand in time. "Lumos." Nothing, no changes.

Ginny stirred and opened her eyes. She took in a deep breath as she blinked against the light.

River smiled at Ginny's confusion. She knew this, and could guide the other girl. "You are on Serenity. We rescued you from drowning in the well. What is your mission, Ginevra?"

Startled, Ginny rolled off the table and fell to the floor. "Ah!"

River jumped to the floor and hunkered down on all fours to meet Ginny at eye level. "You are on Serenity. We—"

"What?" Ginny shook her head. "Where am I?"

"You are on Serenity. She is a ship. She likes being lived on."

"What? Where are we going?"

"Persephone. The others want a job."

Ginny was shaking. Nothing was familiar around her. Had the spell sent her to America? She had heard that magic was wild there, but even this seemed impossible.

"I'm sorry, I'm thinking of the right words to say. I know they don't sound the way I planned them to be."

Ginny remained confused. "What's going on?"

"My words sometimes are backward. But you are safe now. You are aboard Serenity. We came to save you from drowning."

"But... I was supposed to be at Hogwarts."

"Perhaps we should all speak? Tea will make you feel better, and we will discuss the tale in full."

Ginny's lip trembled as she nodded, and she pushed herself up to her feet. "Where's my wand?"

River rose to her feet and stretched out her right hand. "Magic does not work here. We don't have control over reality."

Her eyes wide, Ginny snatched her wand in a panic. "Lumos! Alohomora! Incendio!" Each word was said in even more panic, and yet still nothing happened. "Why?" she wailed.

Zoe had come close from the cries, but did not enter the Infirmary. "River?"

"Ginevra has awakened. We should all speak upstairs. She has a mission."

Zoe eyed both girls warily, but nodded and then headed back upstairs.

"Ginny."

River cocked her head at Ginny. "Oh?"

"Not even my mother calls me Ginevra. Everyone calls me Ginny."

"Ginny. We will explain our story and hear yours. All will be well then."

Her lip trembled, and Ginny seemed close to tears. "Nobody will believe me," she whispered. "There's no magic here. Ron ruined the spell."

"I will believe you," River said gently. She reached out for Ginny, who reluctantly took her hand. "They may not believe in anything, but I believe in everything."

"Why?"

"Sometimes it's a girl that's a savior, not a boy."

Confused, Ginny followed River up to the kitchen area, the others were assembled there already, and Ginny almost wanted to shrink back up against the wall. This was too new, too strange and different. Oh get a grip! she told herself fiercely. You asked for this mission. You wanted to be a full part of the Order. This is what the others would have had to have done.

They watched Ginny straighten her shoulders a bit before moving forward to sit in the offered chair. "Thank you," she said. "If not for all of you, I'd be dead right now."

"Well, you can thank our little witch over there," Mal said, pointing at River. "We wouldn't have known about you otherwise."

"How about you start at the beginning?" Zoe asked.

"My name is Ginny Weasley. I'm a member of the Order of the Phoenix." She looked around the table and noted the blank faces around her. "Haven't you heard of us? We're instrumental on the side of Light."

"Sounds like you're in a war," Mal commented.

"We are. Against the Dark Lord and his Death Eaters." She looked around in disbelief. "You haven't heard of him?"

"You'd notice names like that in the black," Jayne muttered, shaking his head. "That ain't subtle, and don't sound like more'n schoolboys scarin' little girls."

"They kill them, too," Ginny replied tartly.

"Whoa! Nobody's killing anybody on my boat!" Mal cut in. He pointed at Ginny. "You. Start over, and this time explain, 'cause we don't know this Order you're talking about."

Ginny sighed, then started again. "I was a student at Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry until two years ago. At that time, Voldemort had grown in power, and so had his followers. I was working with the Order of the Phoenix to stop him. We've recently suffered heavy losses at Stonehenge, so my brother Ron was working with Hermione to send someone forward to gather crucial information. It was meant to be like a Time Turner in reverse. I volunteered. But something must have gone wrong with the spell, because I ended up in a well instead of at Hogwarts."

Mal was staring at River throughout her speech. "This Hogwarts... what did it look like?"

"It's a castle in northern Scotland."

He wanted to smack himself in the head. River had been talking about the castle stones that had been turned into a well. He mulled it over for a moment, then turned back to Ginny. "Wait a minute. What planet is Scotland on?"

Ginny blinked. "What?"

"Is it Londinium? Ariel? Osiris?" Mal looked at the others around the table. "Somehow I don't see a castle standing on the Rim worlds."

Ginny shook her head. "Scotland's a country on Earth."

The entire table had fallen silent.

"Earth," Zoe finally said. Her voice was brittle. "As in, Earth-That-Was?"

"What are you talking about?"

"Ain't no planets called Earth no more. Unless you count New Earth, and nobody does," Jayne said thoughtfully into the stunned silence. "What year d'you think it is?"

Ginny blinked in surprise. "It's 1998."

"That's impossible," Simon said, shaking his head. "It can't be."

Ginny pushed herself to her feet. "What in bloody hell are you all on about?!"

River touched Ginny's hand and motioned for her to sit down. "After the Earth was used up, long ago, a new solar system was found. Hundreds of new 'Earths' were terraformed and colonized. It took a few dozen planets to get it right, but they finally did. The central planets, the Core planets, form the heart of the Alliance. There are the middle planets and the Rim worlds, and it's not considered so civilized as the Core. There was a war between the Independents and the Alliance several years ago. The Alliance won. Whoever was left of the Independents had drifted away from the Core and Alliance control."

"I don't understand," Ginny whispered. "What are you telling me?"

"It's not 1998," Zoe said. Her voice was surprisingly gentle. "It is now the year 2518."

Ginny's eyes were as round as saucers. "No. That's not possible..."

"You said Ron ruined the spell," River said gently.

"No. No, he wouldn't have done this to me, he couldn't have screwed up so badly. He couldn't have, Hermione told him what to do, he couldn't have..." Ginny brought a hand up to her mouth as she looked around at the other faces at the table. "There was a scream, just as he finished the spell. I remember that now. It hurt, and there was a scream but it wasn't me. I was here already and drowning in the well." She sank down into the chair, though her gaze was turned inward. "We didn't have much time."

"What were you supposed to find?" Kaylee asked. Her expression was one of sympathy, as if she had known this strange girl and could feel her pain.

"They were hiding too well, and they kept finding us." Ginny gulped. "There have been spies before on both sides. I was supposed to find the other cells, try to find out who it was and then go back and tell them. I wasn't supposed to go so far, only five years."

"Looks like you went five hundred," Jayne added helpfully. He ignored the scathing look that Simon shot him and kept his eyes fixed on the redhead. "D'you know how to get back?"

Ginny's lip trembled for a moment, and she slowly began to shake her head. Her eyes scanned the strange faces and the odd kitchen she was sitting in, and she burst into tears. River was the only one that dared to comfort her; the others were too busy taking it all in.

"We have to help somehow," Kaylee said, looking around. "We can't just leave her here, all orphaned and such."

"How are we gonna do that?" Mal challenged. "We ain't got no magic."

"There's a sage on Shinon," Inara began, voice soft. "They said she could do magic."

All eyes went from Inara to Mal, who looked uneasy. He took in Inara's placid face, River's earnest eyes and Ginny's tear-stricken expression. "We still need coin. The boat ain't gonna fly if we can't fuel it up."

"We can find a delivery job in Persephone that'll take us to Shinon. Kill two birds with one stone," Kaylee offered. "I can look for that."

"All right, then," Mal said with a sigh after a long moment. "All right. But nobody's turning anybody into a toad, got me?" he added to Ginny. He waited until the tearful girl sniffled and nodded. "Okay. I guess you can bunk in the guest quarters for now. Our Albatross can show you the way." He stood and nodded at her. "Welcome to Serenity."

***
***

Part 2

The passenger dorm was fairly quiet. Simon had already moved into Kaylee's bunk, but River had remained behind. She tended to read or sketch in her free time, so there wasn't a lot of noise echoing in the dorm. The quiet was just as distracting for Ginny as she curled up on the bed in the next room. She didn't want to be alone in her thoughts at this point; all she could think of was the final moments of the spell Ron had cast. The spell had been complex, and the magic mesh had pressed into her skin. It had pushed into her so blindingly fast that she hadn't been able to breathe. There had been a scream, but it hadn't been hers.

Who had it been? Ginny thought, chewing on the inside of her cheek. What had happened as I left?

There was a soft knock at the door. As Ginny sat up, River entered the door with a tray. On it were two tea cups and one pot with steam rising from the spout.

River smiled at the redhead. "Our worlds collide, as heaven pulls us through the abyss. We must contemplate their meaning together."

"What?"

River sat down beside Ginny and balanced the tray between them. She began to pour the jasmine tea into the two cups. She looked up as she held out one cup. "The secret of the world is written in the stars. Perhaps there is a way to recreate the moment of your departure in our own time and space in order to return you to your starting point."

"But there's no magic here," Ginny protested. She didn't look at the tea cup in her hands. "There's nothing we can do to recreate the spell, since I never knew it in the first place."

River smiled and sipped at her tea. "I'm carrying your heart in mine, and perhaps some of your knowledge, too. This sage we seek to visit may have knowledge from our lost times. Perhaps your magical wisdom is still preserved this far into the future."

"But there's no place here I can do magic..."

"I would imagine that magic draws its power from life. There is little life to draw from here. We are in the far reaches of space, the vacuum of matter and dark matter. You would need a live world to draw from, to collect the dreams and breath of a thousand souls. Magic of fairy tales often needed creatures of the fantastic and herbs of questionable reality. Perhaps these are things we may find once you absorb the dreams of a populace. Life force may be necessary. You would need the heartbeat of a living planet." River sipped at her tea and eyed Ginny. "Drink, before it grows cold and tasteless."

She sipped at the jasmine tea. "It's different from home," the girl said softly. She took a deep swallow. "It's nice."

"It is good to have someone to speak with," River murmured. "There are few here with which I can do so, and little still in common to speak of. I have never been an ordinary girl."

"You talk a little funny."

"It is what they made of me," River replied solemnly. "But please, speak of your world. Perhaps we may find a common core to begin again."

Ginny found herself describing the Burrow, Hogwarts, Harry, her classmates and what it had all meant to her. There were times she found herself crying, but it didn't bother her at all. It didn't matter that River could see her tears, since River seemed to understand everything. She knew what it was like to be the youngest in the family. She knew what it was like to be pampered and then thrown to the wolves. She knew what it was like to have the pressure of others placed upon her and no way to act upon them. River knew.

"I miss them," Ginny finished simply.

"Sometimes it seems that I don't have the skills to recollect the twists and turns of plot that turned us to friends," River murmured. She reached out and touched Ginny's tears with her fingertips. She brought them to her tongue and tasted the bitter salt.

"What if there is no way back?" Ginny asked, watching River curiously.

River stood and picked up the empty cups. She placed them back on the tray, and removed it from the bed. "We will cross that path once we arrive at the stream."

Ginny jumped to her feet. "No. I need to know if there's something more for me here. If I can't go back, what would I be able to do here?"

River placed the tray down on the dresser top. She approached the other girl, stepping lightly on her bare toes. She moved forward, until barely an inch separated their faces. Her kiss was the lightest of caresses on the other girl's lips, and she darted back to her prior position. She was fast and nimble, doing everything in the blink of an eye.

She touched her lips with her fingertips. "His touch was last, most tender and loving. You had to leave him behind to perform your task, and his silver eyes haunt you. He loves you very much, though he doesn't know the words." River's lips twitched in a sardonic smile. "I wish I could have the same assurances for myself."

Ginny had gone stark white with River's words. "How do you know that?"

"You question whether you know me at all," River murmured to Ginny. She linked her fingers through the stunned girl's hands, ignoring the tea tray on the dresser. "It's all right. They always do. They don't know how to see me now. I don't fit their perceptions of me, their mistaken conceptions had been shattered and they don't know how to repair the damage. You will revisit every smile he made and how it fit into the day you left, but it will not make sense. Chaos does not readily make way to linear thought."

"Why do you talk like that?" Ginny asked, her brows furrowing in confusion. She didn't know what to feel about the strange girl in front of her. Should she be afraid of that fleeting kiss? Should she be afraid of what the girl could guess about her? Her head was pounding, and she was afraid it would blossom into a migraine. "You talk in circles."

"They think me strange," River murmured, coming even closer. Ginny could smell the clean scent of her soap and shampoo. "Sometimes, they did to you, in your own time. You felt it, the distance and the absence. You felt the emptiness between spaces in their words. You saw the things they did not say."

River kissed her, full and wet and with longing. It was the way he had kissed her, his silver eyes growing molten and his blonde hair curling against his cheek. River's tongue slid into her mouth the same way, her hands on Ginny's cheeks. Ginny found her arms wrapping around the slim girl, her hands sliding down the smooth back. She wasn't shaped like Draco at all, but she was kissing her the same way, and it was as close to Draco as she could get.

River broke the kiss and blinked owlishly. For a fleeting moment, Ginny was haunted by the last sight of Luna peeking out over Neville's shoulder, blinking up at her. Luna would have been more suited to speaking with this girl. They would have been fast friends.

"He's sorry. He feels he hurt you by being beside you, by not being worthy of your love. He feels that to protect you is to push you away, and that his touch would taint you." River caressed Ginny's cheek in much the same way Draco had done before she had left, his harsh words bringing tears to her eyes. "He worries your enemies would track you down through him, and worries that you don't mean what you say to him." She dropped her hand from Ginny's cheek and rested it over her heaving breast. For some reason, Ginny didn't protest. "You hide him here, but he doesn't know that. He feels alone, adrift in darkness of his father's making. He feels as though you are a last salvation that he cannot accept."

Ginny wanted to believe it. She wanted to believe that River knew things, that she hadn't been taken for a fool yet again. She watched River take the tray and calmly walk to the door. "River? How is it that you know things like that?"

Her gaze was soft and sad. "I'm whimsical in the brainpan, they say. I'm crazy. I'm what they fear to contemplate. I've always known. I've never not. I know how to read between their voices in conversations as well, and how people speak without words. I've always known."

"Does it get any better?" Ginny asked, her voice above a whisper. Her hands were clasped over her chest, fingers linked together tightly. "Does it get easier? Can they accept us just knowing these things and reacting?"

River shook her head. "I'm a witch. You are, too."

"I've always been able to do magic before..." Ginny's voice trailed off. "But there's no magic here, not anymore."

"The worlds don't have enough life to sustain themselves, let alone magic. Very few worlds do anymore. Magic isn't something that others had tried to preserve."

"Do you have someone?" Ginny asked, voice soft and sad. She had her memories of Draco, and River suddenly seemed so very alone.

She shook her head again. "I am Mei Mei. I am a child to them still. I am not a mature woman for romantical stylings, and would likely not ever find someone to accept the different facets they had carved into me at the Academy."

"Are you that strange?"

River's eyes were deep fathomless pools. "I am. Believe it if you will, but I am. I am not a simple frail creature as I may seem. The others have seen to that."

"But don't you want someone to love you back?"

"Of course," she said primly. "But I am not appropriate for the marriage mart any longer. I am something to be feared, something cobbled together out of fear and pain and abuse. I have my brother to love me, but I can expect no other. None would have me, and I would not suffer pity gladly just for an illusion of love."

Ginny watched her go in silence. The future wasn't necessarily any better than the past.

