Кассандра Клэр - Draco Veritas

"She didn´t know." Harryś cool voice cut across Dracoś tirade.

"I didn´t want it," Ginny whispered. "I just picked it up to — to have something to carry — in case I needed a, a weapon — and I forgot I had it.

I´m sorry…"

"Itś all right, Gin." Harry looked acutely uncomfortable. "You rescued us

— no need to — "

"And how did she manage that, exactly?" Draco said loudly. His eyes were narrowed; his soft mouth twisted into a hard line. "Eh, Ginny? How did you manage to stay behind in the Manor when everyone else was flung out? You never did tell us that."

Ginny set her chin. "Are you accusing me of something?"

"Malfoy," Harry said sharply, "Don´t you think we should…" Harry broke off then, a perplexed look on his face. "What was that?"

Ginny paused and listened. At first she heard nothing but the faint rustle of leafless branches. She was about to say so when a sound so faint she might have mistaken it for the sigh of the wind caught the edge of her hearing: a low ululating cry, rising in pitch. It was not a human noise at all; it was the sound of a baying dog. No sooner had she thought that than it was joined by other, similar cries: not a dog but a pack of them…or a pack of wolves?

She turned quickly and looked at Harry and Draco. Harry looked confused, but Draco did not: he looked merely horrified, and so pale that the thin scar high on his smooth cheekbone looked like a livid thread of silver.

"Oh, God," he said. "They´ve let loose the hellhounds."

In the dream, she was at the seaside. It was a curious dream, because she knew she was dreaming, and at the same time it also seemed more real than any other dream she had ever had.

Hermione had been to the beach enough times to know that she was not standing on any beach that actually existed. The sand was too white and fine, the sea too blue and unmoving. There were no clouds and the sun was high in the sky yet the view seemed shaded with a peculiar twilight feeling. She shivered as she walked along the perimeter of the water towards two figures she could see in the distance.

As she approached them they became suddenly clear, as if she were focusing the lens of a camera. One was a small dark-haired child, sitting among the ruins of a half-built sandcastle; the other was an older boy, blond, kneeling beside him and watching him intently. As she drew closer they raised their heads and looked at her. She realized without any sense of surprise that she knew them both.

The childś face was thin and haunted, his eyes a vivid piercing green.

The scar that slashed across his forehead was a livid scarlet. He could not have been more than eight years old and in his small hands he clutched a red plastic bucket. Around the rim of the bucket were a number of peculiar symbols that looked as if they had been scratched into the plastic with a knife.

Harry, she thought. Oh, Harry.

The older boy had glanced at her once and then away. He looked to be the age he really was: if her dream-Draco was any different than Draco in life, it was simply that his face was more transparently readable, more like Harryś. He wore pajamas, and his arms were crossed in front of him as if he were cold.

The boy who was Harry spoke first. "Have you come to help me?" he asked her, raising his small face to hers. "My mother built me a castle but I knocked it down. Will you help me build it back up?"

She looked down the beach, then back at Harry. "Even if we build it up, the tide will wash it away," she said.

"No." Harryś tone was positive. "The tides here run backwards.

Everything does."

She looked at the blond boy who was Draco, and wasn´t. "Is he telling the truth?" she asked.

He frowned at the question. "Don´t you believe him?" he said. "Love is faith, I always thought."

"Then maybe you should help him," she said.

He uncrossed his arms slowly and held them out to her, palms-up: she saw that across his wrists two jagged incisions gaped, deep and empty. "I gave all I had already," he said. "I haven´t got any more."

She could not stop staring at the cuts: she thought they must go down to his very bones, and yet they were clean and bloodless. "Doesn´t it hurt?"

"Everything hurts," said Harry, and tipped his bucket towards her. Silver fluid spilled out of it and soaked into the sand at her feet. And then she realized what it was: it was blood. It spilled and spilled and she stepped away from the widening pool; surely such a small container could not hold much more blood. Surely no person could hold that much blood. But it continued to spread, moving towards her in a slow tide, and the gray-eyed boy with the cut wrists watched her, unmoved and unmoving, as she backed away and backed away and -

She tripped and went down, tumbling backward. She was awake before she even struck the ground.

…

Hermione opened her eyes. Something was fluttering insistently against her face in the darkness. She sat up, brushing it away: then realized it was one of Pigwidgeonś wings. He was hovering above her, holding a letter in one small claw.

She sat up and reached out a hand for it, "Thanks, Pig." It was an ordinary piece of rolled parchment, tied with a bit of string. She held it for a moment before opening, letting the strangeness of her dream fade. It had seemed so real: the beach, the sand and the blood. Her intellectual curiosity had been piqued by the odd symbols around the rim of Harryś red pail. Were they the same symbols that chased the edges of his runic band in reality? She would have to check her notebooks. If they were, she would be impressed at the recollective powers of her own subconscious.

Pig had settled on her right shoulder. She suspected he missed Ron, and let him remain there as she opened the letter. It was extremely short.

Hermione, I must speak with you. I am waiting for you downstairs at the front door. I sent up the little owl so you wouldn´t be frightened. I can´t let anyone else see me. Please come downstairs. Itś about Draco.

She stared at the signature for several long moments in disbelief. Perhaps this was some kind of joke? How could she possibly think…? Hermione jumped back with an exclamation as the letter in her hand disintegrated into ashes. Damn paranoid Slytherins, she thought furiously, and swung her legs over the edge of the bed.

She had gone to sleep in her own pajama bottoms and one of Harryś old souvenir T-shirts from the 1996 Chudley Cannons/Holyhead Harpies game. She drew a flowered robe of Ginnyś out of the closet, shrugged it on, and headed downstairs. Righteous indignation gave her feet wings, and within a moment she was standing in the entryway, pulling the bolts on the front door back and drawing it wide.

The slender figure on the front steps jumped and turned around. She was wrapped in a thick green cloak with a gold-bordered hood: only a bit of her pointed chin was visible. Her breath puffed out in white clouds of frozen air.

"So," Hermione said frostily. "You wanted to talk to me about something?

Talk."

The hood trembled for a moment; then it was pushed decisively back and a cascade of red-gold curls tumbled out. Dark green eyes stared into Hermioneś with a mute, resentful appeal.

"Let me come in," Blaise said. "We can talk inside."

Later Draco would remember their mad dash from the gates of the Manor to the edge of Malfoy Park as a nightmare of crazily tilting shadows. Ice had hardened over the road, making it smooth as glass and treacherous to run on: he had never been so glad for his heavy-soled dragonhide boots.

Ginny seemed to be having more trouble: twice he caught her as she slipped; twice she righted herself quickly and kept running. Harry, of course, being Harry, was having no trouble: he was built to run, light and lean and wiry. He ran like the snow fell, like he flew: as if it was his one purpose.