Кассандра Клэр - Draco Veritas

That was gone now, though, and he'd better get used to it. And unblocking his mind to Draco's was not a good idea — Harry knew, without false modesty, that his will was strong enough to withstand almost any enchantment brought to bear against it, but he also knew that Draco was cleverer that he was, that he was brilliantly manipulative, and that while he couldn't lie to Harry, he could certainly artfully present the facts. Draco would break his resolve down in two seconds flat. No, it was better to do what he had been doing, and keep the contact closed, much as it hurt him, much as he was already desperate for news of his friends.

In the end, this decision would keep them alive and that was what mattered.

Wasn't it?

Harry got to his feet, slowly, looking at the pile of books on the armchair.

Finally he selected The Lonely Broomstick Guide to the Continent almost at random and dragged himself over to the front counter to pay.

Exhaustion hung over him like a second cloak. He was so tired he stepped on a round-faced witch's outstretched foot and nearly knocked over a hooded wizard carrying an enormous pile of history books.

Flustered from apologizing, Harry was halfway through paying the clerk behind the counter when a thought occurred to him. "Excuse me," he began, a bit nervously, "But I was wondering if there's a way out of Diagon Alley that won't take me back through the Leaky Cauldron?"

The clerk looked up at him sharply, and once again Harry had the feeling that the man was trying to place him. "What's wrong with the Leaky Cauldron, lad?"

"I…" said Harry, swallowing hard. "I'm trying to avoid an old girlfriend.

You know how these things are."

"Ah. Yes." The clerk wrinkled his narrow face in thought. "I don't know as there's a better way…"

"There is another way," said the hooded wizard with the history books, who had been silently standing behind Harry in the line. "There's a back way out through the Shrieking Teacup. It's a pub. Two streets down from Margin Alley you take a left and keep walking. You can't miss it."

"Ah," said Harry. He would have thanked the stranger, but there was something in his aspect — in the cloak drawn close about his face, and the withdrawn posture — that advised against it. "Well," Harry said. "I'll be going along then."

He took his purchase and escaped out into the street, now almost completely dark. The firefly lamps were lighting themselves, one by one, pale beacons of light in the greater darkness. Harry set off towards Margin Alley with a determined stride.

Back in the bookshop, the wizard who had directed Harry to the Shrieking Teacup pushed his stack of books across the counter towards the clerk, his hood slipping back slightly as he did so, revealing his bright hair.

The clerk ducked his head. "Young Mister Finnigan," he observed, with a pleased smile, and glanced down at the stack of books with a chuckle.

"Doing a bit of brushing up on your history, then?" he asked, running a finger along the embossed spines. The Rise and Fall of the Dark Lord, The Downfall of Darkness: A History of You-Know-Who, I Was Voldemort's Minion: The Autobiography of An Ex-Death Eater, The Trial of Igor Karkaroff, Inside the Ministry Trials, Death Eaters Who Recanted. "You know," he added, brushing his wand across the book covers and adding up the prices that appeared, glowing, in midair, "I don't think your parents would be any too pleased that you were hanging about in a place like the Shrieking Teacup."

"Oh, I wouldn't go there," said Seamus Finnigan, and his blue eyes lit with amusement. "I was just having a bit of fun with the tourist."

"Good lad," chuckled the clerk. "I suppose I should have guessed. You Gryffindors are such pranksters, although I always say there's no harm in you, really."

"Isn't that the truth," agreed Seamus, sliding his Galleons across the counter. "I mean," he said, raising his fair, blue-eyed face to the light, "do I look like someone who was likely to cause any trouble?"

And he smiled, a bright boyish smile that made the clerk think of pleasant spring afternoons and Quidditch and cats with tangled balls of yarn and cheerful childish laughter. He chuckled. "Not at all."

As the boy scooped his purchases off the counter, the clerk asked him to pass along his regards to the elder Finnigans.

Seamus smiled, and promised that he would.

Hermione looked sideways at Draco as he watched Charlie's carriage pull away from the foot of the steps. Clouds had begun to roll in over the horizon now and the light had turned the color of pewter. The shadows of the clouds overhead moved up the steps and Hermione shivered, but Draco didn't seem to notice. His face was hidden behind the uneven locks of white-blond hair that tumbled forward to cover his eyes. She remembered what he said about needing it cut; it curled the way ivy vines curled when they grew too long — in looping tendrils. He tipped his head back then, and looked up, and his hair fell away from his face. In the tarnished light he seemed a photo negative of himself: ice-white skin and white hair and white eyes, and all that monochromatic pallor ought to have looked washed out, but it didn't. People ought not to be that beautiful, Hermione thought. There ought to be limits on these things, or what would be the point of imagination?

"I think," he said, and the normalcy of his tone startled her, "that it's going to rain. We should go inside."

It's just the two of us, now, she thought.

It was an odd, fleeting thought, and vanished as soon as it had crossed her mind.

"I know," she said.

They went inside, side by side, and the door to the Great Hall closed behind them just as the first drops of rain struck the paving outside.

Already the inside of the castle, all damp stone that it was, smelled of rain, and Hermione remembered another rainy night, and Harry soaking wet, Crookshanks in his arms, and he'd looked up at her and past her at Draco on the stairs next to her and she had seen what passed between them even then, that peculiarly empathic antagonism that wasn't hate and wasn't love either, that was, even then, an indefinable connection.

You hate what you need. The more he has of this antidote the more it will hurt him. You may have to hold him down.

"Draco," she said, softly, but he was looking out one of the near windows, distantly curious, at the gray-black night, crystallizing now to shattered silver, alive with frozen falling rain. "Draco," she said again, and this time he turned and looked at her.

There was something moving behind his eyes: it was a cool, resolved look, the look of something icy that was not icy at all, a refracted sort of frozen flame. She remembered him in Potions class, cracking firecrabs for a powder. The other students had used their small jeweled pins on the crabs first, a swift and merciful killing, but Draco had crushed them alive.

They had burned his fingers as they died but he had not minded, or at least, it had not removed the look of intently fascinated cruelty from his face. He wore a similar look now. It was an inward look, giving her no clue what he was thinking. But it sent a shiver up her spine.

I will have to watch him, she thought. Not just for his own good, but for everyone's safety. Even my own.

"I'm going to the Owlery," she told him calmly, "to send a letter to Gringotts. You can come if you like."

He shrugged but fell into step beside her as she headed up the stairs. "I checked the Marauder's Map over again," he said. "Riddle's definitely nowhere on the grounds, and neither is Finnigan. Of course, the map doesn't show the Chamber of Secrets…"

"True, but after what Dumbledore did to the entrance to the Chamber after second year, I doubt anyone could get in there. Anyway, there's nothing in there Riddle would want now. Harry killed the basilisk and Dumbledore had the whole place flooded with lake water."