***

If she could just keep moving, she could keep the panic at bay, stop herself from seeing his eyes as she left him, and drown out the horrible whispers at the back of her mind. She remembered the last time she had seen Draco, rain pouring from the sky. The clouds had been as silver as his eyes, and she had been so frustrated by his need to prove himself.

"Prove what?" Draco had drawled. "I don't need to prove anything."

"That you're good enough," Ginny said softly.

"I am."

"That when you're hurt, someone will care," Ginny had continued. "That when you're gone, someone will grieve." She had watched his face contort with rage and agony, had known that her barb had more than hit its mark. He had kissed her then, full of longing and desperation, then had disappeared out into the field. A week later, she had been caught in a spell net so tight it had taken her breath and spirited her into the future.

"You're thinking about a boy," Kaylee said matter of factly, dropping down into the seat next to Ginny at the card table. Kaylee grabbed the cards from Ginny's hands. She had watched the redhead shuffle the cards for solitaire for the past ten minutes.

Ginny flushed. "How can you tell? Are you psychic, too?"

"Oh, gosh, no! But I've done my share of pining over boys, and it looks the same no matter what year it is." Kaylee's laughter was light and bubbling, water over a brook in the Highlands of Scotland. Ginny had missed the sound of such things.

"I... We didn't part well."

Kaylee began dealing cards for Gin Rummy. "You play Gin Rummy where you're from? I know the game's old, but I dunno how old." She waited until Ginny nodded. "So you didn't part well, huh? Well, how did it end?"

"That's just it. I don't know if it did. River said something about him wanting to protect me from our enemies, and that he doesn't believe I could really love him." Ginny bit her lip and picked up the well worn cards. "I want her to be right."

Kaylee overturned the first card on the draw pile. "She probably is. She knows stuff like that. I would say to trust in what you feel. I always got so mad when Simon said something stupid, and I'd think maybe he didn't like me after all." Kaylee giggled as she drew up a card. "It's... love is something crazy. It makes you all twisty into knots and you doubt you even know what you know, which is just silly. But it's fun and goes right to your head like a belly full of hooch." She watched Ginny take her card in contemplation. "It can hurt, but when it works it's like walking on the sun."

Ginny looked up at Kaylee, unshed tears in her eyes. "That's all I want. That's all I ever wanted."

"Sometimes you gotta make it happen. Else nobody will ever know what's in your heart. Pushing it away don't do nothing but burn you up inside. Ain't no call for that, you know."

"River's alone, and she's so sad because of it. I don't know which is better."

Kaylee frowned. "Hm... I guess I didn't stop to notice River, to be honest. I was kinda occupied with her brother. But if she's gonna be my sister, and I can really only hope about that because Simon's something of a boob when it comes to love, then we should help fix that."

Ginny blinked at the bubbling rush of words. "But who? She says she's crazy."

"Oh. Yeah. But she's pretty. There's always somebody who would go for a pretty face. And if he sticks around long enough, then he'll see how sweet she is, too." Kaylee paused as she drew up the next card. "Or is she sly? I don't know about that."

"Sly?"

"Into girls. Or boys into boys. You know, kinda not mainstream, so they do it on the sly."

Future slang was odd, but fairly easy to understand with explanations. "Oh! No, I don't think so," Ginny murmured, pushing their kisses from her mind. That had been different. River had been taking the memory of Draco from her lips. River had implied wanting a man to love her as more than a sister, not a girl.

"Well, there ain't too much competition 'round these parts. Maybe on Persephone we can find somebody," Kaylee added with a flourish. Ginny noticed Jayne walking past the recreation area from the kitchen.

"We can find somebody for what?" Jayne asked, holding a drink in hand. "A paying job?"

Kaylee smiled at him warmly. "Nah. We're thinkin' to fix up River. Wanna sit with us?"

Jayne looked horrified. "What kind of go se is that? Who'd stick by someone with a couple screws loose?"

"Ain't her fault and you know it," Kaylee retorted hotly. "It's not right what they did, and she shouldn't have to be alone for it."

"It would have to be a merc," Jayne decided after a lengthy swig of his drink. He plopped the glass down on the table with a decisive hand.

"Why?" Kaylee asked, curious.

Jayne shrugged as he peeked at Kaylee's cards. "Who else wouldn't think twice about how she took down three dozen Reavers by herself?"

"Reavers?" Ginny asked, pulling her cards away from Jayne's view.

"Man-things. Crazy. Completely batshit insane," Jayne replied matter-of-factly. "The doc's sister is only a teensy bit crazy in comparison."

Kaylee blinked in surprise. "I think that's the nicest thing you've said about her."

"Well, now, like you said, it ain't her fault she's nuts." Jayne looked uncomfortable and stood. "Anyway, don't go doing nothing stupid. Most mercs ain't no dating kind."

Kaylee and Ginny exchanged looks as Jayne left the recreation area. "I'm having a horrid idea," Ginny said, putting her cards down on the table. "I do think she might be completely angry with us if we do it."

Kaylee grinned. "I think it would be cute, don't you?"

They dissolved into giggles and continued their game.

***

The Eavesdown Docks on Persephone were the same as always. They were bustling and full of busy people who didn't always look twice at who was passing by. Kaylee had seized Ginny's arm and declared that they would be looking for work that would get them to Shinon. "Respectable people look for friendly faces to do the work," Kaylee said, smiling sweetly up at Jayne's scowling face. "Why don't you and River stock up on munitions while we're out and about?" She turned to Simon, who was about to say something. "Honey, you can come with us and shop for those medical supplies you wanted."

That neatly shut down everyone's arguments before they began.

Kaylee winked at Ginny, who giggled. "I've never been here before," she said in explanation when she caught Simon eyeing her oddly. "I'm excited. I've never been on another planet before. It sounds exciting."

Simon launched into a long winded lecture about terraforming and the science behind it. Before Ginny knew it, they were perusing the work lists and they were striking up conversations with others around them. Mal and Zoe had opted to remain on Serenity, talking amongst themselves; Ginny hadn't felt comfortable asking them any questions.

She spied River and Jayne on a few occasions going through different shops. They seemed to be conversing amiably enough, so she tried spying on them when they were close enough. That also served to give Simon and Kaylee some semblance of privacy.

"I didn’t really know what to call you, and you didn’t know me at all," River was saying. "How was I supposed to know that names are fluid?"

"I was happy to explain. Your stupid brother wouldn't let me," Jayne replied, picking up a rather large and scary looking knife. "Here. Test this one out."

River hefted it easily, and rolled her wrist around in a circle. In her hands, the knife's movements looked like pure poetry. "I suppose this one might do. The end is weighted differently. It may cause problems with wrist motion."

"Huh. I thought so."

Jayne put the knife back on the rack and looked at River. "You're good at that."

"Oh? At what? Testing weights?" River shrugged and took another wicked looking blade from off of the display shelf. "I can see things clearer, test the realms in an instant." She looked up at Jayne and smiled. "No, that's not true. It's all smoke in the mirrors, something to try and earn myself a place to speak of."

"Huh?"

"If I'm not the witch of the ship, what else will I be?"

Jayne's brow furrowed. "You're the pilot."

"No, I'm not. That's still Wash. He will always be the pilot, and his ghost walks the bridge. I will never be able to replace him."

Jayne looked away, uncomfortable. "Look, don't go talkin' 'bout ghosts."

River looked at Jayne thoughtfully. "I never really knew how to move you. I didn't realize this was a simpler way that telling you of life necessities."

"What?"

"Red is life and love and happiness. I told you that you looked better in red." Ginny watched Jayne touch his chest almost instinctively, his face drawn up in near anger. "I thought it was easier to show you than explain. I tried to intrude through the little holes in your veins, but it didn't work out that way. I don't know how to speak," River concluded.

Jayne snorted, grabbing a box of ammunition. "Stop using so many damn complicated words. Just say what you think, nice and simple. Ain't no call to speak fancy 'round these parts. All it does is set you apart."

"I am apart," River murmured. She looked at the box in Jayne's hands. "That's not on sale."

Grumbling, Jayne put it back on the shelf. "Lookit, nobody here's smart as you, dong ma? So nobody's gonna understand something you say in riddles. Speak simple, and then we'll know what you're talking 'bout."

"I don't know what I say sometimes," River admitted.

"Then keep your mouth shut like I do," Jayne muttered, shaking his head. "No use to spit up nonsense and look witchy. Better to look stupid than crazy. At least then they underestimate you and you can take 'em down easier."

River blinked. "Is that why you do that?"

"Huh? Do what?"

"Stay so silent." Jayne nodded almost belligerently. "Well, it is not these hiding places that have kept me innocent of such things. You would teach me to just let it all go by."

"Well, yeah. Easier that way. If you ain't no pilot, then you gotta figger out something else to do," Jayne added, moving over to another corner of the munitions shop.

"But I like being the witch," River murmured, almost to herself. She followed Jayne deeper into the store, and Ginny returned to Kaylee and Simon.

"I've need of someone to deliver a package," a tall woman with dark hair was telling Kaylee earnestly. "Alia did me such a favor, and I need to have this returned right away."

Ginny smiled at the woman as Kaylee accepted the package. "Of course. We'll go to Shinon right away, we promise."

"I've never been to Shinon," Ginny said honestly, looking at the tall, elegant-looking woman. "Is it nice there?"

The woman's eyes grew misty and faraway. "Its greatest beauty are the treasures walking within its sacred walls." Her smile was distant and haunting.

The universe is brought back from the verge of destruction every time you smile, Draco had told her once. She had carried the statement with her like a jewel, and it sometimes made her smile the same kind of haunting smile.

"Be well," Ginny said in farewell as the woman turned and walked into the crowds. The woman didn't respond, and disappeared behind the buildings.

"We have a job to do," Kaylee said with a smile. "A good hefty amount of coin, and just where we need to go anyhow. I think Buddha's smiling down on all of us just now."

Ginny smiled at her, her heart sinking to her toes. What if I can't go back? If River doesn't even have a place here, what hope is there for me?

***

They approached Shinon somewhat cautiously, but there was no need. No questions were asked; authentication codes for their delivery job were proof enough that they had every right to be there. The package, a bridal set of jewelry being returned to the Shinon Companion Training House, took them just where they needed to be. The credits earned from the trip were deposited into Mal's account, and he gave some to Kaylee for a supply run. Inara took River, Ginny and Jayne with her into the Training House to look for the sage.

The Sage of Wisdom Lost lived in the heart of the Training House, in the midst of the tallest spire. Her rooms were airy and filled with bookshelves stacked three deep to the ceiling. It was a library that Hermione Granger would have cheerfully throttled someone to have access to, Ginny realized, and this woman lived with the wealth of knowledge at her fingertips. Ginny blinked back the tears threatening to rise at the thought of Hermione. What if Ginny could never see any of them again?

The woman was old, bent over a table with a magnifying glass in hand. Her hair was spun white silver, pinned to the top of her head with elegant silver pins encrusted with clear crystals. Her robes were elegant jade colored silk with black ribbon trim. Her fingers carried heavy gold rings with elaborate carvings, and they were tracing glyphs on the pages of the massive book in front of her. "I know why you are here," she said, not looking up from the book. "The announcement had told me of your complement."

Inara stepped forward. "Great Sage of Wisdom Lost..."

"Hush," the woman replied, standing up to her full height. She was eye level to Inara's chin. "I know who you all are, and I know who I am. I am keeper of the Granger Library, though no one calls it by such a name anymore."

Ginny's gut twisted, and she wanted to cry.

The woman stepped away from the heavy book on the table and approached them. "They told me about you," she replied, approaching Ginny. "We saved everything we could, especially of magic. In the early days of this library, some mages were still capable of the spells enclosed within this library."

Ginny thought she couldn't breathe. "There's magic here?"

"Less so than in your time, but once upon a time we were able to cast simple spells. There is no school like the one this library was salvaged from," the sage said, gesturing around her. "These books are such ancient tomes, yet they are as readable as the day they were written." She cast a jaundiced eye over the company before her. "I am to share this with Ginevra Molly Weasley and her companions, and no other."

River looked at Ginny curiously. "Perhaps your wand will work now."

"Wand?" Jayne asked, confused.

Ginny removed her wand from her sleeve. She kept it by force of habit at this point; she knew it wouldn't work on Serenity, but it had comforted her somewhat. She pointed it at the pile of massive books beside Inara. "Wingardium leviosa!"

After a slight hitching movement, the books began to float.

She was going to faint. She was going to fall. This might work after all.

Inara caught Ginny's arm as she was about to sway in shock. "I suppose that's proof enough then," she said, looking at the sage's resentful gaze.

"It will have to be," the woman replied with a sigh. "We were warned of this, given a description of the girl. The initial spell had misfired, and the timing was off. There was no way to tell exactly what had happened, so a secret library and Order of Sages was created to wait for their wayward charge."

"What happened?" Ginny asked, looking at her. Her freckles stood out sharply against her pale skin. The sage didn't reply at first, looking at her sadly. "What happened to everyone?" Ginny repeated, voice rising in panic.

"They lost," the sage said, voice soft and sad. "The remnants of your Order were driven underground. Your school was destroyed to the last brick."

"My friends?" Ginny whispered. She felt Inara link a hand through hers in support, but she couldn't feel it. Her chest hurt, as if she was drowning again.

"Lady Granger charged the remnants with the task of saving the library and the knowledge of what happened to you. This we have done for five hundred years. Grafting ourselves to the Companions Guild was the safest alternative we had."

"Lady Granger?" Ginny asked, voice faint.

"A sarcastic title attributed to her that we have perpetuated in reverence," the sage replied. She went back to the massive desk and sat behind it. "She unfortunately did not survive the second onslaught against the Order."

She was going to collapse. That must be why Ginny's head was swimming.

"Magic died after the war ended, so really, there was no winner," the sage continued, oblivious to Ginny's discomfort. "Soon enough, hardly anyone could do magic."

Jayne pushed the floating book down into its pile. The sound was loud in the silence. "So now what, lady?" he asked, voice harsh. "You just about kicked her upside the head. Got any good news to share?"

"No."

Ginny looked up in a panic. "You have to send me back! I have to fix it! I have to change it!"

"I can't do that," the sage said, voice grave. "I'm sorry."

"You're lying," River said with certainty in the pained silence. "You're deliberately lying and you will help her return." She approached the desk with confident steps, eyes boring into the sage's frightened ones. "I know you. And you will help us."

The sage seemed to shrink inside herself. "Dear Buddha, it's not supposed to be true. You're supposed to be dead. You're not supposed to be here, this wasn't supposed to happen." She put her hands up in prayer and began to whisper.

"I know you," River repeated, hissing at the woman. Her face was a contorted mask of anger. "I know what you've done, what you can't hide from yourself. I know the lies you perpetuate to keep yourself in the gilded ivory tower. I know the secrets to relativity and connectivity. And you will help us. You will send her back to her own time so she can correct the mistakes made."

"There were none!" the sage replied, interrupting her prayers. "This is the way it was supposed to be!"

River's palm slammed down onto the tabletop with a reverberating crack. "No."

The sage shrank down further into herself. "I can't."

"You will."

Tears sprang to the old woman's eyes. "I can't alter the time stream..."

"You will send her back. You will correct the damage done in error. You will restore reality to the form it was meant to take."

"I..."

"You will," River said, voice brooking no argument. There was the weight of knowledge in her eyes, the appearance of stars and galaxies and pure infinity behind her.

The sage shrank down into herself. "I will."

***
***

Part 3


"I'm thinking I should take that volume back up, crack its spine and refresh my memory," River murmured, oblivious to the stares she was receiving. The sage had scurried from the room as fast as she could, leaving River's stunned companions behind.

