Кассандра Клэр - Draco Veritas

Draco turned on his heel and stalked out of the kitchen. Grabbing up a dishtowel, Hermione was drying her hands when an idea hit her. She peered out and around the kitchen door. "Draco!" she called. "My wand — I left it on the table in the bedroom. Could you bring it to the kitchen?"

Draco, who had been leaning against the side of the corridor, gave her a look of intense annoyance. He peeled himself off the wall and stalked down the hall and into the bedroom. She saw Harry glance up at him as he came into the room and then Hermione took her wand out of her left robe pocket and raised her hand and pointed it at the bedroom door.

"Claudo!" she hissed, and she saw Draco pause and spin around as the door slammed shut. " Forinsecus!" There was a grinding noise, and a number of iron bolts and locks appeared on the outside of the door.

"Prohibeo iunea!" Hermione called, and the bolts slid home into the locks just as something thumped against the opposite side of the door -

probably Draco, Hermione thought, signaling his rage at being locked in.

Well, too bad for him. She slid the wand back into her pocket. "There," she said aloud, "Now they'll have to talk to each other," and, pushing down the feeling that perhaps she had just done something unwise, she went back into the kitchen.

Ginny was so lost in thought when she returned to the living room that it took her several moments to realize that Blaise was gone.

Sirius and Lupin sat alone on the couch; Sirius' shaggy dark head was bent and he was studying a folder of parchment that Lupin had open on his lap. Lupin was speaking, and his voice was soft, the words meaning nothing to Ginny, "The victims were all close to Voldemort during the darkest years," he was saying, "They denied it at the trials, of course, and escaped Azkaban. The spies say they returned to Voldemort later, and he forgave them. As for now…"

Ginny stopped listening and simply stood for a moment, watching them as Sirius leaned to turn a page of parchment and Lupin moved aside to allow it, turning his head with a half-smile in his old friend's direction. She wondered if, wherever they went together, they carried with them the ghosts of two others boys: one dead, one who might as well be. She wondered if Harry and Draco would ever be like this, some time in the far future. She wasn't sure she could ever imagine them peaceful — not together, and certainly not apart.

Something occurred to her belatedly. "Where's Blaise?" she demanded.

Lupin looked up. "She left," he said. "She went to Pansy Parkinson's. She said she'd come back later tonight and if she couldn't, she'd owl tomorrow."

"Oh," Ginny said, feeling oddly bereft. "But — "

Lupin looked up at her. "Yes?"

"It's raining," she said.

"She took your raincloak," Lupin said. "The yellow one — she said you wouldn't mind."

Of course she did, Ginny thought, faintly amused by Blaise's nerve. She was disappointed the other girl was gone. There had been something she had wanted to ask her, something she had wanted to say…

"Moony," said Sirius thoughtfully, tapping his quill against Lupin's knee, "could you check and see if Avery is cross-referenced under the Mulciber files? Didn't Arbuthnot Mulciber meet a sticky end a few years ago?"

"Mm, he did, but Moody said that was a botched plot of Renton's, so it's probably unrelated. I suppose it wouldn't hurt to look, though…"

There was the sound of rustling parchment, but Ginny had stopped paying attention. Idly, she crossed the room to the long table that ran along the wall under the garden window. Usually it held Mrs. Weasley's good china, but now it was covered with books and numbered stacks of parchment. She ran her finger along the gold-embossed spine of one of the books, Death Eater Histories, Vol.III, but her mind was elsewhere. She was thinking about Blaise, about how Ginny had known just the right thing to say to make the other girl stay, somehow, which seemed odd to Ginny because she didn't know Blaise at all, in fact had barely spoken to her previously.

It was because she was like Draco, Ginny thought, I talked to her just as if she had been Draco. They were both so single-minded and so economical in their caring; weighing the checks and balances of what mattered and what didn't, what was worth doing and what wasn't. Each armored all over with their icy indifference, each with a vulnerable place where they could be hurt: for Blaise, it was Draco. For Draco…

"Nothing under Mulciber," Lupin said, softly, his voice cutting through her reverie.

"Check the others, then," Sirius said. "Parpis and that first one, Nott…"

It was as if his words cut into her, as sharply as a knife. Ginny stiffened all over, whirling away from the table to stare at Lupin and Sirius. Neither of them noticed her movement at all, so engrossed were they in their papers.

A moment later Ginny was scrabbling at her pocket, yanking out the slip of parchment Draco had given her, opening it with shaking fingers, reading once again down the list of names. Thaddeus Nott, Eleftheria Parpis, Charles Travers — and that was all, the lower part of the list had been torn away, right through the last listed name: Linton Avery.

A queer feeling built up behind Ginny's eyes, as if she were about to cry, or laugh very hard. She could hear her own uneven breathing, and feel the pound of blood in her veins. Tom, she thought. It's you, Tom, killing them, isn't it? I should have guessed. I should have known it was you. But why would you kill them, your own Death Eaters?

Her breath caught in her throat. Because they're not yours, she thought, the world seeming to tilt crazily about her. They're his…and you could never bear to share your toys, not even with yourself. Better that the toys be broken…

She looked up, then, absolutely sure that Lupin and Sirius must be able to sense her shock, hear the hammering beat of her heart. But they were still engrossed in their research and their own conversation. She felt as if they were miles away and she was looking at them through Omnioculars.

Think, Ginny, she told herself fiercely. Detach from the panic and think…This senseless killing isn't senseless at all. Tom never does anything without a rhyme or a reason to it. If he's killing them in a specific order, then there's a reason for that order. They were all close to Voldemort during the darkest years, Lupin had said, They denied it at the trials, of course, and escaped Azkaban. The spies say they returned to Voldemort later, and he forgave them -

But you didn't forgive them, Ginny thought. You didn't forgive them, did you, Tom? You never forgive anything. Her heart was still pounding wildly as she reached for the book on top of the table, and flipped quickly to the index. She found the entry for 'Trials,' and swiftly paged back until she found the right chapter. Somewhere, she thought, there would be a list of their names, not in the order in which they had been brought to trial, but in the order in which each had been pardoned and forgiven…

And there it was. Trembling, she pressed the page flat and read: Thaddeus Nott

Eleftheria Parpis

Abuthnot Mulciber

Charles Travers

Linton Avery

Frances Parkinson

The book dropped out of Ginny's hands and struck the floor with a bang.

Both Lupin and Sirius looked up, startled. Ginny as barely aware of Sirius beginning to rise to his feet, a worried expression on his face. 'Ginny, are you — "

"I have to go," Ginny whispered, and bolted past him, through living room and out the doors and into the hallway and she grabbed Charlie's green cloak off the wall peg and stumbled out the front door, clutching her broomstick in one hand, not even remembering when she had picked it up but that didn't matter because she was fleeing down into the garden, she was kicking off from the ground, she was racing the rising moon towards Pansy's house and praying that she was not already too late.