Кассандра Клэр - Draco Veritas

because, of course, I had given him up a long time ago."

"Couldn´t…" Harry began falteringly, "couldn´t it be reversed, somehow, I mean, all spells are reversible — "

"Reversed?" Lucius´ voice was suddenly icy again. "Why would I want it reversed? I am very satisfied with the bargain I made. To gain much, one must sacrifice much, and I have gained vastly. I have gained the world."

And lost your soul. Harry thought of Draco, up on the tower. He reached out with his mind for him, but felt only a resistant uncommunicative silence. Anxiety gnawed at his stomach again, worse than before. "What do you want from me?´ he asked abruptly. "You didn´t bring me down here just to tell me stories about the past."

"No." Lucius´ voice had a razor edge now; Harry suspected that the older man now very much regretted having said anything at all about his gift to Voldemort. "I brought you down here to offer you a bargain."

"What kind of bargain?"

"It is simple. You have that cup. I want it."

"I told you already, I don´t have it and I don´t know where it is."

"I understand that. But your girlfriend does. And therefore, I am willing to make a trade."

The world turned dark around the edges. "A trade?" Harry whispered.

"You mean — you don´t mean trading one of them for the other?"

I´d rather die myself, he thought, and meant it, but did not say it. Lucius did not want or need his death at the moment. Offering it would mean nothing.

Lucius chuckled. "Amusing as it would be for me to watch you make that choice….no, that isn´t what I mean. I mean, that I will trade you what you want, if you will write a letter to Miss Granger, and ask her to share the location of the cup with me. Tell her why, as well. She´ll understand."

"You´ll trade me what?" Harry said, his head spinning.

"This," Lucius said, and from an inner pocket of his robe, he drew an object and set it down on the desk in front of him.

Harry stared. It was a clear glass vial the size, perhaps, of a rolled parchment. The top and bottom of the vial were thickly encrusted with wine-colored jewels. Inside was perhaps two inches of pale greenish liquid.

"More poison?" Harry said, weary bitterness creeping into his voice.

"No," Lucius replied. “Antidote.”

Hermione lay awake in Ginnyś bed, staring up at the ceiling. Restlessness hummed in her blood; she could not sleep. When she shut her eyes she saw Harryś face, pale and worried when he turned away from her back at school. Not having seen him since, she fretted: what if he died, and the last thing she had ever said to him was that she didn´t want to be with him anymore?

Giving up on sleep, she sat up slowly, and rested her chin on her knees.

Thinking about what would happen to her if Harry died had always filled her with shuddering nausea; she remembered Draco telling her that she couldn´t imagine a world without Harry in it. Oh, but I can, she thought grimly. I just don´t want to live in it.

She got up and padded quietly into the bathroom in search of water. After lighting the torch with a whispered Lumos, she stared disconsolately at herself in the mirror over the sink. So this was what love looked like: dark shadows under the eyes, pinched pallor, unhappy mouth. Draco would have laughed at her, wouldn´t he. Gazing at her own face, she spared a flash of ironic pity for Pansy: so this was Pansyś idea of a devastating femme fatale, was it? Anyone who had to wear her face to feel pretty and loveable….she paused, the glass of water halfway to her mouth. What on earth HAD put this diabolical scheme into Pansyś head? Why Ron? It wasn´t that he had been nursing a secret passion for her all these years, Hermione was quite sure of that. Oh, there was something there, there always was with two people who were so close and who had once been romantically involved, however briefly. There was always that lingering possessiveness, in Ron no doubt complicated by his intermittent jealousy of Harry that had never quite gone away. Still, Pansy must have caught onto something: a look, a phrase, a gesture, something about Ron…

Something about Ron. Hermione put the glass down on the sink, slowly and carefully. Her earlier, cursory search of Ronś room had yielded nothing and she had felt ashamed for looking, especially when she had no idea what she was looking for. But something tickled the back of her mind now; something she could not push down or ignore…

As quietly as she could, she doused the light and left the bathroom, creeping down the hall past Charlieś room, and crossing the landing to the stairs. A quick anti-creaking spell took care of noise; she padded upstairs in near-silence, and slipped into Ronś room.

She lit the lamp and glanced around. It looked exactly as it had that afternoon. Neat and tidy, covered with posters, the same frayed orange bedspread. The same stack of photographs was sitting on the desk, where Ron must have placed them after pulling them down off the walls. The same pile of comics by the bed. She´d been through the desk drawers and found nothing much of interest — so she had thought. She knelt down now and reopened the largest drawer, sliding it out completely and placing it on the floor.

There was a box inside it, which she had seen before. It was a blue box, simple painted wood, with a gold embossed seal on the top: Mahoneyś Divination Supplies, 14 Diagon Alley. She knew the box: she had given it to Ron herself, at the end of the summer. What he had said, or so nearly said, to her when they´d been imprisoned in Slytherinś castle had always stayed with her although he had never mentioned it again: she had always wondered if it had something to do with his never-used Divination talent. This box had been the result of those musings.

She pried the lid off, and sat back, gazing at the box contents thoughtfully. There was a scrying bowl: small and made of copper. There was a pack of tea leaves with a small instructional booklet on how to use them. There was a sphere of dark crystal on a bronze stand, on which was etched the words: I hold the secrets.

Hermione lifted the sphere thoughtfully in her hand. Then she brought her hand down, hard, smashing the crystal ball against the metal edge of Ronś bedside table. She braced herself for the noise of it shattering: to her surprise, it broke apart quietly and neatly, in two perfect halves.

A small, carefully rolled bundle of handwritten parchments tumbled out.

They had been folded over and over and wound around with a thin silver chain. A feeling of inexpressible sadness took hold of Hermione as she picked them up: she knew what they were. Even knowing what he knew, even knowing the truth, Ron would not have been able to bring himself to throw them out. Underneath everything, she sometimes thought, he was the most sentimental of them all — the most easily amused and the most easily hurt. With a sigh, she picked up the small packet of love letters and dropped it into her robe pocket, where it sat heavily, just over her heart.

"So thatś the deal," Harry said. He´d been pacing up and down the top of the tower since the guards had brought him back, now he stopped, and put his hands behind his back, and looked at Draco. The wind had picked up: it kept blowing strands of Dracoś hair into his face, and when he reached to push it back, the adamantine cuff seared a cold line across his skin. "The cup in exchange for the antidote. Well, not to cup, so to speak -

just a letter to Hermione asking her to send it to the Manor. Which she would, once she realized whatś at stake. Itś pretty simple, really."

"I wonder," Draco said. He found himself possessed of a curious calm. "If heś been planning this for a long time."

"I don´t think so," said Harry. His hair blew across his face. "Not this specifically. Anyway, it doesn´t matter."