"What?" Inara asked, voice strangled.

"Sometimes even I need to read to help remind myself," she said, looking up from the book she had retrieved from the sage's shelf.

"What was that all about?" Jayne thundered.

"Someone needed to remind her of her duty," River replied placidly, tracing the book's cover with her fingers. "It's been five hundred years, after all."

"What happened five hundred years ago?" Ginny asked, voice faint. "Why didn't she want to help me?"

"She believed it would do more harm than good to send you back," River said primly. She moved to the shelves and found another small volume. She took it down to read.

"You never seemed... like that before," Jayne said somewhat lamely.

River looked up in surprise. "No?" He shook his head. "Oh. Perhaps my speech was too altered."

Jayne didn't seem to accept that explanation, but he let the topic drop.

Ginny had been turning over the sage's words in her mind. "I don't understand how sending me back would be harmful. That's where I've got to be."

"There must be a reason," Inara temporized.

"Some feel that removing then re-inserting someone into the time stream is harmful. You would pollute it with knowledge from the future. That was certainly your intent," River stated. "In her mind, you were always meant to be here. You were always meant to fail."

Ginny's eyes were wide. "That can't be true."

"I think you are exactly where you are meant to be, in the time you were meant to be." River opened the larger of the two books in her hands and looked at the glyphs on the pages. It looked like she could read it. "Sometimes things happen for a reason. Patterns and loops, whorls of fate. Nothing magic is by accident, but by sheer force of will."

"You think so?"

"I know so. That's what magic is. At its core is the ability to manipulate time and space and matter, making it dance to your will."

"Dance?" Inara asked, voice laced with confusion.

River did a pirouette as much on pointe as she could do in combat boots. "Yes."

"So does this mean you're magic?" Jayne asked after a moment.

"I don't know. But I know other witchy things."

Jayne looked to the door uneasily. He didn't like how long it was taking the sage to return. He watched River blithely take two more books from the shelves, wondering what she was up to. It might not be a good thing to leave a psychotic psychic alone in a library.

"What's taking her so long?" Ginny asked, echoing Jayne's unspoken thoughts.

"She tarries until she can work up the proper courage to refuse us again," River said, turning. She had the four books in hand. "Here, shrink these to size. I have what we need to begin again."

"You're going to take them?" Ginny asked, horrified.

"She's not reading them, so she won't miss them." River winked at Jayne. "This would not be proper crime without theft."

Jayne frowned. "It wasn't supposed ta be crime, though." He looked around, eyes falling on the desk. He caught sight of the richly decorated objects casually laid out. "I don't suppose they'll miss a thing or two, though."

"We can't!" Inara hissed, rushing to Jayne's side as he began to pocket items.

"They are actually very necessary," River insisted. "We cannot operate in a vacuum."

"What vacuum? What operation?"

"We will send Ginny back ourselves and correct the time stream."

Inara was deathly pale. "Is that even possible?"

"We send her back where we found her, by the well. It's the last vestige of the castle."

"Might be nice, livin' in a castle," Jayne mused.

"It's drafty in Gryffindor Tower," Ginny replied automatically, dazed. They were going to send her back. She would be able to go home again.

"Ginny?" Inara asked, voice almost fragile. She was frightened of magic, having grown up with stories of spells gone wrong. "We shouldn't..."

"Let's do it," Ginny said, looking at River and Inara. "Let's fix this."

***

Mr. Universe's moon was quiet and still, echoing with painful memories. River pointedly did not speak with Wash's ghost, who had been uncomfortable with returning there. Ginny hadn't been to the bridge at all, so River was unable to tell if she was the only one able to see ghosts. Ginny had spoken of the House ghosts at Hogwarts, but magic worked differently. River's gifts were a hollow shell compared to Ginny's magic, even in its muted and subdued capacity. If she had the same ability to manipulate matter... Well, that was likely what the Academy had been trying to recreate. Imagine a troupe of psychic and magical assassins. Imagine the damage done without a touch, without a trace to track down.

She would have been truly dangerous if they had been able to unlock the secrets to magic.

River led the way to the stone well, still full of water. Ginny shivered at the sight of it, an innocuous pile of rock that had nearly killed her. She still remembered kicking against the dark water, lungs filling with fluid and heart filling with panic. She remembered thinking she was about to die. "It looks like Trelawney's tower," she murmured. Then she looked up at Mal and Zoe, who were watching her warily. "But smaller. Kind of."

"That a person?" Zoe asked. Her voice was full of harsh edges and pain, and Ginny hadn't felt comfortable asking after its source.

"Was, I guess. She taught Divinations." At their blank look, Ginny hurried to explain. "The ways to tell the future. Tea leaves, crystal balls, tarot cards, dowsing... We all used to say it was all rot, but she might have been right after all. She once told me my future was full of travel and water, and that I had to be careful of water."

"Your element is fire," River said, extending the shrunken books toward Ginny. "Of course you would have to be careful of water. But it will also have to be careful of you."

"Engorgio," Ginny said, pointing her wand at the books. They enlarged to full size in River's hands, and she could hear the gasps from the others. Inara and Jayne had seen what magic could do, however weak it was. The others hadn't.

"Can we do this?" Simon asked, brow furrowed. He turned to each of the others in turn. "I mean, she's the only one that's magic, and she's the one that has to go back. How will the rest of us perform the spell if we haven't got any magic?"

"We'll have enough," River said with certainty. "We can do this."

Sometimes I think I'm dreaming, Ginny thought, watching River begin to chalk a large circle around the well. She remembered Hermione doing the same thing – it had been three weeks ago, Ginny wanted to say, three weeks and five hundred years – and the sound of chalk on stone was somewhat comforting. Ron, let me do this. You won't get it right, and something will go frightfully wrong, Hermione had said.

Yes, something had all right.

But maybe something good would come out of it. Ginny thought of the kiss she had shared with River, the memory of Draco the other girl had pulled from her lips. Her lips ached to be kissed again. She closed her eyes and thought of Draco. Maybe he loved her after all. Maybe River would find happiness with someone like Jayne if he couldn't be the one for her. Maybe Kaylee was right, and it was all a function of time and patience. Maybe the three weeks she had spent in time and space would help her realize all that she could be.

She wasn't as weak as her family sometimes thought she was. She wasn't the one that had to be hidden away so Harry could go off and save the Wizarding World. She wasn't the one that had to be left behind because she couldn't contribute.

Ginny opened her eyes and saw River chalking glyphs around the circle. They were the same as Hermione's glyphs, and her wrist movements were the same. Who had River been descended from? Would it be too much to hope that something of Hermione had survived five hundred years? Would it be too much to hope that something could be done to save the past?

Sometimes it's a girl that's a savior, not a boy, River had said. She had also been certain that Ginny had come to the future for a reason.

River held the book in her hands and began to chant, the same way Ron had done. Even so, you're not the same. Nothing's the same. I'm not the same girl that came running forward. The girl that's racing back is different, sure she can win this.

River met Ginny's eyes as she chanted, and the others were clustered behind her. Ginny could see Serenity behind them, and she could remember the feel of the bed she had slept on for the past three weeks. It had felt like the Burrow when she was caught up in dreams. It had been a home of sorts, someplace safe to be.

I've lost myself again but found a friend to understand and wrap me up and keep me safe and this time I know I won't get hurt...

The spell lines rose from the floor, much as they had five hundred years ago when Ron had chanted the spell. River's voice was sure and clear. She knew what she was doing.

Tom, I won't let you break me. It doesn't matter what name you have now or what you look like. It's over, it's done. I won't be frightened of you anymore.

The spell lines rapidly shrunk inward and wrapped themselves around Ginny.

I had friends here. They protected me like family. They were better than you were. I won't be afraid of you, Tom. I won't hide anymore. I'll do what needs to be done to take you down. I know your weaknesses...

The spell lines pressed inward, pushing out her breath. She thought they looked like letters, but she wasn't sure what words they were spelling out. Maybe it was a trick of the mind as she lost oxygen. It hadn't looked like letters the last time.

And then the spell lines whipped out as she lost consciousness.

***

"Someone care to explain what in blazes is goin' on here?!"

Ginny rolled over onto her side and then pushed herself up onto all fours. She opened her eyes once she realized she was kneeling on stone.

She was in Great Hall at Hogwarts, kneeling within Hermione's old spell circle. The chalk was faded, and one of the walls had been completely blasted away. It hadn't been like that before! she thought in a panic.

The Serenity crew was standing around the faded circle, the ship just behind them all in the courtyard. Ginny looked from their confused and angry faces to the destroyed castle around them. "What happened?"

River shut the book after she looked over the spell. "Your friend did not understand the full effect of the spell she had chosen."

"Say what?" Mal thundered. "You sayin' we're stuck here, now?" He didn't even wait for her reply. "Oh no, that ain't happening. We're finding someone magical here to send us right back to where we ought to be."

"We ought to be right here," River said placidly. She smiled at the captain and then turned to Ginny. "The spell brings participants where they need to go to fulfill their destinies. Ginny was meant to come forward in order to bring us back."

Mal stalked forward and grabbed the book from River's hands. Simon rushed forward to defend her, but Kaylee pulled him back. Mal squinted at the text. "What in blazes does this thing say? I can't even tell what are letters."

"It's written in ancient Greek." River said placidly. "I can also read English, Latin, French, Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese and Esperanto."

"What's Esperanto?"

"Some made up language," Jayne supplied helpfully. All eyes swung his way. "What? Mattie an' I learned it as kids. Was fun confusin' folks back home."

River grinned and took the book back from Mal. "Languages are delightful things, full of stories within the text and context. I have always enjoyed the form of language as much as its content and means of delivery."

Mal shook his head, regretting he had even asked. "Lookit, we can't stay here."

"We have to find out what's happened since I left," Ginny said, voice firm. "I obviously didn't come back to the same point in time. So something needs to be done. I can't imagine that we're so far into my future that there's no magic."

"That means what?" Zoe asked, checking for her pistol at her hip. She looked at the missing wall with a weary look. "If your magic can do that..."

"But everyone's vulnerable to something," she insisted, taking out her wand. "I've been taking lessons from Tonks..." She muttered something subvocally, and a ghostly image of a map appeared in front of her. There was a group of blue dots off to the left of it. "There's some people out there we might be able to talk to. Hopefully it's even one of ours."

"What in Buddha's name is that?" Zoe asked, hand securely over her pistol.

"It's a map that tracks whoever might be close by. Death Eaters with the Dark Mark would show up red. Neutrals are blue and known Order members are white."

"So this blue thing could also be people that don't have that mark," Mal said, eyes narrowing. "It's a neat trick, but can still fail."

"Yes, but it's better than nothing," Ginny insisted, dropping her wand. The map vanished. "The dots are in the kitchens, so I doubt it's too many unaffiliated Death Eaters. It's likely the house elves still hanging about."

"The what?" Mal asked, blinking.

"It's best if I show you. Oh, and mind the portraits. They move and talk, too. It's a little odd if you're not used to magical portraits." Ginny paused. "Some of them might know what's happened here, too."

Most of Serenity's crew blinked in surprise, but followed Ginny. This was her world, now, and she would know what was safe and what wasn't.

River danced along the stones, as best as she could in her combat boots. When she tried to take them off, Simon absolutely forbid it. Kaylee shook her head at River, and patted her shoulder gently. "We'll get you some dancing shoes somewhere, okay?" Kaylee had offered. "If there was a battle here, you'd never know if there was splinters or glass or something."

"Fair enough," River had conceded. So she danced down the hallway in her combat boots, the skirt to her red dress filling out around her. Some of the portraits watched her, amused, and raced amongst each others' frames to talk to one another.

Ginny led them down the twins' entrance into the kitchens. Sure enough, there were a dozen house elves scurrying about, cooking an army's worth of food. Some of them stopped still once they saw Ginny enter the kitchens.

"Who are you cooking for?" she asked, looking around. "There are no students."

"Order orders," one of them piped up. "There must be food, there must be services. We place it on the table–" the elf pointed over to a large table off in a nook to the side of the kitchens "–and it goes where it is needed. Order Headquarters, Saint Mungo's, Ministry Headquarters. Whatever needs it at the moment."

Ginny's heart leaped. "Where was the last meal sent?"

"Can't tell. But there's another meal due! Must work!"

The elf scurried back into the kitchens, and Ginny smiled. She inhaled the scent of the food, mouth watering. There was an easy way to contact others, then. The table was likely spelled to receive foodstuffs only; she would never have allowed it to carry people, in case that would be a mode of attack. She still remembered the Room of Requirement ploy the Death Eaters had used, and had no doubt that the others did as well.

Ginny snatched up a linen napkin from the pile in the corner of the kitchens and Summoned ink and a quill. Once it zoomed into the kitchen, amazing Serenity's crew, she quickly wrote a small note on the napkin. She placed it on the charmed table and watched as it disappeared into flames to one of three destinations.

"A man destined to burn can never drown."

Ginny looked at River quizzically. You said I was meant for fire and I nearly did drown anyway, Ginny thought.

"Silver eyes won't drown, though they will come close," River murmured, turning to the kitchen wall. "It will certainly feel like drowning in oblivion, though he will be far from it. He fears for his soul. He fears that if that line is crossed, he will never return." She looked at a portrait and poked at the canvas. The portrait's inhabitants, a field full of wild horses, began to run about in frightened circles. They calmed down after a moment, and the head of the herd even let River stroke its mane gently. "This is a most curious kind of magic. I am quite intrigued by its manifestations. The artists certainly were able to change the laws of physics as well as space and time. Which all blend together in any event."

"River, stop touching that," Simon said, touching her elbow. Reluctantly, River dropped her hand from the painting.

"I hope they get here soon," Ginny murmured. "I can't tell how much time passed or if there's any kind of danger here."

"The red eyes... Red is for the fires that burn there, but he is not really full of life as he would wish to be. If no one else can see that he's human, then maybe he isn't, not really. He says he doesn't wish to be, but he does. There is no meaning if he isn't human, and there is no purpose to his struggles if he cannot outlast the last of the humans that had once mattered to him. He is very human, indeed."

Ginny shivered. "I didn't tell you anything about him."

"You didn't have to," River said with a smile. "I feel him here. His imprint lies within the walls of this space, in the air. He has left his mark and I can feel it."

"Can you not be so creepifying?" Jayne muttered, shaking his head. Ginny frowned at him, vaguely aware that Kaylee was as well. So much for that pairing, then. She had hoped that maybe River could at least get a date or two out of it, so she could see what it was like. It hadn't seemed like too much to ask for at the time.

River blinked owlishly. Ginny was suddenly reminded more of Luna, and hoped fiercely that her friend was all right.

There was a quick trio of popping sounds, and Ginny turned around.

They were greeted by a skinny woman with a ripped brown leather jacket over a black jumpsuit, purple hair and sparkling blue eyes. "Wotcher, Ginny," she said cheerfully, wand in hand. Two men in black suits were behind her, wands at the ready. The woman raised a hand to the two men behind her as she surveyed Ginny's companions.

"How long was I gone?" Ginny asked, forcing her voice into an even tone.

Tonks grinned rather rakishly. "Long enough to throw Ron and your Mum into a tizzy. Come on, then. We're off to the new HQ. Hermione's gone into a right fit, trying to figure out what happened. Nobody's been able to figure it out."

"She had forgotten to translate the rest of the directions from the ancient Greek," River supplied helpfully. All eyes swung toward her, but she smiled easily. "It sends the participant where she is most needed, not where she wants to go."

