Кассандра Клэр - Draco Veritas

Detaching herself from Harry, Hermione rose to her feet. "It's not her fault," she said. "I played dead."

"I'm sure you did, Mudblood," said Lucius. He lifted his wand. "Now you'll have no need to play — "

"No, Lucius." Voldemort stilled his servant's hand. "I like an audience.

Take her!" he barked, and the guards began to surge out from behind him, moving towards the children. "Remember, I have your Diviner friend tied up in the Ceremonial Chamber," Voldemort said, seeing Harry move towards his sword. "Touch another one of my guards — struggle at all — and I'll have him torn in pieces, slowly."

Harry relaxed. His face was a mask. Two guards came to hold him, two more Hermione. Draco turned to Ginny. He was paper-white, but his eyes were blazing. He caught at her shoulders. "Ginny — " he began, but another guard seized him, and tore him away from her. The guards began to march them down the hall, barely pausing to step over Rhysenn's prone body. Voldemort and Lucius followed, Wormtail creeping behind them.

Ginny had almost begun to wonder where her guard was, or if they intended to leave her here alone among the dead, when Tom was at her side. Sudden as a striking adder, he seized her, his hands digging into the soft flesh of her arms. She staggered and cried out, unable to stop herself.

"Ginny," he whispered, his voice a hiss like poisonous vapor. "My foolish, stupid Ginny. You are mine and mine alone, don't you understand that?"

"Yes," she said, looking up into his face. That lovely face she knew so well, the eyes like deep blue wounds. She could see rage, and behind that, a bright sharp agony. I've hurt him, she thought, wonderingly. I've actually hurt him.

He loves you, Draco had said: In his own sick, revolting way, he does love you.

The pain of impossible love; Ginny knew the look of it the way she knew the sight of her own hands. "I am yours, Tom," she said.

He shook her, hard. "I saw your ribbon around his wrist," he snarled.

"Like a knight's favor — is he your noble white knight, Ginny? Is he going to save you?"

She shook her head.

"You're mine," he said. "You'll always be mine. You are what I tore out of myself to become what I had to become, and I am what you tore out of yourself to make me all your rage and all your hate, and all your poisoned love. You can never belong to anyone else but me!" His voice had risen to a near-hysterical pitch, and his eyes were wide and wild. "I saw how you looked at him, and I won't have it! You're mine, and I'll make you mine after the ceremony — I'll make you mine forever. Do you understand me?"

"You could make me yours now," she said.

For a moment, she thought he might break her neck on the spot, and risk the consequences to himself later. Either that, she thought, or he might take her up on her offer — something she didn't want to think about, but if it prevented him from ascending to godhood, might well be worth it.

Instead he just laughed, his grip on her arms relaxing. "My Ginny," he said. "How you do tease me." He kissed her forehead as if he meant to mark her, and let her go. "Nice try," he said, and took her hand.

Ginny said nothing. Hand in hand with Tom, she went down the corridor.

In front of them, moving slowly because they were being dragged, were Harry, Hermione, and Draco. Voldemort walked behind, and Lucius beside him. Rhysenn, crumpled on the ground, did not stir as they passed.

This is it, Ginny thought. The last of it, the final battle. This is where it is all decided. This is where we die or live, where we save the world or lose it. This is the end.

Raising her head, she marched down the hall, keeping her gaze steadily in front of her, not looking to the right or left. Whatever happened, they would meet it together — Harry, Hermione, Draco, Ron, and herself, as they had met so many things in the past, and triumphed.

She did not look to the side when they passed Wormtail, creeping along alone by the wall, his silver hand glimmering in the darkness. He cast a resentful look at her Weasley hair as she went by, and grunted to himself.

"Bother," he muttered. "We're going to need at least two more pairs of shackles."

Ron saw the chamber doors open, and a guard enter, dragging a wildly struggling captive with him, her curly brown hair obscuring her face as she writhed and kicked. Hermione! he thought with immense relief, dragging himself as close as he could to the edge of the platform and looking down. I knew she'd be all right!

She was followed by a far more subdued Harry, whose hands were bound behind him, and Draco, whose hair was thoroughly mussed and who looked too sullen to put up a fight. Hermione, hissing and spitting, threw something of a tantrum over wanting to be shackled next to Harry: the end result of this was that she was bound to the wall at the end of the line of shackles, farthest from everyone else. This, Ron thought, was uncharacteristic of her, but he didn't dwell on it: he was distracted by the advent of Ginny, who walked into the room not under guard at all, but hand in hand with dark-haired Tom Riddle.

Where the others were filthy and beaten-looking, Ginny looked radiant, seeming almost to glow inside her blue satin robes. Her hair rained down around her shoulders, strawberry-gold. She showed no resistance to Tom as he carefully shackled her to the wall beside Harry, who offered her a stiff little nod. Draco, tied between Hermione and Harry, didn't look at her at all as Tom leaned in and fastened the iron manacles about her slim wrists, gazing at her intently as he did so.

Mum would certainly not approve of this, Ron thought with a dry hysteria, as Tom stepped back and surveyed his work appraisingly. "Very fetching," he said. "Like Andromeda, waiting for the Hydra."

"It was the Kraken," put in Draco, who was gazing at the ceiling.

"It wasn't," said Tom. "It was the Hydra."

"It was the Kraken, you undereducated yob," said Draco. "You know, books aren't just for storing up memories of your maladjusted, spotty adolescence, Riddle; some people actually read them."

Tom glanced over towards Voldemort. "Can we gut him now?"

It was Lucius who shook his head. "Not yet. We may need him," he said cryptically.

Tom's lip curled, but he didn't reply. Instead he leaned in and kissed Ginny, hard, on the mouth. Seeing her stiffen, Ron remembered his vision in which she had been dead, neck snapped, lying broken on a bed of her own fiery hair. He turned his face away.

Ginny watched Tom walk away from her, the bitter taste of his kiss still on her lips. She knew what the others must think of her. Except Hermione.

Hermione ought to understand. She had only been following Hermione's orders, after all.

It was not that there was any part of her that wanted Tom, longed for his touch as she might long for the cool tang of a knife blade against her wrist, savored his beauty as she might savor the sweetness of poison. In no way had she been grateful for the freedom Hermione's orders had given her to respond to his caresses, acknowledge his deadly adoration.

No.

As he had fastened the shackles around her wrists he had leaned in and whispered in her ear, the words of the long-ago cast spell that had started all this.

As thou art bound, let us be bound

Thee to me.

Voldemort was already waiting inside the pentagram for Tom, his stiff posture showing his impatience. He held his wand in one white, spidery hand. Lucius stood outside the pentagram, arms folded, expression impassive. Wormtail knelt at Voldemort's feet, holding an open book up for the Dark Lord's perusal, a look of abject fear on his face. As Tom stepped grinning into the pentagram, a bright line of fire ran all the way around its edges, outlining it in flame.