Кассандра Клэр - Draco Veritas

"There is one thing we do know," said Draco. He had taken a parchment out of his pocket and was holding it up to the light. After a brief moment, Hermione recognized it as the Marauder's Map. "Neither Seamus Finnigan nor Tom Riddle is currently in the castle."

"I know." Ginny's voice was small. "I can sort of…feel Tom when he's around. He's not around. He's gone."

Hermione sighed. "Our first order of business is to find Harry," she said.

"Then we'll tell him about the Tom Riddle business, and see what he thinks we should do. Meantime, I'll owl Seamus — it's worth a try — and owl a few people in Diagon Alley, tell them to keep a look out for him."

She blinked at Ginny's expression. "Ginny, what?"

"Find Harry?" Ginny said. "What do you mean, find Harry?"

Draco, in the middle of stowing the Marauder's Map in a pocket, looked up, his expression for a moment unguarded. Then his eyes went opaque.

Hermione cursed herself. "I'm sorry, you've got enough to deal with, Ginny…"

"No." Ginny sat up very straight, tossing her hair back. "Tell me. I told you everything, please don't hide things from me."

"Indeed," said a voice behind them. A voice that made Hermione jump and spin around in surprise. A voice she had not been expecting here, just as she had not been expecting to see its owner.

"That's pretty much what I was about to say myself," Charlie Weasley went on, striding quickly towards them, his fiery hair tousled and damp from the cold air outside. "Now what's all this with the miserable expressions and the talk about hiding things? Would somebody like to tell me what's going on?"

When, halfway up what seemed like the sixth round of spiral stairs, a three-headed snake lunged out at him from behind an alcove, Ron was perturbed.

Gasping out a very rude word, he stumbled backward, almost knocking Rhysenn down the rest of the stairs. She shrieked and staggered to the side as he seized a torch out of a nearby bracket and spun to face the serpent.

Which had disappeared back around the corner of the stairs.

Ron swore again, under his breath. He hated snakes. Not as much as he hated spiders, but he was still not a fan. The fact that Harry could speak to them had never endeared the cold-blooded, slithering creatures to him much. They remained, in his mind, creepy and vaguely slimy.

He moved slowly up the stairs, the torch outthrust stiffly before him. He could see the shadow of the snake thrown in sharp relief against the wall up ahead of him, and he swallowed hard, his throat as dry as dust. He tried to imagine what Harry or Draco would do in this situation. That was easy in Harry's case; Harry would talk to the snake, whisper soothingly to it in Parseltongue, and soon enough the snake would adoringly obey his every command. Draco would whip out one of his annoyingly sharp and expensive-looking swords, and within five minutes would be juggling two of the snake's heads while playing football with the third one and mentally composing a scathing one-liner to fit the occasion.

Ron, knowing himself capable of none of those actions, tightened his grip on the torch and took another, hesitant step upward.

"Oh, for goodness sake," said an irritable voice behind him; he turned his head and saw that Rhysenn had regained her feet and was regarding him with a vexed expression. "There's no need to get so wound up about Kevin."

"Kevin?" said Ron blankly.

"The snake," said Rhysenn blandly, as if this were obvious.

"KEVIN?"

"Yes. Kevin. He guards the north exit to the roof."

"Oh, really." Ron's voice dripped sarcasm. "It didn't occur to you that maybe we should take one of the other exits to the roof, then? Like, the north exit or the east exit even the west exit?"

"West exit is attack hornets," said Rhysenn. "East exit is living skeletons."

"North exit?"

"Giant tarantula."

"Ah," said Ron. His irritation had abated somewhat.

"If you're so afraid," said Rhysenn with a sniff, "I'll go first," and with that, she stomped by him, the skirt of her corseted black dress held high.

Ron followed her, feeling foolish.

The snake watched Rhysenn go by with only a flicker of it's lazy adder's tongues. But when Ron made as if to pass it, it reared up, and fixed him with the cold gaze of its six golden eyes.

Ron stared back at it. Its eyes were hypnotic, gold fissures in the dark scales around it. When it spoke to him, he was only somewhat surprised: he heard its voice inside his mind, much in the same way that he imagined Harry heard Draco's.

Diviner, said the snake.

Ron lowered the torch in his hand. Yes. That's me.

You are bitter, for one so blessed. Such a gift as yours is rare. The dreams you dream are true dreams and will come to pass.

Ron thought of his vision of Ginny dead and it struck him again, like a second blow against his heart. Is there nothing I can do? Is the future I see set in stone? Can it be changed?

No. What you see cannot be altered or undone. All things end, Diviner, and to you is given the gift of seeing those ends. If you tried, you could see the end of the world.

It doesn't seem like much of a gift to me, Ron said sourly.

It is not, said the serpent, all that you can do.

Ron lifted the torch; the light of it blazed up between them and turned the gold eyes he stared at into six individual flames. What do you mean?

What else can I do?

But the snake, startled by the fire, shied away, hissing. It slithered away from him, and vanished through a hole in the alcove.

Ron swore, almost dropping the torch in his dismay. "Come back here — "

But Rhysenn had caught at his sleeve. Her gray eyes were dark with some distress he could not define. "Do not trouble the castle's inhabitants," she said softly. "It would be unwise."

Ron said nothing, but allowed her to tug him up the stairs. When he drew level with her, she moved to take his arm, and in his distracted state, he let her.

"Charlie." Ginny's voice was a thready whisper.

He had been looking down at his hands where they lay open on his knees, now he looked up at his sister. "What is it, Ginny?"

She could still hardly believe he was here. He had arrived so unexpectedly, had shooed Hermione and Draco out of the infirmary, closed the curtains around her bed, and sat down on the low chair next to her. She had waited for him to say something, but he had been silent, allowing Ginny her own silence, giving her the space to gather herself.

His blue eyes were on her now, steady, reassuring. She thought of her brothers. Bill, so much older than she was, she had always looked up to.

He was dashing and glamorous. Percy was reliable, sometimes irritating, dependable in an emergency. George and Fred had made her life a torment when she was younger, but they also made her laugh. Ron, she loved the most out of all of them, he was the closest to her in age, the most like a friend. But Charlie was the kindest.

"How did you know to come?" she whispered.

"Draco," he said promptly. "He owled me."

She stared at him, her mouth partly open. "He did what?"

"He owled me. He said you'd been hurt, I should come right away."

Charlie shrugged. "So I came right away. I should thank him for owling me and not Mum or Dad — I don´t think they could have taken it right now."

"He must have done it while I was unconscious," Ginny said. She looked down at her hands against the white bedspread, several shades darker than the white sheets but still very pale. She felt bruised all over, although she knew Madam Pomfrey had healed most of her injuries. She could still feel where Tom had touched her. Like rings of fire where his hands had braceleted her wrists, her arms. Her mouth felt bruised where he had bitten it. "Charlie," she said, slowly. "I've… done bad things.