"I suppose there's names and whatnot we'll be collecting?" Tonks asked, eyeing them all. The two men behind her eyed everyone warily, hands tight around their wands. Mal didn't like the way they looked, but figured that the wands could probably spell more damage to them before he even got his gun out of his holster.

"There's a reason and a purpose, and all things have come round the way it should be. We all will serve a means and an end," River said with a friendly smile. She rushed forward and extended her hand. It startled the two men, but Tonks held her ground. "River Jade Tam. I am most pleased to meet you, Nyphadora Tonks. We have traveled a great way by most difficult means, even for the spell."

The woman flushed as she shook River's hand. She was aware of the stares of the others, and was used to it even as it made her uncomfortable. "Right. River, then. I'm Tonks, though, if you don't mind."

"Won't it be Lupin?" River asked quizzically, cocking her head to the side. Tonks glared at Ginny, who looked just as amazed.

"All right. You've got a lot to answer for," Tonks said to Ginny. There was an edge to her voice that wasn't there before, but it wasn't out of meanness; now she was down to business. Mal and Zoe were comforted by that tone; they were used to dealing with the law. Jayne bristled somewhat, and Simon and Kaylee just seemed confused. Inara appeared resigned, and merely kept her hands clasped in front of her. "Gather up, everyone. I'm sure there's a good reason for all this, and we're going to find out. The room we're going to is charmed six ways to Sunday, so don't think of trying anything silly."

"What does being charmed mean?" Simon asked, confused. Kaylee shrugged in confusion while River giggled behind her hand. Simon shot River an annoyed look, but remained silent. Simon was sure that River didn't have any sense of the gravity of the situation.

"Ginny, did you bring us a pack of Muggles?" Tonks asked, taking something wrapped out of her coat pocket.

Ginny flushed but stood her ground. "There is more to this crew than you would think just looking at them. You of all people should know that about looks."

Tonks looked surprised for a moment, then nodded. "Right then. I'll let you do the explaining once we've gotten there."

One of the men in the black suits looked at Tonks. "You better know what you're doing. We know nothing about them."

Ginny's eyes flashed. "I'm a full member of the Order. I trust them with my life. They saved me from drowning and they know how to handle themselves."

Mal and Zoe exchanged looks. Jayne did his best to look menacing, staring at the two men in black suits, hand over the gun at his hip. He knew his best girls were locked up tight in his bunk on Serenity, which wasn't that far away. At least he knew these strangers couldn't go getting into his things at their leisure. Mal had made sure it was harder to break into Serenity, and Kaylee had installed time-controlled locks on everything. The ship should be locked up tighter than a drum by the time the strangers tried to look in.

"Right, then," Tonks said, voice deliberately cheerful. "Gather up, everybody linking hands. Once I touch the Portkey, we're set to go."

"Portkey?" Kaylee asked, looking around. She linked hands with Simon and River, who grasped Ginny's hand as well. Inara caught Simon's other hand, and reached out for Zoe. Zoe linked to Mal, who wound up linking hands with Jayne. Tonks linked an arm with Ginny and caught up her other arm with Jayne's. Tonks gave a meaningful look to the two men in black. "Hey, aren't they coming with us?"

"They're going to check out the perimeter. Hogwarts has been abandoned since the attack a few months ago. We'll want to be sure that nobody followed you here."

"Trust us, lady," Jayne began, shaking his head. "Ain't nobody could've followed us from where we came from."

"Just the same, we're going to be safe." The two men left the kitchens, and then Tonks smiled at everyone. "All righty, then. Here we go."

She let the cloth drop from the portkey, an old beer mug, and grasped it by its handle. There was an odd tugging sensation from everyone's bellies, and then time and space seemed to contort around them again.

River's laughter was the only thing left behind in the kitchens.

***
***

Part 4


The room was filled with armed Order members. While Ginny understood the need for caution logically, her heart shattered at the sight. The feel of River squeezing her hand in support brought her back to herself, and she lifted her chin. She could steel herself to her duty. It wasn't that hard. She had been determined to do so for some time.

Questions were fired back and forth, but Ginny tuned them out. Most of them were for Tonks anyway, and she was too busy reorienting herself.

"Ginny!" Hermione cried behind her.

Ginny slowly turned, dropping her arm from Tonks'. She kept River's hand clutched tight in hers.

"It's been three months!" Hermione continued, pushing her way to the front. Ginny had never been so glad to see her, but somehow couldn't bring herself to leave center stage just yet. "We've thought the spell didn't work and that we've lost you."

Ginny thought of the sage's words, that Hermione had pulled aside a library and set in motion a collective of sorts that would keep word of her throughout the ages. Would she have done such a thing within three months?

What a silly thought. Of course she would.

"I can let the others know you're safe. We've been keeping word out to look for you," Hermione continued. Ginny could see that she was nervous; Hermione was at her most silent or her most chatty if she was nervous.

"I'm fine," Ginny said. She looked at River briefly, and the other girl let go of her. She stepped forward and hugged Hermione. "Have you set aside people looking for me?"

"Of course! Their main purpose was actually the library," Hermione said briskly. "We managed to salvage Hogwarts' library after the attack. I couldn't just leave it there after all that. Who knows what's buried in the Restricted Section that they'd want?"

"You should keep it separate and safe somewhere," Ginny said with a nod. "Don't even tell them I'm back, or else they'll lose their vigilance."

"Oh, heavens, you're right," Hermione said, blinking with surprise. "I won't tell Hannah that you're back, then. She and Justin took the library and hid it somewhere." Hermione looked over Ginny's shoulder, where she could see the others. River was watching them closely. "Who are all of them? What are they doing here?"

Ginny sighed. "It's a bit of a story. Once the others are done with questions, I'll tell you."

Hermione searched Ginny's face. "Are you all right?"

Ginny blinked in surprise. "Of course I am."

She nodded and pulled away. "All right. I'll wait. I'll let Ron and your Mum know. They're away at the moment. We didn't expect to hear from you."

"We'll go over everything," Ginny said, and watched as Hermione left the room. She returned to the circle, where she could see Mal getting more and more impatient.

"Not everyone enjoys stories," River murmured.

Ginny thought of the diary from her first year, and all the damage it had done. She thought of the newspapers and gossip columns through the years. She thought of Harry's potions book from last year, with its notes in the margins.

"No. Especially not the good ones."

River nodded, and Ginny found comfort in the fact that someone could understand her.

***

There was some measure of quiet once everything was settled. Ginny had been afraid to ask what had happened to Draco in the three months since she had been gone. No one had known that he had meant anything to her, and she didn't want them to. He was her secret, jealously guarded and kept close to her heart. It didn't matter if he would shatter it with a glance, or grind her beneath the hell of one expensive boot. She had already tried for the fairy tale and had watched it fall away from her half formed. Harry had been her girlhood dream, but a disaster of a romance. She had tried to say that it was the war, but couldn't fool herself for long. Her ideal of Harry didn't exist. He was a seething ball of emotion that didn't have room for someone else's messy psyche interfering with his. He didn't have room for the reality of her, just the illusion of her. Ginny now knew that she couldn't live with a sham of a relationship.

River sat beside her in the room that she had been assigned. Ginny had ostensibly been the tour guide in the room assignments, having known this older headquarters building before she had left. Their new headquarters was a network of rooms and hallways branching off from a center one by means of portkey doors and complex webs of spells that Ginny had never understood. It made their headquarters more spread out and harder to find, since it was impossible to find any one central knot of Order members.

"You don't have to feel responsible for us," River murmured, looking at her fingertips. She was shivering with cold, and the skin beneath her nails was slightly purple with it. "I'm sure we'll be able to find our own way. And once we've done whatever it is we're meant to do, the spell will allow us to return properly."

"You're taking this awful calmly."

"How else could I be?" River blew on her fingertips. "I knew this might happen. But you had to come back and do what needed to be done. Your destiny cannot be left unfulfilled."

Ginny caught hold of River's hands and rubbed them in hers. "We'll have to get you a coat. It's winter in this part of the world."

"This is the winter of our discontent."

"That sounds familiar."

"From history. It's all history. Like the surface of the moon where they walked not long before in your time, or the land between here and the mountains. There is history in the air, and we shape it as it moves."

"Why do you talk that way?" Ginny asked, knowing she had asked it a dozen times on Serenity.

"I think in metaphor. I can't help but speak in the same semblance of language."

"The others aren't comfortable with you," Ginny said, looking down at River's hands. "I think that's part of it."

"The other is what these hands are capable of. They were trained to do many frightening things, Ginny. Don't forget that."

Ginny looked River in the eye. "Maybe that's why you're here."

River blinked in surprise. "Me?"

"Yes, you. You speak in riddles and you know things. You can do things. Jayne said that a mercenary wouldn't be frightened of the things you can do with weapons. Maybe that's why the spell brought you here, so you can help us."

"You spoke of me to Jayne? Why?"

Ginny blinked. "Um... Well, Kaylee and I were talking about boys. I said you didn't have one."

"No. Boys aren't good for me," River said with a definite shake of her head. "Boys would be scared of me. Men might not fear me, but boys would. Boys would run and hide." She stood up and smiled definitively at Ginny. "We should find your silver-eyed boy. You should see him again and speak with him. You've been lonesome for his company for some time. He's here somewhere, isn't he?"

"I don't know," Ginny murmured. "But we can find out while we find you better clothes for the weather around here."

"Yes. Shivering would waste too much energy and my flesh would shrink."

"Um. Yeah. That, too. Come on."

Ginny led River through the portkey corridors, knowing where Central Processing would be. She was bound to find some warm clothing for River, as well as nice enough jacket that would keep her warm. The room had blankets for the evening, but if River was going to do any kind of exploring with her, she needed a jacket.

They had fun going through Central Processing's stores, finding things that fit River better than any of the hand me downs she currently owned. "Here, this should look great on you," Ginny said, handing over a red sweater with yellow flowers embroidered on the hem of the sleeves. As River took it from her, Ginny thought she could see a flash of silver blonde hair out of the corner of her eyes. She whipped around, then froze in place.

"Talk to him," River whispered gently, giving Ginny's back a push.

Ginny found herself stumbling forward, looking for that flash of silver blonde. He was here, he was all right. He hadn't gotten himself killed and he was still affiliated with the Order. Maybe things would work themselves out and the twisting, tangling feeling in her gut could finally be silenced.

"Draco," Ginny said once she found him. She was just a touch breathless, as if saying his name had been a forbidden talisman.

His eyes were flat gray instead of stunning quicksilver. "I thought I heard that you'd returned," he said, his voice completely emotionless.

Ginny's heart fluttered wildly in her chest, a caged thing yearning to break free. He feels that to protect you is to push you away, River had said a lifetime ago. "I'm glad to see you here," she said, her own voice cool. It betrayed none of her panic, though she knew her freckles had to be standing out against her too pale skin.

His eyes flicked across her face for the briefest of moments. "You should get back to your family. They were worried."

"They know I'm here. Hermione saw me when I returned. We had to be debriefed, and I had to help River get settled in better."

"River?" Draco asked, brow crinkling. "A new operative?"

"Something like that. Part of the help I've brought back. We're friends."

Draco's face shut back down. "You have a lot of those."

"She's here, if you want to meet her. She's really only just arrived, so she only knows me."

"How generous," Draco said, tone unreadable. "I'm on my way out."

"Stay a moment, please," Ginny asked, hoping the desperation didn't show itself in her voice. "I would like it if you met her. It can be terribly lonely here."

His eyes flashed the warning his lips would never make. "No, I can't."

"Just a moment," Ginny asked, reaching for his hand. It fell through her fingers, and she felt as if she had touched ice. "Please, Draco."

His eyes moved just past Ginny for a moment. "It seems she's found us."

River dropped her chin onto Ginny's shoulder. "Draconis domesticus dificile. Moth wings drawn close to flame, burning up from the outside in."

"River, this is Draco."

He eyed River warily as she moved gracefully around Ginny, who had remained standing still almost awkwardly. He nodded at her, and watched as she extended a hand in greeting. He didn't move, intending to let her falter and withdraw the offer.

Instead, she lifted an eyebrow at him. "Is it not proper to extend a similar round of greeting and felicitations for opportune meetings? Even if it is not heartfelt, it is expected."

Draco responded to the gentle chastise, which sounded as arch as his mother's tones would have been. She was a cultured one, even if she didn't appear that way now. "Forgive me, this is hardly a most proper introduction."

Ginny bristled and River stepped forward with a deep curtsey. "Ma Foi is forgiven. C'est bon, all is well is once more." She smiled sunnily at the two teens in front of her, as if she was unaware of the tension between them. "Perhaps we may dine together this evening, and speak of times other than these? It would prove most distracting and beneficial for a introductory meeting. And perhaps there shall be other tales to tell?"

"I've other plans this evening," Draco replied, backing up slightly. He didn't like how River intruded a hair too close for his liking. Ginny instinctively hovered just outside his invisible shell, unsure whether or not he would rebuff her for trying to come closer.

"You don't have any," River said flatly, shaking her head. "And truly, I would like to hear more of this time and place. There is bound to be many places where my knowledge is deficient and would improve from the telling."

"That's hardly my place, is it?" Draco began, backing up a full step. "I've got to go."

"Coward," River hissed so softly. Draco almost thought he imagined it, and stared at her turning back, dumbfounded. She looked at Ginny's stricken face. "Perhaps I was in error when I told you what I did. We should shift our attentions elsewhere. Maybe I've been wanting something special for a change, but this isn't it."

Draco bristled at the veiled insult. "You..."

River grasped Ginny by the hand and pulled her back into the racks. Draco watched them disappear from view, too stunned to make a move.

I've lost everything, he thought, feeling his stomach drop out from under him. He didn't know why and didn't care.

Mouth dry, he went off in search of Hermione. She was a Mudblood, and it galled him to no end that he would have to go through her. But she would know where Ginny was staying and planning to be.

And she would likely know who this River person was.

Ginny waited until they had left Central Processing and were safely ensconced in River's room before opening her mouth to vent. Her mother would have been proud; Molly was constantly telling her that she had to hold her tongue more.

"You were getting desperate," River said, cutting off her rant. It was eerie and uncanny, but it completely defused Ginny's argument. "It would have completely shut him down and driven him further away."

Ginny pushed River's new clothes aside and sighed. "I just can't get this right. Merlin, this must be perfectly laughable."

"You're seventeen and in love," River said, voice sad. "He's eighteen and sure he's all wrong for you. Why should you have expected it to go easily? All worthy things require effort. He won't value you if you offer yourself so cheaply."

Ginny groaned and covered her face in her hands. "You sound like my mother telling me not to date boys."

"You need something to compare this to, so I would not offer such impractical advice," River said, voice crisp. She paused thoughtfully. "Though this is quite contrary to the marital expectations I would have had to fulfill. I'm not sure what this says about me, that I'm so willing to push them aside as well."

"What would you have to have done? Sit and wait?"

"I would have married someone socially and financially appropriate that my family had beneficial ties to. The alliance is fiscal and kindred related, as well as for mutual profit. My emotional ties would not have been necessary." River sighed. "A girl can dream, though. I might have been tied to someone nice."

"All this tying up," Ginny sighed. "Can't these things ever be simple? All I want is something real, something mine and just for me."

River shook her head. "Emotions are wily, intangible things."

Ginny shook her head. "Look at me. I promised myself I'd never pine over someone ever again, and what am I doing? Pining. And ignoring you. Come on, let's get these things on you so you can stop shivering like a leaf."

