Кассандра Клэр - Draco Veritas

"Tom? Who's Tom?" Draco stared at Ginny. Ginny stared at Draco's moustache. She was more confused than she could ever remember being.

"Tom Riddle," she said. "Only the most evil wizard who ever lived."

"The most evil wizard who ever lived is the Dark Wizard Morgan," said Draco in a tone of great superiority. "Poor darling. You must have hit your head during the battle." He suddenly lunged at her and swept her up in his arms like a storybook heroine, with the ease of someone who'd done it dozens of times before. "Never fear, dearest," he declared as he started back towards the castle. "Your Tristan is here to take care of you."

Ginny goggled. Tristan? she thought, disbelievingly. She only knew one Tristan — and he didn't exist. Or at least, not really. Only between the pages of a book.

But then, she'd known the pages of a book to come alive before.

She raised her head from Tristan's shoulder and gazed around the meadow one more time. Suddenly she remembered why she thought she'd seen this place before. She had seen it before — the meadow, the wildflowers, even the boy and girl embracing, his blond hair tangling with her scarlet locks — of course she'd seen it all before.

On the cover of Passionate Trousers.

"Malfoy!" Forgetting his trepidation, Harry raced forward and spun in a circle, staring around him. He saw nothing — the clearing was empty.

Leaves rattled like dry bones, and the dry bones under them cracked beneath his feet a if he were standing on ice. The sky high, high above the trees mocked him with its frost-blue emptiness. Harry cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted. "MALFOY!"

No sound answered him. There was no birdsong here, no rustle of forest animals — the place was a tomb of sickening silence. Harry imagined he could hear his own heart beating, a rapid staccato like Muggle gunfire.

"Malfoy!"

When Draco answered him, it took Harry a moment to realize that the answering, itself, was silent. Could you not yell like that?

Harry spun around again; the clearing was still empty. 'Where are you?

What happened?"

I'm not sure, exactly. Draco's mental voice sounded as bewildered as Harry felt. I stepped on something funny — a tree root maybe — and then the ground just opened up and dropped me about six feet down.

You didn't make a sound, Harry replied, and shivered. I thought -

Yes, well, I was yelling like Millicent Bulstrode that time she walked in on Neville Longbottom alone in the Herbology classroom rolling around naked with those Fluttering Ferns. Not my fault you're deaf.

"Neville had a perfectly good explanation for that!"

I'm just reporting what I heard, Potter. Draco sounded amused, and for a moment Harry relaxed — he had forgotten what it was like to have this other, living presence in his head, comforting and yet familiar as his own self.

Look, Malfoy, you have to tell me where you are, so we can get you out.

I don't know where I am, Draco said crossly. It's a sort of dirt cell or a cube, bare walls with roots poking through. I can see light way above my head. It's a little lighter down here than it is in the Slytherin dungeon.

More consistently decorated, too.

Really? Harry had begun to pace the clearing, sunk in thought.

Oh, yes. The Slytherin dungeon is this ridiculous mixture of period Victorian furnishings and Restoration sensibility. Not to mention the Classical vases — I've told Snape several times that they have no place whatever in a -

I MEANT, can you really see light?

Oh. Draco subsided. I can, yes.

And you stepped on a tree root? Is that what you think happened? Some sort of — trigger?

That's what I think, yes, Draco began, then added, suddenly alarmed, But that doesn't mean you should -

Don't try to protect me, Malfoy. I can take my own risks, Harry said. He was eyeing a large tree root with an appraising gaze. It humped up out of the ground at an odd and twisted angle, far from the surrounding trees.

He raised his foot.

Draco sounded panicked. Potter, I'm not trying to -

Harry brought his foot down, hard, on the root. It sank into the ground, tipping him forward. He stumbled and toppled over, a cry of startled surprise torn from his throat as the world turned itself upside down. A moment of falling and he hit hard-packed dirt with a bone-jarring thud.

He rolled with the fall, as he'd been taught to do in Quidditch, and fetched up at Draco's feet.

Draco looked furious. There was dirt smeared on his cheek, and a rip in the shoulder of his cloak where a branch had poked through. "- protect you," he finished, and glowered.

Harry blinked and sat up. The cell was as Draco had described it — small and square, its dirt walls snaggled with branches. They grew so thickly across the walls, especially the wall just beside Draco, that no dirt was visible through them. "Protect me what?"

Draco shook his head, more in sorrow than in anger. "You really do have a tiny, tiny brain, don't you Potter? I swear, there are species of kelp out there that could probably beat you at chess."

Harry took his wand out of his pocket, and shook dirt off it. "Ron beats me at chess."

"My point is proved," Draco said. "I was saying, though it hardly matters now, that I wasn't trying to protect you. It's just that we're both stuck down here now. Makes the possibility of rescue more remote, you see."

"That's true." Harry raised his wand, and pointed it at the thick net of branches covering the wall beside Draco. "Nullus veneficium ager," he said. The branches trembled for a moment, then seemed to wither away and vanish. Behind them was a gaping black hole in the wall, wide as a doorway. It led away into blackness. Harry slid his wand back into his pocket. "Let's go," he said.

Draco was smiling, just a little, with the right side of his mouth. "Then again, perhaps you do have your uses."

"Yeah," said Harry. "I've been told that."

"Put me DOWN!" Ginny yelled, for the fifth or sixth time, as Tristan trudged placidly under a huge portcullis and through a set of tremendous double doors and into the castle.

"Not until we are well within the castle walls, my sweet," he replied.

Ginny began to pound on his back.

She continued to pound as they wound down long corridors, through an arched doorway whose panels were chased with pearls and silver, and into a sumptuously decorated grand drawing room. The walls were papered in cherry-colored watered silk, the windows hung with tasseled gold drapes. There were rosewood chaise longues scattered at intervals around the room, each upholstered in a deep jewel-toned velvet. Sprawled on one of them was a young man with long black hair, dressed in burgundy satin. A foam of white lace spilled from his wrists as he sat up.

He stared at Tristan, who had just dumped Ginny unceremoniously onto a pink chaise and was trying not to pant.

"Cor," he said, with some interest. "Did she try to run away again?"

"Not at all," said Tristan. "She became lost while out plucking flowers in the meadow."

"You know what they say, Tris," said the dark-haired boy. "If you love something, set it free. If it doesn't come back to you, hunt it down and chop its head off." He chortled to himself, green eyes sparkling. It was only then that Ginny recognized him. He was Harry — a very different Harry. Harry as he might have been if the Malfoys had raised him, perhaps, vain and spoilt. Although it wasn't as if Harry had been raised by good, kind people anyway, Ginny reflected. Perhaps he simply had a core of goodness and kindness in him that outside evils could not touch. This boy, however, clearly did not. There was a nasty glint in his eye as he looked at Tristan.

"Don't start, Sebastian," Tristan sighed. Sebastian. Ginny tried desperately to remember his function in the book, but couldn't. Perhaps she had been drunk with Blaise when she'd read that part.