Scorpius didn't go to the library. The day after they returned, Albus dragged him out of the castle and down to the lake. It was freezing cold and frozen over, and the wind blowing across the ice seemed to cut into him, despite his scarf and coat. Despite the weather, Avina and Ruby stood on the shore, arguing. As he and Albus drew closer, Scorpius heard Avina say, "It's my duty."

"You don't need a duty!" Ruby cried. "You're eleven! You ought to be trying to see how far you can skate across the lake!"

"You're not serious?" Albus asked, his eyes going wide. "I was going to take you out on a date."

"What's going on?" Scorpius asked when he reached them. He wasn't at all sure where he wanted the explanations to begin. He hadn't heard anyone his age talk about duty; only his father did, late at night when it was just him and Astoria and a bottle of wine. He wasn't sure what the duty could be that Ruby was so against it, and apparently Albus knew, too, and also had a crush on Avina. Scorpius couldn't help feeling like he'd been left out of quite a lot, but Ruby answered him so quickly that he didn't have time to feel bitter.

"Avina's going to leave."

"What? No!" Scorpius ran the last few steps to her side, stumbling slightly on the frozen snow. "You can't leave. We were still going to help you figure out the spells. I just got a new book for Christmas."

Avina smiled sadly. "It's like I told Ruby: I have a duty. I was frightened, but I need to go back. I'm still their princess, and a member of the royal family shouldn't be a coward." She lifted her chin, and Scorpius remembered that she wasn't just some eleven-year-old girl who had wandered into their world. She was a princess and a warrior, and not someone that the rest of them needed to protect. "If my sister's dead, then the throne falls to me."

"What about that thing that was there?" Scorpius asked. "You can't just go back to that. You'll be killed."

She bit her lower lip and nodded. "I know. There's a chance I won't be, though. I've been studying with the professors who were still here, and they taught me some magic that ought to help. Professor Longbottom even gave me some leaves that will keep me safe." She opened a little pouch at her waist and showed them a bundle of light green leaves with blue veins.

"All the professors think you ought to go back?" Albus asked.

"How could they?" Ruby looked ready to snap at any professor who dared wander past. "You're just a kid! They shouldn't make you go back there."

"They feel the same way you do," Avina said. "They tried to talk me out of it, but I wouldn't be persuaded. It took two weeks to get them to agree, and I don't have time to argue with you now, so please just trust me." She paused, again the eleven-year-old girl they had come to know, and looked each one of them in the eye. "I can do this."

Scorpius wanted to grab her arm and hold on so tightly that it would be impossible for her to leave, and Ruby was shaking her head so hard the beaded ponytail holders at the ends of her braids hit each other with hollow, plastic sounds. Albus was the only one of them to step forward, and it wasn't to object. Instead, he took Avina's hand and said, "I trust you." When Avina smiled, he leaned forward and kissed her quickly on the lips. When he stepped back, both of them were blushing.

"Thank you, Albus," she said, releasing his hand. "I won't forget you."

"I won't forget you, either."

Ruby's cheeks were bright red, and she let out her breath in an angry huff, though the cloud made it seem rather less angry. "Why did you say that you didn't have time to argue with us now?" she asked. "Does the magic have to be done at a specific time?"

Avina nodded. "That's how it works in Essemeulia. Simple magic can be done just about any time, but more complicated magic, like this, needs certain things to work. I learned a simple spell to bring me home, and my father said it would work no matter where I was, so long as I had ice and it was the start of a new year. I only hope I haven't put this off for too long."

"The year's only just started," Ruby said. "How close to the beginning do you need it to be?"

"I don't know," Avina said. "I'll find out soon enough, though."

She was about to step out onto the ice when Scorpius said, "Wait." When she stopped and looked back at him, he asked, "Were you really going to leave before I had a chance to say good-bye?"

Avina smiled sadly. "I've never been very good at those," she said. "I thought things might be easier if I could just vanish."

"They won't be," Scorpius said. He wasn't sure if he could tell her how it would feel, but he knew there would be a hole inside him, and he would always wonder why she had left so suddenly and whether she had cared about them at all. He'd miss her more than anything, and Albus would miss her more than that. They'd be a trio again, and it would feel strange for weeks to have an empty chair at a corner of a table in the library.

"You're right," Avina said. "I'd always be worried that you would hate me for it."

"We couldn't hate you," Albus said, but his voice was small, and even when he stepped out to the edge of the ice, no one answered him. Instead, Avina gave him a quick kiss on the cheek before walking out onto the lake.