I am a leaf on the wind, River thought, allowing Ginny to pull off the thin red dress from her slender frame. Watch me soar.

"You told me that ghosts are visible here," River murmured, shivering in the cold.

"Did you see one at the shop?" Ginny asked, rummaging through the pile for something appropriate for River.

"No, just thinking."

"Oh. They look like faint blue images of what they used to be. It's awful chilly when they float through you."

"They can't manifest as solid?"

"Nope." Ginny picked up a red wool blouse and a white skirt with large red roses on it. "Loud, but it suits you." She smiled as River pulled on the clothing quickly. "If that skirt was gold, I'd say you were in Gryffindor colors."

"I'd rather be like a flame."

Ginny thought on that for a moment. "Bright until the end."

River's smile was wide and genuinely pleased. "Exactly."

"Okay, let's go meet my mum. I warn you, she'll want to plump you up right quick. But I think you'll like her. She's nearly everyone's mum now. My dad was off doing something for the new Ministry, and it sounded like he was still gone."

River smiled at Ginny and put on the dark brown jacket that was offered. She still had her same combat boots on, since they hadn't found any shoes that fit. Ginny had resorted to tailoring charms, which had helped them stay in place better. River hadn't found the dancing shoes that Kaylee had promised she could have, but it was only a matter of time.

With magic, there was always enough time.

***

Everyone was clustered in the main gathering hall. Some witches and wizards spared no time in trying to glean impressions of the future. The Serenity crew for the most part was mindful of the fact that they had no idea what kind of impact they were making on reality. "I could even unmake my own grandparents if I say the wrong thing!" Jayne said at one point. "And I don't know what that stuff is in the glass, but if there's more of it..."

"Butterbeer? There's loads," one man said. He had red hair, freckles across his face and an easy grin. Jayne thought his name was Charlie, but couldn't remember his last name.

"Good. Keep it comin'," Jayne had said cheerfully. "I can tell you 'bout stuff, but I don't know if it's worth a good goddamn."

"Well, I didn't think it could hurt to try."

Mal and Zoe were more taciturn, and often leveled icy glares at others that tried to interrupt their whispered conversation. Kaylee and Simon were chatting with a pair of redheaded twins, a spacey blonde girl and a boy with brown hair, full teeth and an easygoing demeanor. Inara was speaking with an older woman with a Scottish accent. Inara appeared enchanted by the conversation. Ginny and River were seated near Ron, Hermione and Molly. Silver eyes tracked Ginny's every movement, every smile. She never looked up at him.

He got up from his seat in the back corner of the dining hall and slipped from the room. He wasn't very hungry in a place like this. He knew he was watched by at least a dozen Aurors, waiting for him to slip and do something stupid. He knew that nobody trusted him. He knew he had made a mistake, and they were all still punishing him for it.

Draco locked himself into his empty bedroom. The room could have belonged to anyone. There were no personal belongings in the room; he had left almost everything behind. There was a Gringotts key on a chain around his neck, a Dark Mark on his arm and the memory of a kiss seared onto his lips.

He looked into the mirror above his sink in the alcove bathroom. His eyes were the color of a winter's sky, overcast and threatening to storm. He thought of warm chocolate brown eyes asking him the questions he had been too afraid to answer. He thought of how they looked when he had pushed her away. Three months had done nothing but sharpen the memory, and he had memorized every expression on her face.

When I dream at night, I see your eyes holding me still. I hate the way they make me feel, he thought, pushing away from the mirror. She didn't know, couldn't know. And if he had his way, she would never know.

His eyes were like ice, and his hands felt almost frozen into claws. He could tear his throat out, and no one would care. He had sacrificed everything he had ever known. His mother was in hiding, somewhere only McGonagall knew, and even then that bargain had been difficult to make. I can't be certain of your loyalties. You care for your family, but I don't think you would ever count our number among them. What would it take for you to betray us as well? she had asked, eyes piercing through to the empty core of him. She had waited for him to say something, to use his rhetoric skills to deny her.

He hadn't. He had simply sat there, eyes focused on the bridge of her glasses. I have no way to prove myself, he had said simply, voice soft and as passive as he could ever make it. He didn't know how to break his own arrogance. I want my mother safe, and I want out. The Headmaster... Draco had licked his lips and looked away. He had been right. I didn't know what it meant. Everyone made it sound important. I wanted to be important. I was supposed to be important, and it never happened that way.

McGonagall had nodded crisply. Evil always lies, Mr. Malfoy, she had said. It reminded him of being in her Transfigurations class. I expect you to do your part in this, but I cannot promise you that you will be trusted. You walk a dangerous path, and I do not envy your position. Her voice had sounded almost sorry, and he had looked up at her then. It is a difficult thing to betray your conscience. I am glad that you haven't yet crossed that bridge, as empty a victory it feels at this moment. Looking back one day, you will be glad of it. But youth doesn't have the same value for steadfastness as the aged do. But I for one am glad that you have found a core of strength within you. You'll need it for the days to come.

He had believed her, damn him. He had thought he could do this.

"I can't do this," Draco told his reflection.

He was startled to see River standing behind him, bent bobby pins in hand. "I broke your locks," she said quietly. She didn't look sorry, and didn't apologize.

"Why are you here?"

"She needed me," River said simply, shrugging. "You told her you didn't love her when you do, and you tell her she's useless when she isn't. You touched her skin and thought she was beautiful but she shouldn't mean a thing to you." She watched as all semblance of color fled from Draco's skin with her pronouncement. He opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out. "And so you've learned to be as faithless as the generations before you, telling yourself you would be content with keeping apart. You thought it would bring comfort."

"What are you doing here?" Draco managed to choke out.

"And it was always horribly convenient before, wasn't it? The lack of emotion? Detachment serves its purposes at times."

Draco rushed forward, but she effortlessly flipped him around and away from her. He landed harmlessly on the bed. He hadn't even thought to use his wand, and was cursing himself for his foolishness now. He drew it, and found that River hadn't moved a muscle.

"Don't rip the wings from your butterfly," River murmured, voice gentle.

"What are you on about?" he demanded, voice drawn and haggard.

"Or perhaps you think her a moth. Perhaps you are a moth as well. He might get burned but he's in the game, and he can't go back. He's struck by the flame and can't deny the need, but he would deny himself and let it devour him whole."

"You're talking nonsense," Draco said, voice harsh. "Speak some sense."

"Ginny," River murmured, watching Draco's face go still. "You've hurt her."

"She's better off without me," he said grudgingly. If she was a friend of Ginny's, then maybe she would just accept it and go away.

She didn't.

"You're sorry you kissed her? You're sorry you met her? You're sorry you made her fall in love with you? Then you a sorry boy indeed. I shouldn't have thought you a man, then."

Draco flushed. "What do you want?"

Her face softened. "She deserves to be happy, doesn't she? And if you make her happy, why would you deny that? Why would you deny it to yourself?"

"You don't understand what you're talking about."

She shook her head and headed for the door. "I know only too well. Do you?"

"Wait! How did you get in here?" He watched as she opened the door and stepped into the hallway. "I warded that door myself. You shouldn't have been able to get in."

Her smile was enigmatic. "Don't you know? I'm a witch."

He watched her disappear in amazed silence.

***
***

Part 5

The Serenity crew seemed to be getting along with Order members, even if they were somewhat confused by the purpose they would serve. Draco watched them at mealtimes and impromptu meetings, and there didn't seem to be a strange one amongst the bunch beside River. She kept by Ginny's side mostly, and the two were whispering between themselves. He couldn't get close enough to hear, and any spell would have been obvious.

Malfoys didn't stalk girls. They didn't have to... shouldn't have to.

Draco left the main hall angrily. This was ridiculous. The slip of a girl shouldn't have affected him this way. He was a Malfoy. He was better than this indecision. The corridors shifted as he walked through them, and he cursed himself for his stupidity. This was one more indignity that he didn't want to suffer.

He ran into Ginny. Literally.

She was standing beneath a window built into the magical hallway, charmed to let in light from some Equatorial place so it wouldn't seem so wintry and depressing in the base. The sunlight set her hair on fire, all the lit golden threads forming a halo around her pale face. Her eyes were wide and luminous, comfortable places he could have fallen into.

"Oh," she said faintly, her hands coming together in a nervous action. Draco watched her clench her fingers together.

"Where's your shadow?" Draco asked, and could have kicked himself for the rude tone he used.

"River's speaking with Pro–" She broke herself off with a faint embarrassed smile. "With Minerva McGonagall. She wanted to discuss some things."

"Where are you going?" Draco asked in a kinder tone.

"I was looking for my mum. Fleur wasn't feeling well..." She stopped herself and gave him another one of her faintly embarrassed smiles. Draco wished he could touch her, something to make her more at ease with herself around him again. When had he done this? When had he set her down this path? "I'm sure you don't want to hear it."

"I can go with you."

Her wide eyes were full of surprise. He could still throw her off kilter; he idly wondered if this was a good thing or not. "Sure. I was going to my room to write her a letter."

Ginny took Draco's proffered arm. His heart sang at the contact. All wasn't lost yet, then. There was still hope if he wanted to go that route.

"What happened exactly?" Draco found himself asking. "No one would tell me, and I couldn't ask anyone about it."

No, that would have been telling. By unspoken agreement, neither had spoken of the other during the entire awkward dance of looks and stolen kisses and longing. Ginny had kept it as a jealously guarded secret, something real she could hold onto when it seemed as though her world shifted around on its axis. It was emotion, it was feeling, it was living. It was more than she seemed to be doing before the war spiraled out of control.

"I was having those nightmares," Ginny murmured. "The ones I told you about..."

"No more bad dreams tonight, promise me," Draco responded automatically, glancing at her intensely. He could see the circles beneath her eyes, not dark yet. She had only recently stopped sleeping due to worry, then.

She smiled at him then, the same smile she used to give him before he had driven her away. His stomach dropped to his toes even as his heart caught in his throat. Merlin, she looked beautiful when she smiled at him like that.

"It was a while ago. I couldn't let the nightmares win. I had to do something, anything they'd allow me to do. I couldn't be locked up and not do something to help if I could. So I agreed to go to the future to find the information we needed to win now." Ginny shrugged helplessly. "But it didn't work that way. I went five hundred years in the future. If not for River... I would have died. I would have drowned. I didn't know... It's so different there. There's planets they live on, creatures at the edge of space that scare them. There's worries and problems and battles and war. Even the future isn't perfect and wonderful. Everyone here seems to think that it'll get better with time, but it's all the same even as it's different. Nothing changes, really, not how it counts."

Draco wanted to ask her what really counted, how things could stay the same even as everything changed. But he thought he could understand what she meant. She was an emotional creature, someone that felt instead of thought, someone who was guided by instinct as much as knowledge. It had attracted and repulsed him when they had first met after his defection from the Death Eaters. She was vibrant in a way no Death Eater ever was. She was different, but the strength of her beliefs was the same. She comforted even as she terrified. Draco suspected that he inspired the same kind of reaction in her.

She was smiling at him, the comfortable smile she used with River or her other friends. "I don't know what happened with the spell, but it doesn't matter. Magic didn't really survive well, but it doesn't matter. You know I used to be so afraid I was going to crumble without my family? I'm not going to make that mistake again."

"Why is it a mistake? I thought your devotion was to your family."

"It's not about them. It was never about them. I did just fine in the future once I let myself be myself. I was there for three weeks, running around with them. They were almost like a family, but they trusted that you'd do your own thing without mucking it up. You know, I couldn't do that here, not once. I had to check in with everyone. I can't go anywhere without letting people know. They're all afraid something will happen again."

Draco was only vaguely aware that something bad had happened to Ginny as a child, something involving dark magic that had scarred her. "So you're not afraid?"

"I can stand on my own two feet. I can make my own decisions. I don't have to be afraid of making a wrong choice or falling under someone's spell. I'm not as weak as they think I am." She smiled at him warmly. "Or you."

"What?" He blinked. "That... thing I said?"

She touched his face briefly. They were outside of her room now, and she would never invite him inside. "It's all right. I forgive you now."

Something vile and ugly sprang up inside of Draco. "Forgive me?"

"I'm not something to hide away and shelter, so I've forgiven you for that."

Draco pushed Ginny up against her door as she was opening it. They both tumbled inside, and Draco kicked the door shut. "You..." he sputtered, too angry to form thoughts. How could she be so calm when he was in such turmoil? How could she smile as if it had all meant nothing? How could her own friend think she had been in love with him if she could move on so quickly? He didn't mean anything at all to her, not if she was like this.

"You've never been at a loss for words before," Ginny said coolly, eyeing him strangely. "Whatever's the matter with you?"

For once in his life, he acted rather than thought first. He grasped her face in his hands and kissed her. It was like their last kiss, desperate and longing, hoping to convey all the emotions he couldn't name. He didn't know how to say what needed to be said, he didn't have the language for it that she did. He had to be controlled and masterful, and she undid all his reserves with a single glance. She didn't know it, couldn't have known it, but that didn't make it any less true. He had thought for hours on end before their last parting. He had known he was bad for her, that she deserved someone better.

Draco broke the kiss. Ginny was initially silent, eyes wide and curiously blank.

Panicked, Draco began to speak. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you cry. If you did, I mean. I tried to lie, I tried to make you run. I didn't want to be the one that was important. I'm sorry you know me at all. I'm sorry you've ever loved me. I know you deserve better. I can't be who you want me to be. I can't do this. I can't be worthy of your love, not the way you want. They will kill me if they see me again. I'm a dead man, Ginny, I can't be there for you. I want to be, but I can't, I can't. I'm sorry I started this. I'm sorry I hurt you. I'm sorry."

Ginny closed her eyes in relief and sagged against the wall. "Oh."

Draco pulled away from her. He was an idiot. He was a Stonehenge-sized idiot, an he would have to memory charm her to wipe the indignity away.

She grinned at him suddenly, and threw her arms around his shoulders. "You're barking mad, but I love you anyway."

He stilled within her embrace. "Haven't you hard a blasted thing I've said, you daft bint?"

She pressed her face against his neck, and he could feel her smile against his skin. Reluctantly, he put his arms around her as well. "I heard everything you didn't say, Draco. It's more important than what you did say, but that's important, too." She pressed a kiss against his neck, and Draco could feel himself settle into some kind of calm at her touch. "You love me, but you can't say it out loud. That's okay. As long as I know it, as long as there's something there to fight for, it's worth it. It'll work if we want it to."

Draco dropped his head so that his face was pressed into the crook of her neck as well. He had missed the scent of her. "I don't know if we should."

"It's worth saving," Ginny murmured. "Love is always worth saving."

"I don't know." Draco held her tightly, a fierce feeling threatening to burst through him. It felt almost like terror, but not quite.

"I do. I can know it for the both of us."

Draco breathed in deeply, and could almost believe it, too.

***

"What you propose, young lady, is dangerous and quite foolish."

River smiled at Minera McGonagall easily, hands around her warm mug of tea. She liked this woman. The prickly demeanor was laced with concern and caring, hope and love. She is the mother I should have had, she thought with a startling moment of clarity. The thought sobered her, and the smile faded.

"Nobody sees what's right before them. They see the shine and sparkle, they don't look up. They see only what they want to see. It's easy to hide in plain sight, it's easy to malign your own first impression to nefarious purpose." River thought of Jayne then, the startling depth he was capable of at times. He had even instructed her on such things during their shopping trip in Persephone nearly two weeks ago. River looked down at the tea cup. It was filled with fragrant jasmine at her request, which had caused McGonagall's eyebrow to hitch up splendidly. "It's easy to be a mask where there is nothing beneath it to hide."

