Кассандра Клэр - Draco Veritas

"I said," the Dark Lord repeated, "that you let me win. Didn´t you, boy?"

Ronś voice came out in a whisper. "I´m really just not all that good at chess," he said. Gathering together all his Gryffindor courage, his raised his chin and met the Dark Lordś gaze. Red eyes like coals stared back at him from a flat, snakelike face. The Dark Lord had no eyelids. Ron felt ill.

"I mean, I´m all right. But I´m nothing special."

"Where chess is concerned, perhaps not," Voldemort said. "It may, perhaps, given your native skill and your lack of training, be impossible for you to beat me. What is important, however, is that you try."

Ron couldn´t believe it. Was Voldemort giving him a pep talk? "I just don´t see…how I could be much of a challenge for you."

Voldemortś lipless mouth curled into a smile. "Oh, but you are," he said.

"If not, perhaps, in the way that you might think." He waved a hand at the chessboard; instantly the pieces rearranged themselves and the board was again ready for play. "Well shall play again now. And this time, if I am not fully satisfied of the sincerity of your attempts to defeat me, I shall remove all of the skin from your right hand. Slowly."

Ron swallowed hard.

"Shall we begin again?" the Dark Lord asked.

Going back in time had never hurt before, but this time it did. Ginny spun the Time Turner over; the world and Malfoy Manor rushed away from her. When it returned, in a burst of light and color, she fell forward onto her knees on the smooth flagstone floor and rested there several minutes, as waking-up pains raced through her nerves like little points of darting fire.

When they subsided, she got to her feet and looked around. Some things changed only a very little with the passage of time; Malfoy Manor was one of them. The difference between the present day and five years in the past was negligible. The same high, beamed ceiling, the same leaded windows paned in blue and green diamonds. The same heavy dark green velvet curtains that hung along the walls. There was no fire in the grate now, because it was spring. The books…Ginny stepped forward and looked at the books; they were what was different. Most of these books had been removed from the Manor before she had ever been inside it. Heavy, rich-looking old books, many obviously of great value and very rare — Oh, how Hermione would have been overjoyed to get her hands on them! Wishful Ways for Wizards and Dreadful Deeds for Dragons jostled against each other on a low shelf next to The Unstrung Harp, by C.F. Earbrass. A higher shelf held The Book of Counted Sorrows, the Black Tome of Alsophocus, The Book of Eibon, the Necronomicon (the ownership of which was said to merit a yearś term in Azkaban — it held all the secrets of raising the dead) and a dozen others, all of which looked equally morally questionable. Other shelves held fiction and even plays: the six plays Shakespeare had written and never released in the Muggle world were there, even The Weird Sisters´ Bane, which remained unfinished.

Ginny, while nowhere near the book lover that Hermione was, was appreciative nonetheless of the rarity of this collection. She let her hand trail over the spines of the books, the bracelet on her wrist clinking and chiming as the charms struck together. The window above the desk was open, letting in air that smelled of grass and the faint sound of wind tangling in leaves. Over the sound of the wind, the fainter sound of footsteps in the hallway was audible, and growing ever louder as they neared the library door…

Ginny felt her heartbeat pick up. She glanced around, hurriedly — the Time-Turner provided a handy enough escape route, but it hardly made her invisible, and she did not want to be seen. She ducked behind the nearest velvet curtain just as the door to the library opened.

The sense of claustrophobia pressing in on her was immediate and intense. The weave of the curtain was so thick as to be almost impenetrable: she tapped lightly against it with the wand she´d concealed up her sleeve, and murmured, "Fenestrus."

A tiny hole the size of a Sickle opened in the curtain. Ginny peered through it, holding her breath.

A house elf had entered the room, carrying a feather duster and muttering to itself. "Must have everything spotless for Master Lucius…the Master does hate dust… Noddy doesn´t want to get in trouble like Dobby, bad silly naughty Dobby, doesn´t want to have to shut his ears in the oven door — "

The house-elf broke off with a squeak as the sound of wheels on gravel wafted through the open window. Ginny tensed, hearing carriage doors slamming and voices calling out. They´re home.

The next few minutes passed in a blur. Ginny held her breath behind the curtain, waiting until she heard footsteps in the hallway, waiting as they grew louder, waiting as the door opened. She shut her eyes tightly.

"Master!" the house-elf squeaked.

Ginnyś eyes flew open, and she pressed her right eye to the hole in the curtain. Up close now, she could see how disheveled Lucius was — his shoes were half-polished, his hair tousled, his face white and masklike with fury.

And in his left hand, he was clutching -

A book. A small, shabby black book with a tattered cover.

"Noddy, you stupid creature," Lucius snapped. "Did I not specifically state that I wanted a fire always lit in this room?"

"Y-yes. Noddy is very sorry, Master — "

"Don´t be sorry. Just do it. And then go to the kitchen and get me a glass of brandy. The decanter here is deplorably empty." Luciuséxpression was deeply sour. "And if you see either my wife or my son, do pass on the message that if either of them interrupts me in my study, they´ll be spending the night in the dungeons."

"Yes, Master, Noddy will do so, Master, and it is very good to have Master home again — "

"Oh shut up, you repellent little earwig," snarled Lucius in a paroxysm of rage, turned away and stalked across the room towards the far door that Ginny knew led to the smaller study. As he passed the fireplace, Lucius paused, then hurled the tattered little diary into the empty hearth.

Ginnyś heart contracted.

The study door slammed behind Lucius, and Ginny heard the sound of the bolt sliding home in the lock. The tension running through her muscles was becoming unbearable. Don´t do it, she thought at the house-elf, hurry off to the kitchens and forget all about it -

But the elf did not hurry off. Instead, it raised a finger and pointed it at the hearth; instantly a lively fire leaped up in the grate, obscuring the diary from view.

"Oh, no," she murmured under her breath. "Oh, no, no no — "

She clapped a hand over her mouth, but fortunately the elf appeared not to have heard her. Gathering up its duster, it hurried from the room.

As soon as the door shut behind it, Ginny threw the curtain aside and pointed her trembling wand at the fireplace: "Accio!" she whispered, and the burning book lifted out of the flames and flew across the room towards her like a miniature shooting star. She tried to catch it but it was too hot to touch; she dropped it and it fell at her feet. Seizing up a book from a small case nearby, she knelt and beat out the tiny flames. When they were all out, she gathered up the diary in a trembling hand. It was warm to the touch, as it had often been before, although she knew that now it was merely because of the fire. The cover was singed, as were the edges of several pages, but it was otherwise intact.

"Oh, thank goodness," she whispered. She brushed a finger over the torn cover: now that the fireś heat was fading, she could feel how dead it was under her fingers, no longer the live thing it had once been. She turned it over and read the words on the back: Vorpalś Variety Store, 15 Vauxhall Road, London.