Taken aback, Ginny was silent for a moment. Then she reached for her bookbag, which was propped against the trunk. "I have to go," she said.

"I´m supposed to meet Elizabeth in the library."

Hermione turned her head. Behind her, the snow continued to fall, silently, covering the windowpane with a white icing. "Ginny — "

"Good luck," Ginny said, hoisting her bookbag over her shoulder. "It´ll be fine, you´ll see."

Hermione nodded, and was silent for a long moment. "I just feel so guilty," she said at last, so quietly that Ginny almost didn´t catch the words. When she did, she stared at her friend in incomprehension.

"What on earth about?"

Hermione looked weary. "Nothing. Never mind."

There was no one else in the Slytherin common room; everyone was at dinner. Draco, not feeling hungry, had stayed behind, although the common area was hardly one of his favorite places. The long, low, underground room never seemed warm, not even in when there was a fire blazing in the ornate marble fireplace, as there was now. The low-hanging greenish lamps cast a sickly sort of pallor over everything. Draco slumped deep into the forest-green velvet armchair he had pulled up to the fire, lost in thought.

He was still disturbed by the vision of his father he had had earlier that day during Potions class. He was almost entirely sure it had not been an ordinary dream — he recalled the pain that had shot through his hand upon waking, and remembered Harry telling him of the prophetic dreams he had dreamed about Voldemort, how Harry had woken up with pains in his scar. And he himself had dreamed bits of Slytherinś life, and sometimes still did. Ordinary dreams were one thing; this was something else. It had looked so real, as well. He tried to imagine where his father and the Dark Lord might be, but there had been nothing specifically identifiable about the stone room. It could have been anywhere.