Something in the older woman's gaze softened at the last comment. "You're still a child, whatever else you may believe about yourself."

River looked up with possibly the most haunted gaze McGonagall had ever seen. Even Harry's despair at Dumbledore's death paled in comparison. "They stripped me to bone and sinew, laid every secret bare and cut to their heart's content. They are the descendants of your Death Eaters, the dead risen up for another turn. There will always be Eaters of the Dead, those that fear death and revere it at once. There will always be darkness and light, yin and yang. Happiness can only be recognized in absence of misery and pain. There is always a duality to the universe, and there will always be balance. I was meant to upset that balance, to become a weapon of untold misery and destruction had they set me loose upon the 'verse."

"But you are not," McGonagall said, voice as crisp as ever. The accent washed over River, and she shut her eyes. Concern flowed through her, the maternal care she had never received before leaving for the Academy.

"I could have been," River murmured. "I would wish to serve a better purpose."

McGonagall sighed. "Miss Tam. I have been a teacher for many years. And while I have never had a child of my own, every child that came through Hogwarts' doors was my responsibility. So I was mother to thousands, after a sense. Do you really believe you are any different from any lost soul who had sought my help?"

River looked up, worry creasing her features. "Yes?"

"And you would be most incorrect. You're a girl," McGonagall said, voice softening. She patted River's hand gently. "A beautiful, talented, lost little girl. You're like my students. You come here searching for answers and find that there are none. You're cast adrift, searching for some kind of anchor. The best ones are those found within yourself. They stay the steadiest, the strongest. Everyone else's outside of you are so fleeting."

River caught a flash of stern gray eyes in a loving face framed by unruly red hair steering a boat in the Scottish Highlands. "Your father."

McGonagall withdrew her hand rather hastily, disconcerted. "Well, now, we're not here to discuss me, are we?"

"He loved you very much," River murmured. "There's an anchor. I don't have that."

"Nonsense. Whatever else they might have done to lead you to your predicament, hold fast to the idea that at one time, they held you in affection." River looked up, blinking in surprise. "No parent could refrain from loving their child, at least a little. Maybe they schooled themselves to not show it any longer. Maybe they knew what was to happen, maybe not. But as even you said, it's easiest not to see what you don't want to. They didn't want you to be in danger, so you weren't. It wasn't some outrageous thing. They wanted you to be safe, so you were. They wanted you to be content, so you were."

"They didn't see me."

"They didn't know you. Parents rarely do."

He didn't have magic, River realized. Her father was a Squib, and could see the potential. And he had the heart to let her go.

"But that is neither here nor there. Your plan, such as it is, is still foolish."

"But it will work," River insisted.

"I cannot allow this," McGonagall said, shaking her head firmly. "There's already been too many losses. Harry's field report stated clearly that there are three camps within easy distance of the castle. He's doing what he can, the dear boy, but there's really only so much he can do. He and his friends are very near the breaking point."

"I don't expect that we would walk away unscathed, with skin or soul intact. It is too much to wish for. But I have seen the field. I know what we can do. I have been observant and have weighted the evidences accordingly."

"I told you. A fool's errand. You don't know what their forces are capable of."

The skin of uncertainty fell from River. McGonagall was startled by the abrupt change in her demeanor. "I see the field. I see the principles. I know the hows and whys and happenstance, can see the statistics. I have seen the power they wield. They don't know of any other, and that will be their downfall, the same it was in my time."

"River..."

"He was human once. He is therefore subject to human weakness of will. He is afflicted with pride and vanity. He is now flesh and blood and bone, he can be tracked and hunted. He will rouse to the open if given sufficient bait. You have lacked a tactician of military caliber and dispassionate heart. Take the one with us. He led an army against impossible odds and survived to wield a bitter heart. His first officer is as equally skilled, concern shattered from her shell and left in pieces. Tools are to be used wisely, if used at all."

"Humans are not tools!" McGonagall shouted. "That's what I've been telling you."

"But he believes them to be." River's reply was soft, almost missed. "He tells his followers he isn't human, but he is still very human, however altered he may be. There is no meaning if he isn't human. There's no point to proving us all failures. He believes wizards and humans to be different species, but they are lost genes and sequences, difficult to replicate. He believes mortals are tools to manipulate and wield. He would show the world he isn't a mere mortal, he isn't someone to be pushed aside or ignored. He would achieve immortality and rule a world of his own making, where he is King and all conforms to his wishes." River looked up with a small smile. "Is this not an Alliance as we've dealt with?"

McGonagall sighed. "It's not that simple."

"The theory is the same. The tools, altered. But mechanics are mechanics and the structure flows by the same set of rules. They cut me in my time, formed a creature of untold skill. He would do the same with magic here. Form and function intertwine, and you cannot have one without the other." River paused. Jayne had said to keep things simple to communicate, and she had been trying so hard to do so. It seemed to be working, but it was so much effort. "We can help. It can work, because it plays to everyone's strengths and weaknesses. How better to topple a giant than to use his own weight against him?"

"We'll have to all meet, River. I still think there are flaws to your plan."

"Perhaps. But it is still solid."

McGonagall sipped her tea, a good strong English blend. "My dear, please remember you're still human, too."

River thought of the axe sliding through a Reaver's chest. She thought of the indeterminate hate and hunger coursing through them all. She thought of the paralyzing fear that had slid away at the thought of Simon or Kaylee in danger. Reavers took no prisoners. They showed no mercy, and dealt with damage, rage, mutilation and humiliation. There was no grace, no forgiveness, no rationalization, no bargaining. There was the wall between them, and there was no bridging it to find a middle ground. Us or Them.

"Every monster was, once," River murmured. "Especially me."

***

"Oh, hells no. In every possible language, no," Mal roared. The entire meeting room was stunned by the vehemence of his tone.

"We need a general to help direct us," McGonagall said evenly. She looked down the bridge of her nose as if he were an errant schoolboy. "You are definitely qualified."

"I lost enough already. We all did. And we didn't ask to get involved in no war, and this ain't our fight to fight." Mal's chin was stubbornly set in that way that Zoe recognized. It would take a minor miracle to change his mind.

"We have all lost enough. We've all lost more than anyone has any right to ask of us. And still we fight. We fight because we can't do anything else. We can't let them win, we can't let them think they're right when we know how fatally wrong they are. They seek to impose their will and their beliefs upon us and upon those without magic. They are vile, and think nothing of torture, starvation and manipulating the minds of those they consider weaker. People like you, Mr. Reynolds. Perhaps you are not from this time, but evils such as this are timeless. They are always wrong, and they must always be fought."

Mal turned to McGonagall. "Lady, you're good."

"I have to be, to keep us all alive," she said with a rueful smile. "But I'm not so good that I don't think we need help wherever we can get it. I'm asking you to help us. Not necessarily to fight with us, but to help us. Yours is a tactician's mind. As was recently pointed out, we have been sorely lacking in battle tactics. We need help."

The simple words worked better than lofty flattery. "Lemme see that map."

***

The small owl flew under cover of dark and made its way into the spelled camp. It flew until it found the intended recipient of the small letter attached to its leg.

The young man in question was thin from lack of food, but he ignored things like that easily. He knew how to deal with hunger. His companions grumbled often, but they weren't used to things like that. It was almost comical, the way they were amazed at how well he could function without magic. They sometimes forgot that he didn't grow up with such things, and that he didn't take it as much for granted as they did.

He had to fix things. Somehow the world he had come to love had come undone, and he was perpetually at the center of it. It wasn't anyone's fault, really, but it was still left up to him to save the Wizarding World. Those who sought to protect him suffered in the process, but these few currently with him refused to be pushed away. Truthfully, he was thankful for that, even as he sometimes resented it. His friends had thrown everything away to wander all through England on his quest, which had taken longer than anyone could have suspected. It had been a dangerous two years, and he could feel every one of his nerves hum with anticipation. The others didn't understand how he could function, how could stay on alert at all times. But they didn't realize the enormity of their sacrifice. They were vulnerable and could be used against him. They were all pawns in Voldemort's game, and he knew only too well how carelessly the self-styled Dark Lord threw away lives.

What aren't you telling me? We're supposed to help you, but keep pushing us to arm's length all the time. It's not helping, you know. We're in this to stay, all of us, Hermione had said with a firm nod. You can't stop us from helping you.

The owl flew off once Harry Potter retrieved Minerva McGonagall's message.

"Reinforcements have arrived. Will move in three days."

"What?" Ron sat up abruptly from where he had been trying to nap. He had only just found the camp a few hours before, narrowly missing a Death Eater attack. Still, it had been worth it to see for himself that Ginny was all right. "Move where?"

Harry crinkled the parchment that the spare note had been written on. They had previously decided on a code dependent on paper types as much as what the note said. Harry knew this kind of parchment well. The parchment was thick and not of particularly good quality. It was from a student's roll, hastily ripped off to begin writing an essay.

He smiled at Ron. "Hogwarts."

"What? But there's nothing left for them there. They've all but blasted it to the ground."

Harry shrugged. "There's enough left for something. McGonagall would never have us move there without a purpose."

"Luna's sure she knows where the last one is. If she can just figure out the riddles..."

"Let's go get Hermione, Neville and Luna. I know we're close, but we've got to act on this. We'll have to wait on finding that last horcrux. It's time we took back what's ours."

***
***

Part 6


Naming something is to recall it, to give it form and substance. It can then be controlled and dealt with accordingly. Mal certainly believed in this, and it was certainly a relief to be poring over a map with Zoe, coordinating troops and strategizing. It certainly recalled different times, when they both thought things were much simpler.

"We won't lose anyone else," he told Zoe once they were alone in the conference room. The magicians had rapidly absorbed their plan and were putting it into action. But Zoe still seemed distant, and it bothered Mal more than anything else.

"You don't know that," Zoe replied, standing from the chair she had been sitting in. The move carried with it more weariness than she had any right to have. Mal felt vaguely guilty for dragging her through all of his messes, but she had known from the start what it was like to stay by his side. He'd lost much more than she had over his short lifetime.

"Still to come is the worst part and you know it, but they'll keep it contained. And if someone's lost it won't be none of ours."

"We thought that last time, didn't we?" she said shortly. Her lips snapped shut almost angrily, as if the retort had betrayed too much. Zoe knew she shouldn't take it out on Mal; he almost didn't make it out alive on Mr. Universe's moon. He had been lucky he was still standing after the beating he had taken. But she couldn't bring herself to be sorry too much. There is a numbness inside my heart and it's growing. Soon enough I won't care about you, either, she thought almost dispassionately. She couldn't bear to lose anyone else.

"Are you sick of pretending it's all right? You wanna scream or something? I'll leave the room if that makes it easier. You've been wound up so tight lately..."

"I'll be fine, sir," Zoe snapped, eyes flashing. She let even him only so far inside.

"You expect me to believe it? You think that all this trouble is really ending? Zoe, you know how wars are..."

"I'll do the job, sir. Don't worry on that."

"That's not what I'm worried about. That's the only thing that got me to accept this crazy plan, since there sure ain't coin involved." Mal looked at her, but she refused to meet his eyes. "I'm sorry, Zoe," he said, voice even. "The way things break up when we don't expect it to... Every step you take like it's betraying the ones we miss... It's not anybody's fault. It is what it is, and it's our job to live and remember. That's the only way they live on."

She finally turned to look at him, hard faced. "You done with the sermon, sir?"

Mal sighed. "I'm here if you need anything. If you want anything. I don't know what kind of help I'd be, but I want you to know I'm here. Just in case."

"No need, sir, but it's appreciated."

He watched Zoe leave the meeting room, spine ramrod straight. Oh, she was pissed off. Still, it was an emotion he could deal with better than grief, and it was something that could get her through a battle without falling.

He would deal with the fallout later.

***

River and Ginny sat in her room. Ginny was sitting cross legged on the bed, clutching a gaudy red pillow to her chest. River was wearing one of her new woolen dresses and combing Ginny's hair in the way she had seen Inara do for Kaylee hundreds of times. Ginny couldn't help but grin and clutch the pillow tighter as she squealed. Hermione and Luna were off hunting for Horcruxes and River was her friend now. She also knew about Draco when the others didn't, so it was more fitting for River to hear about the reconciliation.

"They're making plans for Hogwarts. We should probably go on ahead," River said after a moment, when Ginny's helpless spasms of joy subsided somewhat.

"Whatever for? Shouldn't we wait for fully realized plans?"

"Their plans won't include us."

"Oh."

"We can take Draco with us. I'm sure he'll protect you."

"He shouldn't be anywhere near where the Death Eaters would find him..."

"Didn't you say it was mostly deserted? And we can check the map."

"You just want to be there, don't you?"

"Don't you?" River countered.

"All right," Ginny conceded. "A quick peek."

The castle was deserted and rather spooky in the middle of the night. Ginny shivered inside of her coat and pressed closer to Draco as they walked toward the Great Hall's remains. The anti-Apparition wards had been destroyed long ago, but most people tended to Apparate into the kitchens. That was the last sign of life in the place.

River lifted the lantern she was carrying and looked over the stones lining the Great Hall. "To think these will be all that's left of this castle to bring you forward."

"What do mean?" she asked curiously. She came up behind River, and Draco followed her. "These are the stones that line the well?"

River pointed to one with a chip in it near the ceiling. "There. That's the capstone."

"Oh. That's one of the stones Fred and George's swamp anchored into. They ultimately had to carve the spell out of it."

River looked through the missing wall and could see the outline to Serenity. "Want to see the boat?" she asked Draco. "I can get inside, if you wish."

"A boat? Here?"

"Serenity. She is a calming place. She tends to bring people where they need to go, not where they want to go." River led the way to the ship and quickly bypassed all the security codes that were built into it. She deliberately tripped the locator code. Mal and Zoe would know that someone was at the ship and could step up the timetable. She put her left hand into her pocket, holding on tightly to the crystal paperweight Jayne had stolen from the sage's desk on Shinon. It still carried the ghost of Jayne's touch on it.

Draco was dazzled by the sight of the ship, and let Ginny lead him around. She showed him all of the rooms, and told little stories from her time there. River remained on the bridge, looking at the dimmed controls.

"You're back. Does this mean we're heading back home?"

River turned and shook her head at Wash. "I'll be there as soon as I can get us there, but I'm busy mending broken pieces of their lives."

"How's my Autumn Flower?" Wash asked, sinking into the pilot's chair. He looked up at River with a hopeful expression. "Less angry, maybe?"

"She needed to have you to fight for. She needed something to believe in stronger than herself. I think she can return from the void. We'll see what gets left over in the aftermath. A little joy, a little sorrow, and a little pride in a job well done."

"I think that's all we've got to ask for," Wash replied with a happy sigh. He looked around the cockpit. "I liked this place, you know. It's a great little place to haunt."

"I've enjoyed conversing with you."

"At least my dinos are all in the same spot."

"We wouldn't have it any other way."

River could see movement outside of the ship and smiled. "That looks like a sneaky face," Wash said in a warning tone. "What did you do?"

"Did you know that ghosts manifest clearly within strong magical fields? It's not enough to become corporeal, but certainly enough to speak."

Wash's ghost stilled. He stared at River, mouth falling open. "What?"

Mal's voice thundered something unintelligible in Mandarin, and River grinned. "Just wait."

Sure enough, Mal and Zoe ran into the bridge. They saw River in one of her new wool dresses and a properly fitting pair of combat boots. She had a confident smile on her face, as if pleased with what she had done.