The ice didn't crack beneath her feet as Scorpius had feared it would. Instead, it remained as strong and stable as the floor of the Great Hall, and she walked out until she was nothing but a figure no taller than his finger. It took looker than he had thought for her to stop, and then she raised her arms up to the sky. She was probably saying something, but he was too far away to hear her voice, and the wind was whipping past his ears so strongly that even Ruby would have had to shout something to get him to hear it. A small, selfish part of him wished for this whole thing to be over; his feet were getting cold, and his nose was running from the chill.

Then she was gone, and it was just the two of them standing by the lake.

It took Scorpius a moment to realize what was wrong, and by the time he had, Ruby had started shouting for Albus. She ran down to the very edge, right where he had been standing, and bent down to look for something, but there was no sign of him. It was like he had simply vanished into thin air. For all Scorpius knew, he had.

"Scorpius!" Ruby shouted. "Get down here and help me!" Her clothes were dusted all over with snow, and Scorpius wondered why his thoughts felt so cold and distant. His best friend was gone; surely he ought to feel something aside from this desire to slip into the snow and hide there until Albus came back and dug him out.

"He's gone," he said, and though he thought the wind was too strong for anyone to hear him, Ruby had very good ears.

"I know he's gone! Get over here and help me look for clues! There has to be something I can find."

Scorpius shook his head. Albus had vanished as completely as Avina. He hadn't fallen into the lake, or through a snowdrift, and the only thing he could think of was that the spell had got him, too. "Was he standing on the ice?"

"What sort of question is that?" Ruby asked, but she stepped out onto the lake anyway. "Yeah, I think he was. He kicked some snow down here, and these must be his boot prints." She looked up, her skin turning a lighter shade of brown. "You don't suppose Avina's spell…"

Scorpius nodded. He didn't want to say anything. Ruby was the Ravenclaw, and she could figure everything out.

"He'll be in Essemeulia by now," she said, climbing up the shore and joining Scorpius. "Maybe Avina can send him back, or someone else will know a spell to get him here. We just have to wait."

If there was anyone left in the kingdom. Scorpius didn't feel like saying that to her. He didn't want Ruby to start crying, because then he wasn't sure what he would do. He didn't even know what to do now, while she was handling everything perfectly well. He just decided to follow her example. When she sat down in the snow, he sat down beside her, and they waited, though the snow was soaking through his clothes and chilling his legs.

With the clouds overhead, he lost all track of time. It was at least several minutes but probably no more than an hour when Ruby said, "I don't know if he's coming back."

"He will," Scorpius said. "We just have to wait." The insides of his nose and chest felt frozen, and he coughed whenever he took a deep breath.

Ruby shook her head. "What are we going to tell Rose? He's her favorite cousin, and I think she likes him even more than she likes her own brother. This is going to tear her apart."

At the mention of James, Scorpius groaned and buried his head in his hands.

"What's the matter?" Ruby asked, setting a hand on his shoulder. "I didn't know you cared about Rose that much."

"It's not that," he said, although he didn't want to see Rose distressed. Any victory over her then would feel hollow. "It's her brother. James is going to kill me."

"Why do you care about what James thinks?"

Scorpius looked up and tried to blink away his tears before Ruby saw them. "It isn't that," he said fiercely. "It's that I'm a Malfoy and I'm in Slytherin. He hates me, and I'm part of the reason his little brother's gone." Even if James hated Slytherins, he couldn't hate them so much to hate his own brother along with them.

"It isn't your fault," Ruby said. "You didn't even know what was happening until an hour ago. James can't blame you for that."

"Do you really think he'll care about what I knew or didn't know?" Scorpius sniffled and pulled his knees up to his chest. It was too cold outside, and there was still no sign of Albus.

"You're right," Ruby said, and she grabbed his elbow, hauling him to his feet. "Come on. Let's get inside before you get frostbite."

"We have to wait for Albus," Scorpius said, but Ruby shook her head and pulled him up to the castle.

"You're pale enough already without getting even colder," she said. "Besides, when Albus does get back, don't you want him to see you not hypothermic?"

Since Albus was the one who had bugged Scorpius to get out of the library, he supposed she was right, though he did wish he could make his own decisions, even if those decisions led to frostbite. Every few steps back, he glanced over his shoulder, just in case either Albus or Avina would appear, but the lake was always empty, nothing but an expanse of ice that stretched out farther than Scorpius could see until it melded with the gray-white, clouded horizon. No one appeared, not even when they reached the castle.