Кассандра Клэр - Draco Veritas

Make them sorry, Harry had said.

Draco smiled. Then he went to the wardrobe and began to get dressed.

It was so dark when Harry finally opened his eyes the next day that he thought it was still the middle of the night. It was a moment before he realized that the curtains had been drawn firmly closed around his bed.

He blinked. How odd, he thought. I never do that. One of the house elves must have come in and closed them.

He sat up slowly, wincing, and fumbled for his glasses. He slid them on, his head pounding. He felt decidedly peculiar. And he was fairly sure that he'd had a most unusual dream…

"Hey there, tiger," said a voice at his elbow.

Harry whipped around so quickly that later he'd be surprised that he hadn't dislocated anything. He knew, somehow, what he'd see before he even turned — and yet it hardly lessened the shock: black hair tumbling down over white shoulders, big gray eyes full of mischief, and a sheet wrapped around an obviously naked body.

Rhysenn.

Harry tried to say something, but all that came out was a whistling noise like a teakettle on the boil.

Her smile widened. "Speechless, are you?" she said. "I'm not surprised, after last night. I'd be shocked if you were in any shape to talk at all."

That freed his voice. "What — what — what — " he stammered. "What are you doing here? How did you get into my bedroom? Where are your clothes?"

She waved a breezy hand. "Probably where you threw them, kitten."

Harry goggled speechlessly. Surely this was a horrible nightmare. Surely he would wake up soon. "But," he began. "But I was dreaming."

"Tsk tsk." She pursed her lips. "Really, now. Do I look like a dream to you?

Do these?" And she held out her thin white arms. There were bruises all up and down them: the marks of fingers. "I had no idea you'd be so forceful. I mean, I knew you were something special. The Boy Who Lived — "

"Shut up!" Harry hissed, and covered his face with his hands. "Just shut up — I wouldn't. I couldn't have."

"Oh, but you would and you could." Her voice hardened, although she still sounded amused. "How upsetting that you don't remember. Last night was certainly one of the most unique nights of my life. Things happened to me last night that — well, that have never happened to me before."

Harry made a gurgling sound, low in his throat. "I don't believe this," he whispered. "I don't believe it. I have a girlfriend."

Rhysenn looked interested. "I thought you broke up?"

"I — no — but — where do you get off knowing so much about my personal life?"

She shrugged, and the sheet slipped down. Harry averted his eyes. "I get the paper," she said. "Everyone knows you're broken up. Except you, apparently."

"We're just — we're taking a break."

"Well, darling, in that case, next time you can bring her."

"Next time? There isn't going to be a next time! There wasn't a this time!"

The left corner of her mouth twitched. "Can you say that for sure?"

Harry was silent.

Rhysenn leaned forward. "You said her name last night," she said softly, and reached out her hand to touch his face; Harry jerked away. "You said Hermione. But you only said it once."

Harry shrank away from her even farther, or tried to. But he found he couldn't move. Something about her, despite his horror and feeling of nausea, still compelled him; her gaze mesmerized him like a cobra's gaze.

It wasn't that she was beautiful; she was, but in a strange, removed, adult way that unsettled him more than anything else. And her eyes, those Malfoy eyes, gray as winter seas, they frightened him. And yet he still found he could not pull away from her as she reached her hand out, brushed the backs of her long fingers against his cheek, and he felt it like the pain of biting down on a broken tooth, all his nerve-ending screaming at once -

He would probably have tumbled off the bed had there not been a knock on the bedroom door at precisely that moment. Harry snapped out of his befuddled state instantly, and stared in horror.

Rhysenn sighed and looked vexed. "Are you going to get the door, or should I?"

"Mister Potter," said a voice at the door, quite loud and sepulchral. One of the Manor's ghost servants, most likely. "Mister Black has sent me to wake you up. It is noon, sir."

"Go away!" Harry shouted desperately in response. "I'm — I'm not here!"

Rhysenn snorted. "Oh, well done."

The knock sounded again, more powerfully this time. "Mister Potter, I am afraid Mister Black impressed upon me the need to awaken you without delay."

"Aaaaaaargh." With a half-wail of despair, Harry got to his feet, wrapping a sheet around himself, and staggered to the door. He opened it a bare crack to see Anton, the ghost butler, hovering just in front of him, looking severe. "Mister Potter," he said. "Mister Black also instructed me to bring you your clothes for the par-"

"Oh, yes, thank you, I'll take those," Harry stammered, seized the pile of clothes from the ghost, and hurled them to the floor behind him. "Thank you, Anton, now if there's nothing else — "

"Oh, but there is," the butler said.

Harry hesitated miserably. "What?"

"Mister Malfoy also required me to pass along a message for him. I believe it was, 'Get downstairs now, you big oversleeping git.'"

"That's great," Harry said, and began to push the door closed again.

"Mister Potter! A moment, please. There is one more thing," said the butler, and held out a half-transparent hand. Shimmering in the middle of the ghost's palm was a familiar circle of scarlet glass, shot through with gold and black. Harry stared at his runic band, his mind racing. It was impossible — he wore it always — he'd been wearing it last night on his belt

— he remembered unbuckling the belt and — and leaving his clothes out for the house-elves to take away. "The laundry elves asked me to return this to you, sir."

"Thank you," Harry replied mechanically. "Thank you, Anton," and he reached to take the runic band from the ghost. Then he shut the door, and turned slowly to face the girl sitting in his bed.

Only, of course, she had vanished.

Hermione was not in good spirits when she arrived at the library at noon.

She had slept badly the night before — very badly. Her room at the Leaky Cauldron had seemed too hot, and she'd been plagued with awful nightmares of a weight pressing down on her, cutting off her breath.

She'd awoken at dawn with the sound of Pansy's voice shouting

"Mudblood!" at her ringing in her ears and had been unable to get back to sleep. All in all, a bad evening.

She had to wait in a longish line before she reached the bookworms. She passed the time by fretting about the upcoming party. The thought of seeing Harry was like a black wall of dread rising up in front of her; he would mope around the party looking depressed and handsome and she would want to drown him in a bowl of fruit punch. Or, even worse, he would have gotten over her completely and would be in the peak of high spirits. Draco would have set him up with some fabulously sexy veela cousin who would be draped all over his lap, feeding him peeled grapes with a pair of solid gold tongs. And she would still want to drown him in a bowl of fruit punch.

"Grapes," she said in a deathly voice to the bookworm when she reached the head of the line. "Who eats peeled grapes? How lazy is that?"

The bookworm waved its antennae in a worried manner. Hermione sighed. "Never mind," she said. "I'm Hermione Granger. Reference number

#97356. You were cross-referencing for me…?"

The worm scurried away and returned with a trolley trundling along behind it, piled with several books. Hermione took them and retreated to her now-familiar corner of the library under the portrait of Rowena Ravenclaw.