"Now, li'l Albatross, you're gonna have to–"

Mal cut himself off as River moved to expose the pilot's chair. He could hear Zoe make a choked cry of pain.

A shadowy blue version of Wash, down to the loud tropical shirt, was sitting in the pilot's chair.

"Baby?" Zoe whispered, her voice cracking.

"Lamby toes... You can see me?"

Zoe fell to her knees and Wash moved forward to kneel down beside her. He tried to hold her, but his hands moved right through her. Their eyes locked, saying everything they needed to say to each other. I miss you. I love you. You will always be the one I love...

River tugged on Mal's arm and led him out of the bridge. "Let them speak. They have much to say, much to do. We can collect Ginny and Draco now."

"You knew..." Mal said, stunned.

"Of course. I've always been talking with him. No one else could see him before."

Mal turned his gaze onto River. "You never said..."

"No one was ready to hear it. There was too much pain. And no one would have believed me anyway," she added, only the slightest bit of anguish coloring her voice. "I'm crazy. I would have made it all up to antagonize others."

It was on the tip of Mal's tongue to deny it, but he knew better. "Yeah, well. It's been rough."

"Yes, it has," she replied primly.

Mal suddenly felt chastised, even if she didn't say the words. It wasn't as if she hadn't suffered since long before he had met her. She had been someone's pawn, the Alliance's test subject in a program she didn't volunteer to enter. It wasn't her fault she was strange and uncommon now. "I can't wait 'till we get up into the black in our own time. This magic nonsense makes my skin crawl something fierce."

"Soon enough, Captain."

"Yeah, I suppose so."

By the time he collected Ginny and Draco from the engine room, Mal felt old and cranky and tired. The hangdog faces of the magical teens were just pathetic. "Lookit, I don't care if you go necking or nothing. But a body's got to sleep some before a battle, don't you know?" he began, shooing them into the main hallway. "Now, let's just go down and back to where we came from, if you don't mind."

River stilled on the stairway down to the cargo bay. "It's begun."

Six shadowy figures in long black hooded cloaks, skeleton masks and wands were just entering the cargo bay.

***

"What aren't you telling me?" Ron demanded in his best demanding voice.

McGonagall wasn't impressed. "There were intruders at the spacecraft, so we're mobilizing forces now. Miss Tam had warned me of the possibility, but I hadn't credited it at the time. I suppose she's rather marvelously gifted at Divinations after all."

Harry pulled a face as he contemplated what McGonagall had just said.

"Divinations. That rot," Ron muttered, shaking his head.

"I never did meet her," Luna remarked, pulling thoughtfully on one of her butterbeer bottle cap earrings. "It sounds like she would have been marvelous to talk to."

McGonagall sighed and suppressed the urge to shake her head at the blonde girl. "Everyone's moving into position. I should think you'd want to be there, Potter."

"Me? What for? Voldemort wouldn't come back out here for a second try at the library. That's what he uses his minions for."

"It's because of the ship located at Hogwarts. Voldemort will think it's your latest weapon."

Harry goggled at McGonagall. "And why would he think that?"

"Because that's what our spies had told him. It's what we wanted him to think. So now his minions, as you call them, are at Hogwarts. He will join them soon enough. And then we can be done with this war."

Harry bit his lip. "We didn't find the last Horcrux. We won't be able to kill him."

"Rubbish. Of course you can. He's carrying his last one."

The teens in front of her blinked in surprise. "We were looking so hard... What is it?" Ron asked, straight to the point as usual.

"Miss Tam figured it out. It's his wand."

The boys groaned. Hermione looked appalled. Luna merely giggled. "So that's the dearest wood," she said. "And I was thinking it might be a mandragora vine."

"In any case," McGonagall said, not approaching Luna's line of thought. "They've already come in for the bait. The time to strike is now."

She waited until the teens Apparated to Hogwarts. She pressed her lips together and looked around the meeting room. It was stark and empty. Still, she would miss it. Hogwarts was already too damaged to continue to function as a school. If they survived this night, they would have to find another location to continue teaching youngsters in. Hopefully, it would be something further south, where it was warm and sunny for more of the year.

"I'm too old for this nonsense," she muttered, shaking her head. She withdrew her wand from her sleeve and Apparated to Hogwarts.

***

Mal thought that the worst thing he could have possibly experienced was in the Battle of Serenity Valley. Facing an army of Reavers and the knowledge of their creation didn't come anywhere near close. The second worst thing was Inara leaving the ship.

What River was proposing now could very well be the third worst thing of his life.

"I refuse to gut Serenity. She's mine, they can't have her, and that's just that."

She seemed infinitely patient, but Mal could feel the tension rising within her. "They know someone is here. They can't see, but they know." River looked at Mal, Draco and Ginny earnestly. "I can distract them while you hide. Or we can fight them all."

"This would be only an initial scout group," Draco whispered. "There would be at least two more outside. There might be more, since this isn't something we see every day."

"Double agents told 'em this is the latest weapon against them," Mal said, voice curt. "And now they're crawling all over the place trying to figure it out."

"If you let them loosen a few pieces for study..."

"Absolutely not!" Mal hissed angrily. "They ain't harming my girl, and that's that. Now, I say we hit 'em and we hit 'em hard. The whole mess is moved up, so we might as well take 'em down good. The others will come on by soon enough."

"Jayne will lead a regiment, and Simon and Kaylee would aid in medical treatments. Jayne would likely return to the ship at his earliest convenience," River told Ginny, who frowned in confusion. "He won't want anyone else touching his girls." River blinked for a moment, and it looked as though she remembered something. "I'll be right back."

Without waiting for a response, she flew off toward the passenger dorms. One of the more observant Death Eaters saw her, and headed straight for the stairs. Mal let loose with some of his more colorful Mandarin phrases as he drew his gun.

"I ain't goin' down without a fight," he declared, and rushed toward the staircase.

Ginny and Draco looked at each other for a long moment, then drew their wands. They followed Mal, grim expressions on their faces.

This would be a long and drawn out battle. Ginny knew she had to believe in something, and she chose to believe that those she loved would survive. They had to.

***

Instinct knew things the mind would not accept, and instinct was telling everyone in the castle that death was near. There was no use brooding about what could have been or should have been. There was only acting on what actually was. It was about action and reaction, moving and being, beginning and never ending.

Bellatrix Black Lestrange had led the charge into the strange object that would be Potter's weapon against her Dark Lord. Her mind skittered through the cold metal places, the gratings and stacks of boxes. None of it looked familiar, and her twisted mind couldn't reshape the images she saw into weapons.

It felt like a trap.

Movement caught her eye, a fleeting flash of white and red outlined against the darkness. It was gone before she could truly see it, but she thought she saw forms outlined in the dark above the stairs. She smiled and began to move up the stairs. The others with her could remain in the open space and try to divine its secrets.

We are born with the dead. See, they return, and bring us with them. They give us the promise of eternal life and eternal power. We kneel before the Master and bask in His Glory and His Gifts. And for that, we are so very, very grateful. Bellatrix smiled beneath her mask, wand extended in her hand. She ached for blood and pain, tears and screams. It had been so very long since she had inflicted it.

Bellatrix dodged the bullets when they came for her head. Not knowing what bullets were, she thought it a type of magic. She fired blasts, teeth grit. Her lord would not have to fight if she was successful. If she could do her job right...

Something burrowed into her side, knocking her off balance. She tumbled from the staircase, and three pairs of feet began to run as she fell to the cargo bay floor.

Just as Bellatrix lost consciousness, she saw the other Death Eaters swarm up the stairs.

***

Zoe stared at Wash's ghostly form, her hand going through his face. "It's not fair," she whispered, frustrated. "I finally see you, and I can't even touch you."

"Lamby toes, you have no idea how good it is to know you can see me." He traced the curve of her face with a fingertip, and tried to pull on a lock of her hair. "I tried. At first I thought I just wasn't trying hard enough. And then one morning, maybe a week or two after, River just started talking to me. And replying when I talked." Wash shrugged and gave Zoe a pleading look. "She was the only one that could see me. None of the others could. You couldn't either, no matter how hard I tried. I think I got into your dreams once."

Tears ran down Zoe's face, hot and angry. They were the tears she had never allowed herself to shed in the months since Wash's death. The fury she had bottled up was now being released, and it came in torrential floods.

"Baby... You're my Autumn Flower, my One and Only. That'll never change, no matter what. I love you. I always will. It won't matter if I'm alive or dead– though now I'm mostly dead, you know– but I'll always love you. It's okay, Zoe. It doesn't hurt being dead. It's frustrating, I'll give you that. I don't like it when there's only River to laugh at my jokes. Half of them she won't even smile to, you know. The girl's got an odd sense of humor..." Wash's voice trailed off and he wrapped his ghostly arms around Zoe.

"I'm by myself," she whispered, voice breaking.

"C'mon, baby. You'll be all right. You've still got me. For the rest of your life, however you want me. Can't do much, true. But I'm still here. I'm not going anywhere. I promised forever, and I mean it. Now, I won't deny that I'll be jealous if you find another dashing young pilot to make into your little boy toy. But if that's what you want, that's what you want." He tried to stroke her hair, but his hand passed through her. "I... I just want you to be happy, Zoe. I want you to smile again. I want you to wear that slinky dress again. I want you go to out on a job and do some crime like your heart's in it. I want you to be the warrior woman I know you are. You're strong enough for the both of us, Zoe. I know you are."

"What's it mean if you're not there?"

"But I am. Can't see me much, true, but I'm there. I'm here. I'm always here." Wash deliberately pushed his hand into her chest, his hand folding around her heart. "I'm here. I'm where I'm supposed to be."

Zoe howled in anguish just as River bolted onto the bridge.

"Death Eaters. Swarms. The timetable has advanced drastically."

Zoe's face hardened into the warrior's mask that Wash knew so well. "No, they don't. They ain't takin' my baby's ghost from me."

She pressed a kiss against the edge of Wash's ghost, then got to her feet. He did as well, and saluted her. Zoe left the bridge, guns in hand.

River grinned at Wash. "Just like doing crime, yes?"

He grinned back at her, feeling the ghostly version of adrenaline surge through him. "Oh yes. I think I'm going to like this ghost thing."

"I have a plan."

"You're always full of plans."

"Yes, but this one is cunning and full of tricks."

"How about monkeys?" Wash asked hopefully. River's brow furrowed in confusion. "Well, there's magic here, and you know monkeys are always full of lots of fun tricks. They're absolutely mischievous, you know."

Something cleared on River's face. "Oh. They are, aren't they?"

"Yes. Magic and monkeys. I think there's a joke about that."

"I don't follow," River murmured.

"Never mind. You get to your cunning plan, huh? I'll sit here and watch and be the peanut gallery. And if there's space monkeys... Well, that'll be quite the plan then." Wash gave River a playful shove, his hands going right through her. "Go on, shoo. You do your cunning plan thing, and they'll go off to be those big damn heroes we know they can be. I'll sit back and watch as I usually do, and maybe we can get off this rock and back to the black."

"It is uncomfortable on the ground?"

"Oh, yeah. Even as a ghost, I'd rather not be planetside if I don't have to be."

River smiled serenely. "Fear not, it won't be long now."

***

Harry looked over the ruins of Hogwarts, feeling the rage simmer within him. This would have to be it, then. He didn't think he could do this again. Everything was lost in rivers of blood and misery, and it was going to be the end of the Wizarding World.

This may just disappear.

He held tightly on to his wand. They had Apparated to a point just outside the edge of the grounds, in a spot that had once held Hagrid's hut. The hut itself had burned in the last battle held at Hogwarts three months before. Much of the castle had come down in the spell battle, and it was damaged beyond repair.

Hermione touched his arm. "Those who are treated unjustly will at last be heard, and their judgment will come, Harry. We won't let them get away with this. We won't."

"I know." He looked at Ron and Hermione. "Thank you."

"For what, mate?" Ron asked, curious.

"For reminding me I'm not alone. I used to think I was."

"Eh. What rot, that. Of course you're not."

"Rubbish, Harry. We're friends. That's what we do."

He smiled at them, the hurt bubbling within him easing somewhat. He looked over the hill, where Neville and Luna had gone ahead to serve as lookouts. "Strange thing, them," he muttered as he shook his head. "When did that happen?"

Hermione chuckled. "She's good for him, though. They needed someone to look after, and they look after each other nicely."

"And you two?" Harry asked, a smile on his face.

"Ah, you," she replied, ducking her head shyly. Ron just laughed and threw an arm around Hermione's shoulders.

"We're all doing good, yeah? We'll win it. We've got to."

That was exactly it, though. Harry was afraid he wasn't good enough.

Sparks flew overhead, red and gold.

"That's it," Harry said, voice grim. "The signal. Let's go."

Into the breech once more, the final battle in the war had begun.

***
***

Part 7


Candles flickered uneasily in the torch sconces. A half moon hung overhead. Sparks flew in various colors all over the castle grounds. It was winter in Scotland, a deep and bone-chilling cold, but at least there was no snow.

Order of the Phoenix members, former Aurors and assorted friends to the side of Light rushed across the field, wands or guns in hand. In the plan formulated, squibs and interested Muggles had been added to the fray. "Guns is simple," Jayne had said as he was instructing them in proper positioning and handling of guns. "Point, aim, squeeze the trigger. Guns are good girls if you take care of 'em proper, and they'll take care of you proper. Don't jerk no trigger like you gotta rush them bullets out. People don't know what they're doin', they can make a bullet backfire and give themselves a nasty reminder. Safety's important. So's getting the bullet into the other guy and keepin' him from givin' you a nasty shot."

Training had been interrupted by the advanced timetable, and Jayne had sworn most colorfully in Mandarin. "So's now's the test. Don't get yourselves killed."

Now Jayne wondered if it had been enough. It's all been all left undone... We're hollow shells, no better than target practice... He didn't want to die on Earth-That-Was in a time-that-was. He didn't want to die, period.

If he could get to Serenity and get his best girls, then those Death Eaters would know what fear really was.

Teeth grit, Jayne ran across the field, pistols blazing.

***

"You can make me scream eternally..." River whispered, easing out of her combat boots. Her toes curled over the cold metal grating of the hallway leading to the kitchen. She could hear arguing there, things being knocked over. Kaylee would be so upset if her painted vines were blasted off. "Maybe I won't be the wanted one. Maybe I won't be the one to walk the path of tears, the pain of coming years..."

Her lips split into a rictus of a grin, and she shed her winter coat by the door leading to Kaylee's room. She could feel Simon's presence by the doorway from all his frequent visits there; he might as well just move in and get it over with. But he was trying to be proper, he was trying to do things the Core way, still. It was his way of showing her respect, of telling her that he loved her enough to make himself wait and earn the right to ask for her hand. Kaylee already owned his heart, even if she didn't know it for sure.

But the ones storming the ship would end it if they could. They thought themselves Eaters of Death, they thought themselves over and above the rules of the universe.

No one was immune. No one.

Still carrying her rictus grin, River became the ship again.

***

Ginny had a flair with hexes; Draco knew this from personal experiences. But being on the receiving end of hexes didn't compare with watching her in action. She was fluid and determined, with elegantly spare movements. She was also wicked fast, spinning about and shouting as the spells flew about. Draco didn't have the same dramatic flair. He had cultivated an air of boredom to his spellcasting, to make it appear as if he couldn't be bothered to hex his opponent into oblivion. It was thus rather disconcerting for the Death Eaters in the kitchen to see the two of them working in tandem, two sides to the same coin.

