Кассандра Клэр - Draco Veritas

"Beg me," he said.

She flicked her gaze upward, and was sorry she had. She did not like the look in his eyes at all. "Beg you to what?"

"Beg me to hurt you," he said.

She had had enough. She jerked away from him. "No. No — that's against the rules. You can't hurt me."

The dreamy look in his eyes intensified. "I think you'll find I can do whatever I want."

He was no longer holding her. She stepped away from him and he watched her, the same look in his eyes, unsettling, distant, familiar. She whirled around and ran for the door -

And found him standing in front of it. Leaning against it, in fact, his back slightly arched, a faint smile playing on his elegant mouth. "You don't want to run away from me, Ginny," he said. "You want to be with me. You wouldn't have brought me back to you otherwise, would you?"

A frightened sob caught in her throat. She stumbled back, away from him, whispering under her breath, "Excubitor, excubitor — "

He began to walk towards her. "The guards won't come," he said. "I've dismantled all the safety charms in this room. You can scream and scream. Go ahead. I want you to."

She tried to take a step backward, but her feet wouldn't move. They seemed bound to the floor. She whipped her head up and stared at him.

He was walking towards her, his left hand held out and she saw that his lips were moving as he walked. The air in front of him seemed to shimmer…wandless magic? But how -

"Cry out if you like," he said. "No one will hear you. It will make no difference to me. You are mine to break. Look up at me, now. Look up at my face."

She obeyed, looking up at him through her terror. His face seemed illuminated by some savage inner light — his eyes glowed, a clear and lambent blue. She recognized the look in them now, and why it had seemed familiar. It was the look of a cat batting at the body of a dying mouse.

"Don't hurt me," she whispered. "Please, please don't hurt me, I'll do whatever you like — "

"Yes," he said. "You will." He took his left hand from his chest then, and touched her face, and smiled. Then he put his hands around her throat.

She tried to scream, but the pressure of his fingers cut off her breath; as the darkness opened like a pit beneath her feet her she heard the clear sound of his laughter following her down into unconsciousness.

Hermione was impressed by the spell on the front door of the Midnight Club. It seemed to her to be an interesting combination of an Unplottable Charm and a Distraction Spell. The building was there, quite visible, if a bit nondescript — it was sandwiched between two warehouses in a cul-de-sac several streets down from Knocturn Alley — but unless you knew it was there, and were looking for it, you couldn't see it at all.

If you did know what you were looking for — as Draco plainly did — the view revealed, shimmering slightly through a distortion in the air, a set of double red doors with black-bracketed smokeless torches burning on either side of the stone steps that led up to them. The building that rose above the doors was grey stone, windowless, imposing.

"So," Draco said, unnecessarily. "Here we are."

Hermione cut her eyes sideways at him. He had changed in the hotel room, out of his old clothes, and the sight of him now made her uneasy.

He looked as if his father had dressed him — in fact, he looked very much his father's son. He wore elegant black clothes, a cloak over a suit, cut from heavy dark material that looked as if it had been imported from the nineteenth century specifically for Malfoy use. The cloak was made out of some weather-resistant enchanted cloth that the snow couldn't dampen or touch. His dress shirt was ferociously, spotlessly white, and the cold burn of his green cufflinks was the only color he wore. He had run a brush (her brush) through his hair before they left and Hermione had been forced to admit that it actually looked better now: the shorter cut suited the thin shape of his face, and in the wet weather, it curled damply against the nape of his neck in a way that -

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" Draco inquired, interrupting her thoughts.

Hopefully not, unless you're even more in love with yourself than you pretend you are, Hermione thought darkly, but all she said was, "If it's

'How the hell did Harry wander in here', then yes."

"That wasn't it," said Draco, still staring at the doors with a bemused expression.

"Well, if you're hoping that they have a karaoke bar so you can sing a cover version of 'You Don't Own Me', then no," said Hermione.

Now Draco did look at her. He smiled faintly. "I was wondering how we were going to get back out," he said. "The place is a fortress."

Hermione tapped the side pocket of her cloak. "I brought one of the hotel's return Portkeys," she said.

Now his smile was less faint. "You think of everything," he said.

She felt herself flush. "I try."

They went up the stairs together and Draco lifted the heavy bronze knocker and let it fall. The sound of the knock seemed to echo down some far corridor. When, a moment later, a small panel opened in the door, Hermione thought at first that there was no one there, only a faint, pale green light that seemed to emanate from within. A high-pitched voice trilled, "Show your passes."

Hermione, panicked, looked to Draco. Not looking nervous at all, he was sliding the black glove off his right hand. He raised the hand and indolently waved it front of the open panel. There was a look on his face she recognized. Contemptuous, arrogant. She knew he was playing a part but she did not like it. "Recognize the ring?" he sneered, lowering his hand. "You should. A hand that wears one like it pays your wages. Open the door."

There was a silence. The panel sealed itself up. Abruptly, with the rattling sound of a dozen bolts sliding back, the door opened in front of them, revealing a long blue corridor that stretched away into the middle distance. Gold torches burned at intervals along the corridor walls. And hovering in front of Hermione and Draco, roughly at eye level, was a fairy.

Hermione blinked. It was definitely a fairy — a small green one with gold and violet wings. It was not at all like the pictures of fairies she had seen in books. Its green-silver carapace had an insectile sheen, and behind its narrow lips shone a row of razor teeth. They gleamed as it squeaked a question:

"You have been sent by the Malfoys?"

Draco's eyes narrowed. Hermione couldn't help but admire how completely he had transformed himself. All his tiredness had dropped away and you could no longer see that he looked weary, or ill, or that he had dark shadows beneath his gray eyes. He wore the overbearing egotism of his family as if it were a second expensive cloak. "I am a Malfoy," he spat.

"Then," inquired the fairy, "why didn't you use one of the official Portkeys, sir…?"

Draco looked furious. "Because I was testing your security measures, you overgrown hornet!" he shouted.

The fairy's double-lidded eyes opened wide. "I am a pixie," it hissed. "And if you continue to shout at me in that manner — "

"Be quiet," Draco barked imperiously, and the fairy's mouth snapped shut. "My father sent me here to inspect the facilities, and that's exactly what I intend to do. Now look here. You can either take me immediately to Mister Blackthorpe — he's still the manager here, isn't he? — right, then, you can either take me to his office, or I can come back with an industrial-sized flyswatter and repaint these walls in a stylish new shade called

"Pixie Guts Splattered All Over." It's a long name, but I think the color would go well with the floor tiling."

The fairy spluttered. Because it was so small, the splutter sounded rather like the buzzing of a bee. For a moment Hermione was afraid that the winged creature was going to fly at Draco and bite him.