Кассандра Клэр - Draco Veritas

"You really do have it," he said. "I was guessing."

Ginny drew away from him, pressing her back into the couch. "I will not give it back," she said fiercely. "I´m perfectly capable of being responsible with it — "

"I didn´t say you weren´t," Draco said quietly. He was watching her narrowly, and a hot flush spread over her face as she remembered the book shrieking outside the gates of the Manor: I belong to Malfoy Manor!

She seemed doomed to look like a fool in front of him, she thought with a small corrupting bitterness that made her even more sure that she had made the right decision. She would not tell any of them what she planned until her plan was successful and it was too late for them to try to stop her. Watch them try to tell her then that she was irresponsible, too young, not brave enough, not part of the group.

"Look," he said, a bit more gently now, "Whatever you´re thinking, you didn´t do anything to give yourself away. But I know the Manor. I know thereś no way whatsoever of resisting that kind of Whirlwind Charm. If you´re in the Manor and you´re trespassing, you´re gone. Unless, of course, you´re in the Manor….but in another time. Time tricks being your specialty."

"If you know," she said with a sinking heart, "then Dumbledore will know, and your mother, too…"

"My mumś off somewhere safe, apparently. As for Dumbledore, thatś trickier. I´ll have to think up a good lie that he won´t see through."

Ginnyś hand tightened around the hourglass at her throat. "You´d lie for me about this?"

He sat up straighter and looked at her intently. "That depends. Does Finnigan know you stole that hourglass?"

"No," she said, surprised at the question. "I´d never — I mean, he wouldn´t want to know. Seamus wouldn´t approve of lying and stealing things.

Heś one of the most moral and good people I know."

"Oh, heś a treasure, all right," said Draco with heavy irony. "I´m sure they´d build a monument to his wonderfulness, if they could find a grade of marble boring enough."

"Hmph," said Ginny, unable to think of a retort to this.

"So he doesn´t know anything about any of this?"

Ginny shook her head. "I haven´t told anyone," she said softly. "Honestly, Draco…the Time-Turner…I would never do anything dangerous. I was just playing…"

"I know what you were doing." A faintly superior look stole into his eyes.

"You went back to get that book."

"The…book?" Ginny nearly fainted with horror. Not the diary, he couldn´t have guessed that, he couldn´t possibly…

"The Liber-Damnatis," he said.

Ginny was speechless.

"Trust you to nick one of the most valuable books out of my fatherś collection," he said, sounding very amused. "He complained for years that it was missing, but since the charms never went off, he just assumed the house-elves had misplaced it somewhere. 'Picked it up to use as a weapon´ — " he snorted. "You´re not a very good liar."

Thatś what you think, Draco Malfoy, Ginny thought grimly. "I bet you can´t guess why I wanted it," she said, hoping against hope that he would enlighten her.

He obliged, looking amusingly exasperated. "Hermione was only going on and on about it being one of the best resources for information about the Four Worthy Objects that ever existed for weeks," he said. "She kept complaining that she couldn´t find any existing copies in any libraries anywhere: I told her we´d had one once but it had gone missing when I was twelve and anyway, the Aurors would have confiscated it last summer if it´d turned up. She made me check the manifests…" He made a face at her. "You must think I don´t pay any attention at all."

Ginnyś mind was whirling. Nothing seemed to quite be making sense: how, out of all the books in the library, had she managed to pick up the one book that Hermione had apparently been wanting — the one book that might tell them about the Worthy Objects? There were coincidences, she thought. And then there were Coincidences. This was obviously one of the latter. "So thatś how you guessed," she said, only half aware she was speaking out loud. "The book…"

"Partly." Dracoś voice was unusually gentle, although it might have been exhaustion. "I think I knew when I saw you in this…" He reached out his left hand, wincing as the bandage rode up on his wrist, and gently touched the edge of her ruined yellow cloak. "I remembered the girl in the library that day. I mentioned her to my father later and he told me I must have been daydreaming. But I knew even before he told me that that she had been lying about why she was there. He never would have hired a girl like that to be my governess."

"Oh, I know, you told me," Ginny said sourly. "Too many freckles."

"No," he said. "Too pretty."

His fingertips were still touching her cloak, lightly; she gingerly took hold of his wrist and bent to brush her cheek against the back of his hand.

"I´m so sorry," she said. "I´m so sorry you´re ill."

"I´ll be fine." He was looking down at her; their faces were very close. She could feel his breath against her cheek, stirring her eyelashes. An agonizing anticipatory tingle ran over her skin. "Ginny, I wanted to tell you that — "

He broke off. For a moment she didn´t know why: then she heard what had interrupted him. Someone was knocking at the door. His hand tightened on her cloak. "Aren´t there wards up around this house?"

"Yes." She looked towards the door. "They don´t let anyone with hostile intentions through. Oh! But it could be Ron- maybe something happened to him, heś been gone for so many hours — " Pulling away from Draco, she leaped to her feet and ran to the kitchen door. He called after her to be careful, but she ignored him. She drew the chain back and threw the door wide open.

The blond young man on the front steps blinked in the sudden light.

"Ginny?"

For a moment, she simply froze in dumbfounded shock. He had so much been the last person she expected to see that for a moment it was as if a stranger stood there. It took a moment for recognition to come flooding in. "Seamus?" she said. "Seamus, what are you doing here?"

"I was worried," he replied, his face breaking into a relieved smile at the sound of her voice. "I heard what happened and I was so worried about you. I flew all night to get here — " and without even finishing the sentence, he covered the space between them with a few swift steps and threw his arms around her. Too shocked to move, she returned his embrace weakly.

"Ginny," he whispered into her hair. "Oh Ginny, I´m so glad to see you…"

The narrow corridor leading down to the Potions Dungeon was so poorly lit as to be a danger. Dumbledore waved a hand as he made his way down it and red and gold sparks followed him, lighting the way. A small smile curled the corner of his mouth. He found the habitual darkness in which Severus Snape liked to work amusing. He found most things about Snape amusing; Severus knew this and bore it grimly. Part of his penance, perhaps. Dumbledore was not sure. In the complex wall of guilt, penance, and intransigence which Snape had built about himself, there were few chinks through which an onlooker might gaze and understand.

Dumbledore had reached the entrance to the laboratory now; he ducked as he passed through the low doorway. It was extremely dim inside, lit only by the light of a few faintly flaring overhead torches. The walls were lined with jars, flasks and vials or many-colored liquids, as were the surfaces of the multiple worktables. Fires burned, cauldrons bubbled, and enormous tomes of magic lay scattered everywhere. Dumbledore resisted the urge to move The Book of Gramarye to a place where it would not get essence of hemlock spilled on it.

He paused in the middle of the room. "Hello, Severus," he said quietly to the man behind the largest worktable. The Potions master, dressed in his black work robes, was busy adding several drops of oil of thornwood to a simmering cauldron, and for a moment did not reply. At last he glanced up and nodded. "Headmaster," he said, by way of greeting. "What brings you down here so late?" He looked around, seeming to notice the darkness in the room for the first time. "Is it late, isn´t it?"