Draco saw movement out of the corner of his eye as the last of the second group was getting blasted out of the door. He cried out and sent a stunning spell through the other door, rushing on ahead. Don't touch Ginny, don't any of you monsters even think about touching her! his mind raged.

Five skeletal masks turned and faced him at once, ignoring the engine room. At that moment, Draco suddenly realized that getting their attention was the single most idiotic thing he's ever done in a lifetime full of stupid decisions. He was alone in the hallway, the others still in the kitchen or moving down to the cargo bay again. There was no backup, no Ginny firing off creative hexes with the passion only a Gryffindor could muster.

Oh bloody hell, I'm going to die, he thought suddenly.

And then a flash of red wool came rushing from his left, the shine of a blade in her hand.

Draco began shooting hexes and countercurses as fast as he could, dropping his cool exterior. Life or death precluded the preternatural Malfoy calm he had cultivated. His voice rose as he fought alongside River. She was fearsome, with a wickedly long knife in hand. She moved like a ballet dancer, long swirling strides and jumps that avoided nasty curses. It was almost as if she knew where they were going to be, so that made it easier to avoid them.

When Draco was caught in his wand arm by a cutting curse, he tried to switch to his left. He was desperate, knowing he could very well die right there. Fight and stand, he told himself fiercely. I will not go down like this!

Just as he fell, a swish of bats flew over his head. They surrounded the lead Death Eater, the one that was about to hit Draco with a nasty spell. They fluttered around him, screeching, clawing at the mask and hood. Tearing them to ribbons, the bats gave no mercy. Draco could see the flash of long silver-blonde hair, a signet ring on a hand about to be clawed by the bats.

Ginny dragged him from the engine room. "Draco, are you all right? I thought you were right behind me... I'm so sorry..."

Draco turned his face away from the sight of his father being surrounded by her most vicious Bat-Bogey Hex. The one she had hit him with in his fifth year hadn't been even a quarter as vicious as the one his father was going through now. He hadn't thought his father would still be a part of the Death Eaters since his imprisonment in Azkaban. But then, a few years could change anyone, and the other Death Eaters had been weak without a leader.

"I'm all right," he said with a smile, trying to grit his teeth against the pain in his arm. "You?"

"Let's go... The fight's vicious outside. They can use our help."

Draco looked around for River, but didn't see her. His father was the only one left in the engine room, trying to ward away the nightmarish bats. There was no flash of red, only black and rivers of dull maroon on the floor. River must have moved on as well.

"Yes. Let's go." He tried to blot out the sound of his father screaming, but couldn't.

***

Bellatrix woke to the delicious sound of screaming. It was the sound of battle, pain and misery, the sound of hope dying a strangled death. There was a company of dead Death Eaters about her, lying in drying pools of dark red blood. Not likely to be spells, then. Even cutting curses didn't cause so much bleeding. So the Order has lowered themselves to work with Muggles. Filthy little creatures...

She could see the battle outside of the cargo bay, spells and bullets flying in all directions. A tall man with a goatee was carrying a monstrosity of a weapon in his arms, and easily felled Death Eaters unaccustomed to such physical attacks.

Bellatrix got to her feet and headed straight for him. He was tall, likely well built beneath his coat. She would rend muscle from bone, draw out the misery for killing her comrades like common filthy Muggles...

A slim girl in a red woolen dress and gooseflesh stepped in the way. "No."

Bellatrix lifted her wand hand, but found it broken into pieces. She hissed in anger, throwing it to the side. Never mind, then. She had other tools and weapons at hand. She was formidable, the Dark Lord's fiercest supporter, the one who had remained faithful throughout all of her years at Azkaban. She was his beloved, his Bella.

"There's very delicate balances," the girl said, hair floating about her in the chill cargo bay like a dark halo. "Magic and science and similarly related realms of rules all have their own discrete function. Different rules and different laws. Each reality, each realm. Every place has its own logic, its own sequence, its own set of rules. You have to know them if you want to work within them." She skipped backward on bare feet, skillfully avoiding the pools of blood without even having to look down to see them.

Bellatrix's lips curled into a snarl. The girl thought she could talk away violence? No, violence sang and moaned, screamed and cried. In comparison, Bellatrix's voice was bland. It was the kind of voice the dead of nightmares spoke in, expressionless and uncaring. "Oh, no, little girl. There are no rules I cannot break."

"You aren't dead yet," the girl said sadly. "There's still time."

"I'll kill you, little girl. Slow and steady, bloody. I'll make you feel pain. I'll make you fear me, you silly Muggle girl. You don't know the power of the Dark Lord. But you will, and I'll bathe in your blood. I'll drink in your fear. Emotions give flavor to death. Sometimes it’s strong enough I can smell it. It's a little bitter, but it’s exquisite, better than wine."

"He's mortal," the girl said, voice soft and almost sibilant. "He's only mortal."

Bellatrix rushed at her then. "You know nothing!"

"He is an awful hollow shell, darkness wrapped in human skin. He is pain and hunger, sorrow and lost devotion. He is raw need, without an object. He doesn't know what he is, he doesn't know what he needs. He wants power and purpose, and he is frightfully mortal. Otherwise there is no meaning, no sense to the dance."

Bellatrix's hands wrapped around the girl's unresisting neck. They tumbled to the floor, spinning and fetching against the wall near the ramp of the cargo bay. Footsteps were up above them, voices shouting. She didn't hear them, kept her focus on the girl with the dark eyes and dark hair and endless streams of words. She ignored the burning in her gut, the flash of pain slicing through her as they had fallen. It didn't matter. Death did, a glorious death in the name of her Dark Lord and Master, a death to elevate his name and prove the worthiness of their cause. It would prove mastery of magic over flesh and bone.

Bellatrix locked eyes with the girl. River, she thought, as her mind pushed into the girl's with Ligilmency. It was always best to understand the enemy...

For a brief flash of insight she almost recognized the edge of something just beyond her ken, a force new and terrible. She sensed it but then pushed herself past that intuition.

And then she saw them, the grinning madness, the steel and flesh and rage. They carried scythe and sickle and gun, dark knowledge, dark hunger. Entranced, Bellatrix pushed further into the sight and memory, watched everything unfold in front of her in fascination. She understood these creatures, these things that used to be men. She could feel their wants slide across her skin, through her mind. She could feel it sink into the soft places within her, the crevices she had hidden away so carefully. Need.

"If I were to say something apologetic about that, it would reflect my feelings," River murmured as Bellatrix's hands loosened from her neck. She pushed the woman off of her, against the frame of the gangplank's opening. Pirates, bloody pirates, we're all bloody pirates, she thought, catching a fragment of Bellatrix's thoughts. She ignored the spreading stain over both their dresses, and pulled her knife out of Bellatrix's stomach. She ignored the cold seeping through her dress as she knelt down on the metal grated floor. She could feel Draco and Ginny fetch up behind her, stunned. She could feel the battle outside rise to fever pitch. Order and Death Eaters were locked in their struggles, the bullets flying making the odds more even. Harry and the Dark Lord were close by, fighting over the supposed weapon that was Serenity. They dodged each other easily; Harry was a much more skilled fighter than when they had first faced off in the graveyard at the end of his fourth year.

"Call it," River whispered against Bellatrix's ear. "You can do it. Call your Master's wand to you, hold it against your heart in longing."

Grinning madly, Bellatrix reached out with her right hand even as her left began digging into her lower lip. "Accio," she said around a mouthful of fingers. She began to giggle, a high crazed sound like glass breaking.

River caught the wand in midflight and broke it over her knee.

As Bellatrix cradled the broken pieces to her bloody chest, River watched dispassionately as a faint green mist hovered in front of her. "Ginny," River whispered.

Ginny blasted the mist with her wand, using an intense fire spell. She turned to the battle, and saw Harry coming closer to Voldemort, wand outstretched. Voldemort was watching them, his mouth falling over in shock. Ginny dropped her wand to her side and smiled at Voldemort sweetly. "Hello, Tom. I remember you. Do you remember me?" Voldemort didn't say anything to the girl smiling at him. He didn't remember. "Don't worry. I'm not afraid of you anymore, Tom. You're nothing now."

And then Harry did the Unforgivable.

"Avada Kedavra!"

As Voldemort fell to the ground, it was almost as if the world came to a crashing halt.

For Ginny, it restarted the moment Bellatrix took the broken ends of Voldemort's wand and drove them into her eyes, screaming in agony. "Master! Master, don't leave me!"

The cleanup was easy after that.

***

Mal stared at his shiny and clean ship. He had to say, cleaning spells sure did make everything easy. He'd miss it back in his own time. Soap and sponges took much longer than a simple Scourgify did, and he often missed spots. Zoe was in the cockpit, telling Wash about the battle, whatever she had seen. Jayne was up in the kitchen, cleaning up every last piece of Vera with his best polish. She was his very best gun, and she had saved a lot of lives in the battle. Mal had almost laughed at the reverence Jayne polished the pieces, but decided that everyone needed a comforting ritual of sorts.

"Well, Albatross, it worked out all right. The Doc and Kaylee didn't even need to patch up too much out there."

River nodded. "They will need to lock up the survivors in small cells," she murmured. "I told Minerva as such. Especially Bellatrix."

"Huh?"

"She tried looking into my mind and saw Miranda's aftereffects."

Mal thought of the way the crazy woman had giggled, whispering "Ree-vurrr..." with her fingers in her mouth. He had assumed it to be River's name at the time.

"We will be able to return now. We have done what we need to do."

"Didn't you change everything?"

River's smile was sad. "Not a thing. Everything ended the way it was supposed to."

Mal watched her go, confused.

She wrapped the long cloak around herself. After the battle, Draco had given her his robe so she wouldn't be too chilled. He had cast warming spells over her as well, which had only just begun to recede. He and Ginny were no doubt combing the walls of Hogwarts for the last time, glad to be alive when so many others were dead.

"Miss Tam," Minerva McGonagall said with some surprise, seeing the barefooted girl approach her on the battlefield. "Everything is well?"

"Things will be progressing," she replied with a smile.

"There aren't many Death Eaters left, but they'll be kept under close watch at Azkaban. Once we finish here, we'll be able to send all you back to your own time."

"It has been a most educational time, Miss McGonagall," River replied. She looked around, and caught a flash of fiery red hair next to pale blonde. "I shall miss all of you."

McGonagall caught River's hand in hers, and the girl looked up at her, startled. "You are an amazing young lady," she said warmly, smiling at her. "I would have been proud to have you as a student. You have marvelous gifts and a generous heart. Guard them well."

Touched, River hugged the older woman. She squeezed, breathing in the scent of crisp linen, dirt and fragile hope. It was the scent of a woman who would have been a tolerant mother, watching as her children grew into the adults they were destined to be. "Thank you," River whispered, tears pricking the backs of her eyelids. She felt McGonagall's arms wrap around her, providing further warmth in the coming chill.

After the spell sent them all back to their own time, River remembered chocolate brown eyes and silver eyes watching her. Their owners' hands were linked, and no one commented on the apparent strangeness of it. That was right. They had earned themselves a measure of peace and love, and she wished them well.

She knelt by the wishing well on Mr. Universe's moon. Zoe was still on the bridge, searching for Wash's ghost. Mal, Kaylee and Simon were going through the ship to be sure that nothing was damaged by the spell. Jayne, uncertainly, stood between River and Serenity. "What'cha doin'?" he asked, uneasy. "There ain't no weird magic things left, is there?"

River found the capstone, and her lips stretched into a smile. "No. They left me a message."

Carved glyphs spelled out Ginny's name. River traced the carvings, and felt the presence imbued into them. Ginny had been married and pregnant, and had wanted to share the good news with her friend across time. She had remembered the stone, remembered that River had always been able to know things, even if it wasn't magic.

She looked up at Jayne, a gentle smile on her face. "All is well. Ginny... she married. She's happy with the life she had."

"So's everything's okay, then," Jayne said, coming closer. He squatted down and looked at the carvings beneath River's fingertips. "Huh. Looks like the stuff from those books you took. Hey, why did you want those things anyway? The ones you had me take?"

River dug about in the coat she had worn as the transfer spell had been conducted. She pulled out the crystal orb, which now carried a milky cast to it. "It absorbs magic," she said softly. She held it out to Jayne, a beatific smile on her face. "It's a gift for Zoe."

Jayne looked at it doubtfully, and helped River to her feet after she pocketed it again. His mouth ran dry as the coat fell open, and he looked up at her earnest face. She's too young, he thought, forcing his mind from the realization that River wasn't a little girl anymore. She was too young to know what that smile could do to a man like him.

She blinked, her hand still caught in his. "You could be my unintended choice to live my life extended," she murmured shyly.

Jayne blinked in response. "Huh?" He shook his head. "You know, you really gotta stop talking like that. Nobody'll understand what you say."

Ginny understood, River thought almost mournfully.

"Hey, now, no crying. It's just simple truth. Most don't know what those words mean."

River locked eyes with Jayne and bit her lip. "My thoughts are clearer now. But sometimes they run from me. There are scary things in here with me."

He nearly smiled at her. "See now? That came out okay." He squeezed her hand gently. "It gets easier, you know. The killin' and such, I mean."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. You did good back then. And if you're not our pilot, you'd make a damn good merc."

River blinked. "So I've a place in the 'verse."

"Yeah. I'd let you watch my back anytime." He squirmed when he realized what he had said. "I, uh, I didn't mean..."

River traced his lips with her fingers, a soft smile on her face. Jayne's heart raced at the sight of it, and he didn't realize he still had River's other hand caught in his.

"Um... Your brother's gonna kill me," Jayne murmured under her fingertips. "And he won't fix me if I get shot."

"I can handle him," River murmured, tracing his lips in fascination. "You... You will be a challenge. You are a puzzle to work through. You're not simple, not easy. You're more difficult to understand than you let on."

"I told ya, I only let people think I'm stupid." He suddenly wanted to impress her, to not be seen as a simple mercenary that was all muscle and no brain.

"No, not stupid," River said softly, fascinated. "Not intelligent in the same book sense, certainly, but not stupid. Never stupid. You're underestimated." She touched his chest after freeing her other hand from his. He gasped at the contact, and her fingertips fell into his mouth. She could feel his tongue on the pad of her forefinger, and she shivered. "Oh."

"You... That's not fair," Jayne said, pulling her hands away from him. "You do things to a body, it's not right."

"Maybe... you can return them?" River whispered, uncertain of his response. "Perhaps you are the clarity I need."

"I dunno," he said, uncertain. He threw a wary glance at the ship behind them, though no one was watching them. "Look, I ain't gonna get in trouble..."

She bit her lip, almost downcast. "Oh."

"...and a fancy Core girl needs courtin', don't she?"

River looked up, startled, as Jayne finished. "I... I never got courted."

Gettin' her brain cut up instead, Jayne thought, suddenly ashamed. "Yeah. But... you know... So they don't think something bad's goin' on..."

She smiled at him, her angel's smile. "I would like to be courted. I would like to feel special. I would like to know what being normal is."

"Girl, you ain't never gonna be normal," Jayne said with a shake of his head. "But that's okay. I don't think normal's too much fun, anyway."

He escorted her back to Serenity, almost like a gentleman.

River's heart sang. It felt like the beginning of things.

***

Nearly five hundred years in the past, Ginny let Draco help her down from the ladder she had used to reach the stone River had pointed out. "You think she'll know?" he asked her, voice full of concern. He was gentle with her, almost reverent.

Ginny grinned at him, her hands resting on her belly. "She knows. She'll see it and she'll know. She'll be okay, I know it."

Together, they walked out of the castle.



The End.