Кассандра Клэр - Draco Veritas

"No you won´t," Lupin said matter-of-factly. "Because I´ll do it for you."

Draco had been right: the passage did open out into the rose garden. By the time they reached the end of it, Ginny was nearly fainting: it was so rank and close inside the narrow passageway underneath the moat that her dormant claustrophobia had awakened. She had to lean against the dripping stone walls while Draco fiddled with the heavy catch on the trapdoor above; finally it popped open and clean night air flooded in.

She exhaled a breath of relief. Draco looked at her. "Eager to get outside?"

he remarked.

Ginny said nothing. It was Harry who spoke, "Let me go first," he said.

He went, clambering up the rough wall and through the open trapdoor, as agile as a lizard. His booted feet dangled at Ginnyś eye level as he pulled himself up; she could see the cracked laces and the heavy, muddy soles.

Then they were gone, replaced by Harryś hand as he reached down to her.

"Come on," he said. "I´ll pull you up."

Ginny glanced at the hand — he had hands like Dracoś, slender and articulately made, and with the same white scar along one palm — and took hold of it; she let Harry haul her up, wincing herself at the pain this must be causing his cut hands. In a moment, she was sprawled beside him on the snow and he was helping Draco up. Draco landed on his knees and hands beside her, then spun around to slam the trap door shut behind them.

"Letś go," he said, matter-of-factly, and got to his feet. "We have to get off the grounds."

Harry looked at him and then said something that Ginny found peculiar, "Can you run if we have to?"

Draco didn´t say anything back; his face shut, and he nodded silently.

Ginny looked from one of them to the other — Harryś white face, Dracoś set one — and decided not to ask. She wondered what Lucius had done to them, up on that tower: they seemed physically unharmed, aside from the shallow cuts on Harryś hands. But there were ways and ways of hurting a person.

"Come on," Draco said, and gestured for them to follow him.

They had emerged at a point about a hundred meters from the house proper: it loomed behind them like the bulwark of an enormous ship. All the windows of the lower floors were darkened, Ginny saw as they made their way away from it: tawny torchlight flared from the upper stories like a line of flame along the ridge of a distant mountain.

The moon had gone behind the clouds, and the only illumination was starlight. It lend a ghostly dimness to the frozen beauty of the gardens.

They stretched away in every direction: long white rows of trees like orderly bones laid out for the moon to bleach. Slender threads of ice wove between the branches. Iced-over snow was piled everywhere like heaps of sugar pressed under glass: Ginnyś feet crunched loudly as she walked, making her wince.

"It doesn´t feel that cold," she whispered, gathering her cloak to her and glancing around, "but thereś so much ice…"

"My fatherś playing around," Draco said shortly. Then he stopped dead -

Harry stopped beside him, and then Ginny stopped as well.

They were standing in front of a mausoleum built of black marble; it was taller than any mausoleum Ginny had ever seen and the marble of it was so black that it looked less like a man-made structure than a hole ripped through the center of the night. On the door was the crest she would always remember: the sword crossed with a wand under the name MALFOY. Beside that were smaller letters: Arte perire sua.

"My fatherś grave," Draco said, with a sharp, unamused laugh. "This was what he asked for in his will…this bloody huge ugly thing. Although the Latin inscription was my mumś idea."

"What does it mean?" Ginny asked, looking at him worriedly — the distance had come back into his expression again.

"´To perish by oneś own creation,´" Draco said flatly. "Which, I suppose, she thought he had. No such luck, though."

With no idea what to say to this, Ginny glanced over at Harry. He was standing, booted feet apart, looking at Draco — and she saw a look flash across his face that she could not have described. Iit seemed a sort of terrible, fearful concern, an almost-pain that hurt her even to look at.

Finally, he reached out a hand and touched Draco on the shoulder.

"We´d better go," he said.

If Draco said anything back, it was silent. A moment later they were moving again, skirting the mausoleum widely. They cut along the side of a low hill, and came around it to see the walls that surrounded the Manor.

High, unbreachable stone, with a pattern of intertwined "M"ś along the top. Farther down, there was a gap in the wall where the enormous wrought iron gate stood, frosted all over with ice. Ginny saw Draco straighten his shoulders.

"Almost there," he said.

They continued on in silence, the only sound the crackle of ice snapping underfoot as they walked. Harry was in front now, and Ginny watched him covertly through her hair. The look on his face back at the mausoleum had frightened her. He seemed lost in thought, but not so much so that he was no longer tense — his shoulders were rigid and his hands clenched and unclenched at his sides.

He paused at the gate and glanced back at Draco. The gate loomed over them with its intertwined, wrought serpents throwing black shadows against the snow. The bronze bolt that held it shut was as thick as one of Harryś arms.

Draco stepped forward. "Let me do it," he said. "Itś best if only I touch things around here," and he reached out and drew back the bolt. The gate creaked open without a sound and they slipped through it: Harry first, then Ginny, and Draco last. He closed the gate behind them and Ginny heard the sound of the bolt drawing itself shut on the other side.

Draco exhaled a breath of relief. "Now — " he began.

He never finished his sentence. An unearthly wailing voice suddenly split the night: it sounded like a thousand angry pixies screaming all at once -

and it was coming directly from the pocket of Ginnyś robes.

"I belong to Malfoy Manor!" the wailing voice announced, increasing in pitch and volume with every word. "I belong to Malfoy Manor! I BELONG

TO MALFOY MANOR!"

Draco clapped his hands over his ears and mouthed something at her furiously. Half-fainting with shock, Ginny dug into her pocket — which was dancing and vibrating against her leg as if it had a live cat in it — and pulled out the second book she had taken from the library, the one she had used to hide the diary in. Freed from the confines of her robes, it shrieked even louder: "I BELONG TO MALFOY MANOR! BRING ME BACK TO

MALFOY MANOR!"

Not knowing what else to do, she threw the book at Draco. White-faced with shock, he caught it and threw it on the ground, bringing his booted foot down on it again and again until the spine splintered in half and the voice broke off abruptly, leaving Ginnyś ears still ringing in the sudden silence.

For a moment, Draco stood staring down at the book and panting, his thin shoulders heaving under his cloak as if he had been running full tilt. Then he bent down and picked it up, and glanced at the cover.

"I don´t suppose," he said flatly, "you want to tell us why you decided to steal a copy of something called the Liber-Damnatis from my fatherś study?"

"I–I´m sorry," Ginny said in a whisper. "I didn´t realize it was important enough to be charmed — "

"Well, apparently it is." Draco thrust the book at her suddenly; she took it, terrified at his expression — it was set, blank and furious. His skin seemed to be pressing back against the bones of his face. "Take it," he hissed.

"You unbelievable, blithering little idiot — you stole it, so take it, if you wanted it so badly — "