Кассандра Клэр - Draco Veritas

With a grunt, Thorvald wedged the crowbar into the crack between the door and the wall and pushed. Hermione winced at the sound of splintering wood. She glanced at Draco. He looked distant, distracted, as if he were doing sums in his head. The guard threw his weight against the bar, and this time the door tore away from its lock with a rending noise.

Thorvald backed up, and Draco crossed in front of him, pushing the door wide with a gloved hand. He took a step forward.

Hermione could not see into the room, but she could see Draco's face. It went from the blankness of distraction to the blankness of shock in less than a second. He whitened, and staggered back with a little cry as if something had hit him.

"Draco?" Forgetting that she wasn't supposed to speak English, Hermione flung herself towards him. "What is it, what's wrong — "

He stiff-armed her away, hard, and gripped her arm. "Don't look — stay back."

"No. Let me go." She struggled, but he only held her tighter. "Let me go. Is it Harry — is it Harry?"

"No," he said. "It's not Harry."

Knowing he wouldn't lie about that, she stopped struggling briefly, and stared at him. His mouth was a twisted line and he didn't seem able to look at her. "You're hurting my arm," she whispered. "Let me go, Draco."

He loosened his grip. She tore her arm out of his grasp and pushed past him, almost knocking him back against the door. She heard him call after her, but not what he said: she was inside the room now, and her heart was hammering in her chest.

It was a room like the others. Plain wide bed, fireplace, bricked-up window, neat rug on the floor. A rosy lamp burned atop a chest of drawers. The mirror behind it was cracked in half. On the floor lay Ginny Weasley, on a bed of torn clothes and tangled hair, her neck twisted at an impossible angle. She was obviously dead.

Hermione crumpled down on her knees beside the body. She felt numb and floating, as if she were very far away. There were marks on Ginny's throat: finger-shaped bruises, ugly and dark. Her white shirt, open at the throat, was stained with blood. Something glittered in her outflung hand.

Hermione said, "Draco. Come here."

"No," he said. She looked up at him. He was inside the room, leaning back against the wall near the door, chest rising and falling quickly under his shirt. He looked pale and sweaty, like someone who was about to throw up. "I can't."

"It's not her. It's not Ginny," Hermione said. "It can't be. This is a Polyjuice brothel, Draco. What's the chance it's actually her?"

"I know that," Draco said. He was still not looking at her. Hermione noticed dimly that the guard seemed to have vanished. "But I can't. If it was — "

"It wouldn't be your fault," Hermione said.

Now Draco did look at her, slowly, as if his gaze was being dragged in her direction. "Liar," he said.

Hermione could not hold his gaze. Her own flinched away. "I don't have my wand," she said, looking down at her hands. "I can't change her back without you. We could wait — "

There was a rustle. She heard Draco move away from the wall, and whisper something: there was a flash of light, and the girl on the floor began to change. Hermione held her breath as the long red hair faded and withdrew into the scalp, the pale freckle-dotted skin darkened, and the clothes tightened as the body inside them swelled. Within a few moments a tall girl with a mop of short dark hair lay on the floor, her hazel eyes wide and unseeing.

Relief washed over her, and then a feeling of guilt. Whoever this girl was, she had been murdered. She reached out, and lightly touched the girl's dead hand, which lay half-open on the rug — "Oh, God," Hermione said.

"Tom. It was Tom."

"How do you know?" Draco asked.

She sat back. "The charm you gave Ginny," she said. "That half a heart, cracked down the middle — "

"Yes? What about it?"

"This is the other half of it," she said, and held out what had been in the girl's fist. The edges of the glass heart were dark, as if it had been scorched in a fire. "He left it. So we'd know it was him."

Draco just stared for a moment. Then he held out his hand, and let her put the glass charm in it. He was still pale, and there was a dark, considering look behind his eyes now; Hermione was not sure she liked it any better than the brittle look he had worn earlier.

"I don't understand," Hermione said. "Is he trying to send us some kind of message? Why kill her? Just because he hates Ginny?"

"Because he loves her," Draco said.

Hermione blinked at him. "What?"

"He loves her," Draco said dully. "I expect because Finnegan did. He loves her, and he hates that he loves her. Love isn't an emotion that would be any use to him. He can't use it; it won't make him stronger or smarter or more powerful. It would just make him weak. If he could cut it out of himself, like a cancer, he would — " He broke off, and Hermione thought fleetingly of his bloody hand; he might have thought of it himself, because he closed his gloved fist around what he was holding. "But he can't — and he doesn't know why he can't. He's angry and that makes him want to hurt her, break her in pieces. You only hate people like this when you loved them once."

Hermione stared at him. "You sound as if you're sorry for him," she said.

"I'm sorry," Draco said. "But not for him."

Before she could respond, the door burst open again, and Thorvald the security troll was suddenly there, Mr. Blackthorpe behind him, and several other men in dark cloaks. They swarmed into the room like bees and Hermione stood up and backed away from the body on the floor as they crowded around it, silent and grim-faced. Mr. Blackthorpe looked up first, his yellow cat's eyes narrowed to slits. He was staring straight at Draco and the expression on his face was as sour as curdled milk.

Hermione glanced quickly at Draco. For a moment she saw him as he actually was: exhausted and ill and too young to be doing what he was doing, nerves worn thin from multiple shocks. Then, like a cloak, he seemed to draw his arrogance, his Malfoy-ness, around himself. He stood up straighter, squared his shoulders, raised his chin at a disdainful angle, and when he spoke, his voice was strong and carrying.

"Next time," he said, "perhaps you'll believe me when I tell you that there is a problem with your security."

"Oh, Tristan," she whispered, tightly clasped to his broad, rigidly muscled chest. "I always knew you would come for me. Even during the darkest of my hours, deep in the dungeons of Castle Plumeria, I never despaired.

Even when Sven held me down and ravished me…and ravished me…again…and again….and again…."

"Yes, well," said Tristan. "I think it would be best if we never spoke of that again, don't you?" He gazed at her, his eyes the color of impassioned hyacinths. "Oh, my minx…at last you are with me…and happiness is mine!"

"Oh, Tristan!"

"Oh, Rhiannon!"

"Oh, for God's sake," interupted Gareth. "Isn't this bloody book over yet?"

"One more page," said Ben, giving him a superior look. "Fine. I'll read it to myself."

If there was one thing you could certainly say about Ben, Ginny thought, it was that he knew his own mind. He raised the book to cover his face and continued reading, looking very incongruous sprawled amongst Ginny's teddy bears and heart-shaped pillows. Gareth, who was sitting on the floor by the foot of the bed, slumped back against the wall and commended twiddling his fingers in a bored, desultory fashion. The runic band around his wrist gleamed when he moved his arm.

Ginny got up off the desk and went over to sit down next to him. He looked at her, faintly surprised, but shifted aside to give her space to sit down. "Gareth," Ginny whispered, pitching her voice very low, "your bracelet — it really won't come off before you die? There's no way to break that charm?"