-yes, there's just a little drama here. just a little. forgive me.

-I was just rereading CoS, and I discovered that Ginny has brown eyes, not green. So sue me. (except the truth is, it really does bother me when I make mistakes like that. But I needed her to have green eyes) Oh, and I spelled the word "gauge" wrong in the quotation at the beginning of the last chapter, which makes me want to strangle myself with the mouse cord, actually. So I'm very very sorry, and I'll be more careful in the future.

Anyway, without further ado, here's (drumroll please) chapter three.

Chapter 3: queen of spades

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The tumult in the heart

keeps asking questions.

And then it stops and undertakes to answer

in the same tone of voice.

No one could tell the difference.

Uninnocent, these conversations start,

and then engage the senses,

only half-meaning to.

And then there is no choice,

and then there is no sense;

until a name

and all its connotation are the same

(Elizabeth Bishop, Conversation)

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Ginny is sitting in the corner seat of the dome car, on the Hogwarts Express. There's not much light; the air is so thick, so slow that she might as well be breathing clouds, or water. This is strange, because, as she remembers it, the top of the car is curved patterned coloured glass. The long ride to Hogwarts was a rainbow dream, the first time, and even after that she always liked to look at the glass. It reminded her sharply of the time before, when she'd been able to dream awake because she didn't dream so much, asleep. The line between dream and reality was blurred beyond any hope of recognition, that year. Even now, the difference between memory and nightmare is equally complex.

Ginny has had enough experience with dreams to learn to dread sleep. She is disappointed, then, when she looks up and the ceiling is not a ceiling at all, wide and black and scattered with stars. She would have liked to see the jewel-bird tatters of that splintered rainbow again, although coloured light doesn't show up on painted canvas quite as clearly as on white.

The table has a chessboard stenciled in the centre. Around the edges there used to be tally marks carved in the wood- seven years of chess games finished with the same triumphant grin, same flash of sky-blue eyes. Hermione always paints Ron in blue and gold. Ginny remembers these things, still, chess and cards and a shared mess of candy and chocolate frogs, that tilting, dizzy feeling of knowing three people in this world whom she could die for, who would die for her. It was almost too much, intoxicating, and all the more since she knew, better than the rest of them did, then, how dangerous that kind of love could be. She looks up, around the table. The brown-eyed queen of spades is dealing cards with long, graceful hands like two white birds. She shakes her short dark hair back and flashes a quick, glowing smile at Ginny that Ginny can't quite place. She knows the face, but she hasn't seen that smile in years, and it was never meant for her, before.

"The game, ladies and gentlemen, is hearts," says the queen of spades, and Ginny knows the voice, light and laughing. "Play will begin to the left of the dealer. Aces are wild."

"Do you know how to play?" asks the king of clubs, turning to Ginny with clear green eyes, as serious as ever. Ginny shakes her head, and discovers that she is wearing a crown set with multifaceted rubies, sparkling tiny hearts.

"That's alright. I'll teach you," says the queen of spades, touching Ginny's wrist lightly. Her hand lingers, and Ginny notices paint under her nails and streaking the back of her hand. The air smells, incongruously, of honeysuckle and dry grass. If memory were not so fickle, Ginny thinks frantically- because she remembers this, has a feeling she should understand. This is like finding the missing piece of a puzzle, long after the image is gone. A summer daybut it's on the other side of tinted glass now, like everything else.

The king of clubs leans over to say something to the king of diamonds, who is holding a white kitten. Ginny would wonder about this, but everything seems to be refusing to make sense in this distant place. Then the king of diamonds looks up at her with an oddly joyous sort of smile.

"This is a might-have-been, Queen of Hearts- in this deck of cards you'll find no ace of spades. No riddles." He pauses, and she recognizes with a start grey eyes like melted silver. Then he continues, more serious. "Try to know, lady, when enough is not enough. Play the hand you're dealt- but I think you'll find the game can still be won." He holds her gaze momentarily before looking away and up, out at the stars on the ceiling.

Ginny looks back to the queen of spades, confused. The brown-eyed girl is sitting in tall grass on the far bank of the river, and sun is glinting in her dark-gold hair. She smiles reassuringly and raises one arm high in the air.

"Choose a card, my queen." She lets go, and the deck of cards takes off into the air with a swift beating of wings. One bird breaks away from the flight to land in Ginny's palm, but the card, when she turns it over, is blank. The girl across the river laughs. Ginny wants to ask her to call back the birds and give a clearer answer, but the queen of spades is already dancing away barefoot over grass into the blue distance, and still Ginny can't remember who she is (if she ever knew).

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yes, it's short. another chapter soon, i promise. meantime review?