Кассандра Клэр - Draco Veritas

Ginny crouched down beside the chair. "Blaise," she whispered. "Are you all right?"

Blaise snorted. "Do I look all right?" She raised her arms slightly and Ginny saw that the thin cords binding her wrists together were tied so tightly that they were cutting into her skin. Blood stained the rope and her hands looked oddly white. Blaise's voice was strained. "You'd better get out of here, Ginny. There's no telling when he'll come back, and if he finds out you're here — "

'He knows I'm here," Ginny said grimly. "Let me untie you — "

"No!" Blaise's eyes were darting around the room again. "He killed Pansy, you know."

"I know," Ginny said, standing up. "I thought he'd killed you, too."

'No," Blaise said slowly. She raised her head to look at Ginny. "It's you he's really after," she said. There were weals on her white neck, dark red, they looked like bite marks. "He's said I looked like you — "

A horrid thought occurred to Ginny. "You do know he's not Seamus, don't you? I mean, not really."

"I know," Blaise said. For a moment, her lower lip trembled, and she looked like what she was — an ordinary teenage girl, badly frightened, struggling to retain the scraps of her self-possession. "What is he, Ginny? I looked in his eyes and I saw — not a person at all but a thing — blacker than a shadow, and twisted, and when he touched me his hands cut me like knives — what is he?"

Ginny blinked — black and twisted? But he was not that — he was beautiful, and the more horrible for being beautiful. Her Tom — she opened her mouth, to explain, to condemn herself, when from behind her a soft voice spoke in a tone that was like a sharp nail running down her spine. "Yes, Ginny," it whispered — he whispered. "Tell her what I am."

They were halfway down the stairs when the snake lunged out at them; Hermione shrieked and threw herself backward. Ron stood where he was, the torch in his hand held stiffly out in front of him. Its flame was the same gold color as the snake's eyes.

"It's all right, Hermione," Ron said. "It's just Kevin."

Just? the serpent inquired, its tone lazy, scraping like scales against the inside of Ron's head. You hold me in low regard, True Dreamer?

Not at all, Ron thought quickly. He could hear Hermione behind him, her breathing sharp and harsh. Without her wand, he thought, she must really be terrified. I just want to pass by.

It's just a snake, you just want to pass by — your desires are so little for one of your power, your speech so careful. Why is that, Diviner?

Ron's mouth twisted bitterly. What power? A head full of useless visions, a future I can't do anything to change -

The snake let out a hiss which sounded impatient. I tell you, boy, it said, the answers you need are not locked only in the future. Some are in the past.

What do you mean by that? Ron began, but he heard a low moan behind him, and turned to see that Hermione had slid, shivering, to the floor. She was alarmingly blue.

Kevin chuckled, if a snake could be said properly to chuckle (although a snake named Kevin might perhaps be capable of more than your ordinary snake, Ron thought.) See to your girl, he hissed, and slithered backward, disappearing into the alcove he had emerged from with a disdainful flick of his tail.

It was only much later, when he had seen Hermione again and had known that she was, for the time being at least, safe, that Harry was able to remember that next terrible half an hour, during which he and Draco had wandered Viktor's flat, silent as ghosts. They had not even called out her name. She was so clearly gone: Harry felt the lack of her, like its own presence, in every room.

They wound up back in the kitchen. Draco paused by the stove and looked down at it. For the first time Harry noticed that there was still a pot on it, the flame underneath turned low. Whatever had been in the pot was now a blackened and unrecognizable mass. Draco waved a hand at the stove and the flame vanished. Then he looked at Harry. "Do we want to talk about what we're going to do now?"

Some part of Harry, a distant part, was comforted by that use of the word "we." Whatever happened, he would not be alone…"They took her," he said. "Voldemort's men."

"Yes. Probably the same ones that came after you last night. They said they were looking for her."

"I heard something," Harry said. "When I woke up- when they woke me this morning. The sound of a body falling — "

"You think she's dead?" Draco said. He touched the side of the pot, jumped, drew his hand back. Closed his fingers in against his palm. He was very white.

"She's not dead," Harry said. "I'd know."

"Yes," Draco said. "I think you would."

"I guess we don't need to talk about what we're going to do." Harry's voice was bitter. "I guess I was going after the Dark Lord anyway. Now I'll just go — a little faster."

"Faster?" Draco said. He was still staring down at the pot, at whatever it had once contained, burned now to ash. "We haste by night, and press by day — " He stopped, overtaken by a fit of coughing. "Sorry," he said. "Ash in my throat."

"All my friends," Harry said. "One by one — " He touched Draco's sleeve.

"You'll be careful?"

Draco looked away from him. "The Dark Lord wouldn't want me. He doesn't like damaged things."

"Your hand will heal," Harry said.

Draco seemed not to hear him. "I almost wish I could talk to my father," he said. "He'd know where Voldemort is."

"I know where he is, sort of," Harry said. "He's in Romania."

"Ah," Draco said, realization in his voice. "Yes, those creatures last night, they were speaking Romanian — and there's a place — my father always spoke of it — a fortress on a hill…"

"We just have to figure out the fastest way to get there."

"As for that," Draco said with the ghost of a smile, "I may have a cunning plan…give me a few minutes, Potter. And why don't you go wash the blood off you. Looking at you is making me sick."

Blaise gave a little moan and tensed all over. Ginny touched her shoulder lightly, then turned, and looked at Tom.

He was lounging in the doorway, his head to the side, a faint smile touching the corner of his mouth. In the light now, she could see that he wore a white shirt, stained all over with blood, some of it dried to rusty stains, some of it fresh and new. His skin — Seamus' wind-tanned skin — was a few shades darker than the shirt, his cheekbones flushed, his lips a pale shell pink, his coppery-gold hair catching the candlelight. He looked like an angel, she thought dazedly, an angel of the old days when there were wars in heaven and angels could kill.

His faint smile widened to a smirk. "Nothing to say, Virginia? Cat got your tongue?" He unhitched himself from the doorway and walked into the room, stopping before Blaise. Hands behind his back, he looked down at her, his gaze considering. "Miss Zabini," he said. "I remember your grandfather, with his stammer and his funny unpronouncable name.

Plenty of money, your family always had, but in the end — foreign trash was all they were and they knew it. Yes, I know you," he added, his voice like poisoned honey, "but you won't know me, oh no." He knelt down then, before her chair, took her bloody hands in his, and brushed his lips across the top of her knuckles. "Ginny could tell you who I was, if she liked," he confided, his eyes fixed on Ginny. They were full of a disturbing amusement. "After all, she made me."

Breath escaped Ginny's lips in a hiss. "Don't," she whispered. "Tom — "

"You hear the way she says my name," Tom murmured, his lips almost touching Blaise's skin. "She doesn't know whether to love me or hate me, for I am herself. I am her love, I am her hatred. I am her joy and I am her loathing and her abhorrence. I am her unrequited passions. I am her guilt and her remembrance. I am her beautiful despair. I am the futility of all her wishes. Out of blood and tears and ink, she made me. And I will never leave her."