Кассандра Клэр - Draco Veritas

"Draco, you couldn't possibly break someone's kneecaps with a toffee hammer. It would be like trying to decapitate them with a nutmeg grater.

Toffee hammers are about an inch long."

Draco eyed her resentfully. "That's not the point."

"I know," Hermione said, shoving papers aside. "You were being funny.

But I'm not in the mood."

Draco hopped back up on the desk. "You could at least pretend you still find me amusing, you know," he said.

"To what purpose?"

Draco had subsided into a full-on sulk. "You are tired of me," he declared.

"Obviously, you have found someone more dashing, more alluring — "

"Viktor Krum!" Hermione exclaimed.

Draco let out a wail and dropped the letter opener. "I was joking! Not that slack-jawed Slavic gorilla! His knuckles brush the ground and he walks like a duck! I never walk like a duck. I prowl, I strut, I slither, I glide — "

'BE QUIET," Hermione thundered. "And don't scream like that, someone will hear you. Honestly, Draco. What I was trying to say is that I found Viktor's name in the files. Draco, around what time was it that Harry Portkeyed himself out of the club? Did you come straight to the office afterward?"

For a moment, there was no answer. Finally, Hermione glanced up. Draco was staring at her, his exaggerated playacting and tipsy mirth quite gone.

"I did," he said. "I left straightaway to find you."

"Then it looks like about a half an hour later, Viktor Krum left the Floo Hub with the rest of his Bulgarian teammates. Their names aren't listed but there were seven of them. Eight, counting Viktor."

"Too many for a team," Draco said, sitting up straighter. "One too many."

Hermione's hands tightened on the parchment. "Viktor. It has to have been Viktor. Harry knows, him, trusts him — "

Draco leaped down from the desk and came to stand beside her. Together they stared down at the words inked in blue: Viktor Krum (D, Blg. Capt.)

& Teammates (7) London — Sofia. "They went to the Floo Hub in Sofia," he said. "From there I assume Viktor would Apparate or Portkey home?"

Hermione nodded. "His family's home is outside Sofia. If we had a fireplace we could try to call on him at his house — there's plenty of Floo powder here — "

"But we can't Floo internationally without a Hub," Draco protested.

"From the Ministry you can Floo anywhere," Hermione said quietly. "No restrictions."

Draco inhaled a startled breath. "Floo Powder," he said. "There must be some in here — "

"In the cabinets," Hermione said. "Don't take too much — they'll know we've been here. Although," she added dryly, looking around at the mess Draco had made of the walls, "I suppose they're not likely to miss that, are they?"

Draco already had his hand inside the cabinet on the wall. "They'll think it was burglars," he said.

"Burglars who broke in and redecorated?"

"Gay burglars," he said, and with a fiendish grin, retrieved a canister of Industrial Strength Floo Powder from the cabinet. "Got it," he said. "Now, I know where there's a fireplace. A huge one. Upstairs, in my father's office." He slammed the cabinet door shut. "Come on, I'll show you."

Furiously, Rhiannon tossed back her mane of honeyed silken hair, glaring at the man who stood before her — the man who had killed her father, dishonored her mother, driven her brother mad, and doomed her true love Tristan to a lingering, painful imprisonment deep beneath the dungeon moat. "You cannot break my spirit, Morgan," she hissed.

The Dark Wizard Morgan chuckled, a deep low rumble like a bassoon. His laugh, like everything else about him, was ineffably manly — from the muscular forearms revealed beneath the foaming lace of his sleeves to the coal-blue eyes and tangles of raven hair, he was a gorgeous slab of masculinity. He was, she reminded herself hastily, also Evil. "You will cooperate," he said to her. "Or your lover Tristan will die by my hand -

although not before I have tortured him sufficiently."

Rhiannon gasped, and her milky bosom heaved beneath the thin gold satin of her gown. "You wouldn't," she moaned.

"I would," Morgan asserted, leaning back against the enormous ornate stone fireplace in a satisfied manner, an action which caused his satin breeches to tighten across his narrow hips and flat, muscular abdomen.

"I'd enjoy it, too. I am evil after all, and take great pleasure in acts of dastardly, if pointless, sadism."

Rhiannon averted her eyes. "What is it you want from me, Morgan?"

"That should be obvious," he purred. "You, my sweet." He began to move towards her, his lean graceful form like a panther's. Rhiannon trembled -

truly he was Evil, but since the moment she met him he had stirred her passions as no other man had, before or since -

"Goodness, this book is trash," Blaise said, tossing Trousers Ablaze onto the nightstand and settling back against the pillows heaped against Ginny's headboard. "Did Draco really give it to you?"

"Mm. For Christmas," Ginny said, leaning her head back against the wall.

Her head was spinning rather — she'd never gotten drunk for absolutely no reason before, but it felt good. They drunk the remains of bottle of Firewhiskey and half a bottle of spiced Mermish wine, and Ginny felt pleasantly lightheaded.

"More wine?" asked Blaise, holding the bottle in one hand and a slim-stemmed glass, very delicately, in the other. Her long hair had come out of its velvet ribbon and it slipped in thick heavy locks over her shoulders.

"Just give me the bottle," Ginny said, and Blaise handed it to her with a chuckling laugh.

"The whole bottle?" she said. "You Gryffindors never do anything halfway."

Ginny made a face. "You sound just like Draco, the way you say 'You Gryffindors'," she said. "Like you were saying, 'You sacks of Bubotuber pus.'"

Blaise flopped back among the cushions — well, flop wasn't really the word, like Draco, she was far too graceful to flop. She leaned, and bent a discerning gaze on Ginny. "So that book was pretty racy," Blaise observed.

"I'm surprised Draco would give a girl a book like that — how far did you get with him, anyway?"

Ginny choked on her wine. "How far did I what with who?"

Blaise frowned. "Must I spell it out?"

"Yes," Ginny said, ungraciously.

Blaise spelled it out. Ginny felt herself blush. "Oh," she said, weakly. "No, we never, I mean, I never — "

"With Draco or with anyone?"

"With anyone," Ginny said.

Blaise smiled. Her green eyes sparkled. "Innocent," she said. "Aren't you?"

Ginny blinked. Innocence conjured up in her mind images of ribbons and sunny days and hide-and-seek and Seamus smiling down at her with steady blue eyes. She remembered Tom kissing her with her own blood on his mouth and looked away from Blaise.

"I suppose I am," she said. "And what about you, have you — ?"

Blaise shrugged. "Yes, but never with Draco," she said. "Although not for a lack of trying."

"Er," said Ginny, tactfully.

"I always wondered how he'd be," Blaise said thoughtfully. She looked up at Ginny, and grinned. "Haven't you?"

"Oh, he strikes me as the sort of boy who sends candy and flowers afterwards to show his appreciation. Only he sends them to himself."

Blaise laughed. "If it went really well, he'd probably buy himself diamond earrings."

"Then he'd get his feelings hurt because his ears aren't actually pierced."

"And he'd break up with himself."

Ginny was giggling so hard she choked on the wine. "Of course then there's always make-up sex with himself."

Blaise smirked, running a delicately manicured finger along the rim of her glass. "Of course, that doesn't change the fact that he would probably be a lot of fun," she said. "You can tell a great deal about the way a boy will be in bed from the way he plays Quidditch, you know."