With Harry behind her, Ginny stormed to the back door of the castle, breathlessly recounting the previous events.
"He tried to kiss me and when I didn't want to he grabbed me and I yelled, and then Neville came! He threatened to duel, we have to help him!" Ginny swung open the door to the terrace and looked around wildly. "Where are they?" The masked man was gone, and the place where Neville had just stood empty.
"Oh dear Merlin!" she then called out, seeing Neville's collapsed figure against the castle wall. She ran towards him and fell down on her knees beside him.
"He's bleeding Harry!" She grabbed his face with her hands. "Neville, Neville, look at me! Open your eyes!" Neville's head lay limply in her hands, moving dully only with her movements. The looking holes in his mask showed his pale, closed eyelids.
"I don't think he's breathing..." Ginny said in a hoarse whisper. Removing one hand from Neville's head, she grabbed her wand out of her skirt, smearing the green fabric with blood. Frantically she began muttering healing spells.
Horror-stricken, Harry knelt down beside Ginny. He grabbed Neville's wrist, trying to feel for a pulse. He felt the violent beating of his own heart pumping blood through his fingertips – or was that Neville's pulse? Closing his eyes firmly in concentration, he focused on Neville's wrist. Desperately, he tried to discern a pulse different from the one he felt bouncing in his chest, but he couldn't. The wrist began to feel cold.
"Ginny, I... I think he's dead," Harry said, turning his head away from Neville towards Ginny in disbelief.
"No!" Ginny yelled out, still looking at Nevilly intently and shaking her head violently, "no, he can't be!" In a hoarse voice she continued to try spells even faster, but the incantations turned into sobs. "He can't be! Oh by Merlin, it's my fault! He came to rescue me!"
"Ginny, it's not your -"
"I should never have gone outside with that horrible man! What was I thinking, that assaulter, that murderer!" Ginny's wand dropped from her hand and rolled away as she let herself fall upon Neville's chest and began to cry. "I let my best friend die because I had to chat with some good-looking stranger. My best friend!"
Harry swallowed at the 'good-looking stranger' part, but then carefully lifted Ginny up from Neville's body and enclosed her shaking body in his arms. Gently, he stroked her wet cheek as she sobbed against his chest. A tear fell down his own face as he bent down his head and spoke to Ginny softly.
"I'll be your best friend. I'll take care of you. I... I'll always love you Ginny."
At this, Ginny lifted her head from Harry's chest and faced him with an intense look, her green eyes contrasting starkly with the smeared black make-up around it. "Then swear that we will find Neville's killer and make him pay for the blood that he has shed."
As Harry opened his mouth to answer, footsteps and exclamations of shock sounded from people coming from the castle and seeing Harry and Ginny sitting in a pool of blood next to a motionless Neville.
"I swear," Harry said.