Кассандра Клэр - Draco Veritas

Ron shook his head. "You have got to resolve all this. I can't take much more of Misery Boy. Better to just — "

"I don't think he's miserable about me," Hermione said softly. "It's something else. That's why I'm worried. That's why I haven't said anything."

"Well, what, then?" Ron bent down and picked up the Runic Studies book, and handed it back to her, but not after peering at the parchment she had folded into the pages. It was covered with strange symbols and odd scribblings. "Now what are you up to?" he laughed.

"Just trying to translate some runes," said Hermione, feeling despairing. "I can't find any key for these, though. They're not Etruscan, they're not Egyptian — "

"I think they're Norwegian," said Ron.

Hermione sat up straight. "Really?"

"Yes," said Ron somberly. "In fact, I'm pretty sure this translates as "Are you happy to see me, or is that a longboat in your pocket?""

Hermione punched him in the arm, making him yelp. "I hate you — give me my homework back — "

"Forget it — " Ron held the parchment over his head, and mayhem might well have ensued had Ginny not appeared in the common room, looked at them, and started to laugh.

"Would the Head Girl and Head Boy like to stop hitting each other long enough to get dinner?" she said finally, once she had stopped giggling.

Hermione took her parchment back, and stuck her tongue out at Ron. "Go on," she said, and he hopped up obediently and went to join his sister.

She watched them a little wistfully as they headed down the stairs together, but the thought of another long meal wherein Harry said nothing to her was more than she could deal with. She sank back sadly amongst the cushions and picked up her books. She had just flipped open her Runic Alphabet when a sound made her pause. A muffled noise — the sound of someone crying?

She got to her feet, drawing her plaid blanket around herself, and went to investigate. The sound was coming from the boys' dormitory, to her surprise, and she paused before going in — but she was, after all, Head Girl, and the students' welfare was her concern. She wasn't just being nosy -

well, all right, she was being a little nosy, but nobody needed to know that.

The door swung wide, and she went in, She blinked a moment in the dim light before her eyes adjusted and she saw Neville, sitting on the floor by his bed, an open Chocolate Frog box in his lap. "Neville?" she said, her voice worried. "Are you all right?"

Neville brought his hands down from his face and looked up at her. "Oh.

Hermione." His voice was quiet. "Why aren't you at dinner?"

"I was studying. Neville, what's wrong?"

He said nothing. She came across the room and sat down beside him. He was looking down at the box in his lap again, and when she followed his gaze, her heart turned over. "Oh…Neville."

Trevor the toad lay curled in a scattering of sawdust at the bottom of the box. He was not trying to escape. He was not even moving. His eyes were open. Hermione knew immediately that he was dead.

"Oh, Neville, I'm so sorry. When did he die? Were you going to bury him?"

"Bury him?" Neville laughed shortly. "This box just turned up at the foot of my bed when I came back from Care of Magical Creatures. I don't know what happened to him." He looked up at Hermione. "Do you think someone could have killed him?"

"Oh, but why would anyone do that? That would just be evil. Maybe somebody found him and was too shy to say anything to you. How long has he been missing?"

"Nearly two weeks," said Neville. His voice was quiet. "Trevor used to be my dad's when he was at school. My grandfather raised him from a tadpole. He was supposed to live a hundred years."

Hermione reached out and patted Neville's hand. It was thinner than she remembered, but then Neville wasn't the round-faced kid he had been at eleven. He had grown into a tall and lanky boy. But the sadness in his eyes reminded her of the child he once had been. "Come on, Neville," she said.

"Let's go bury him in the snow out by Hagrid's hut. And if Charlie comes back, maybe he'll let you have some Firewhiskey — I think you need it."

"You must think I'm stupid, crying over a dead toad," said Neville in a low voice. "You won't tell anyone, will you?"

"No," she said. "I don't think you're stupid. And I won't tell anyone."

It took Draco a long time to fall asleep that night. His brief conversation with Hermione played over and over in his head like a news report on the Wizarding Wireless, and then again he saw Blaise's hurt expression during Charlie's class, and Ginny sitting with Seamus in the Great Hall. He would have liked to have talked to Harry, but Harry seemed distracted, and there was nobody else he really had any interest in talking to. Life was grim. Even recalling the look of fleeting terror that had crossed Finnegan's face in the library didn't help matters much.

He had no sooner drifted into an uneasy slumber than a muffled pounding on the door to his bedroom woke him once again. He struggled to sit up, brushing his hair away from his eyes; reaching out, he tapped the candle on his bed stand to light it. He swung his legs over the side of the bed, and winced at the coldness of the stone floor.

The pounding came again, louder this time. "All right, all right, keep your knickers on," he muttered to himself, and went to open the door.

There was no one there. Draco blinked into the emptiness for a moment, startled, before he twigged. "Harry?"

There was a slight rustling and Harry's head appeared, crowned with even messier hair than usual, seeming to float in midair above the floor. Draco remembered the first time he had ever seen Harry pull that stunt with his Invisibility Cloak, back at the Shrieking Shack; it had nearly scared the living daylights out of him. Now, he could take it in stride. "Sorry," said Harry contritely. "I didn't want anyone to see me here."

"Yes, not even me, apparently," said Draco, leaning against the doorjamb.

"How did you get past the common room door? How'd you know the password?"

"It's 'Slytherin Pride', isn't it?" said Harry. "Just the sort of password you would think up."

"Yes, very clever."

"Look, are you going to let me in or are you just going to swank around in your silk pajamas like a big fat pretentious git? Because in that case I'm leaving."

Draco looked injured. "You think I'm fat?"

"Let me in, Malfoy."

Draco dropped his arm and Harry stalked past him, tossing his Invisibility Cloak onto the chest of drawers at the foot of Draco's bed. Underneath it he was wearing blue cotton pajamas with a hole in the right sleeve, piped with yellow around the collar and cuffs. The sort of pajamas Draco himself might have worn when he was about seven. Harry glanced around the room cursorily. "It's not so small," he said. "Weird ceiling, though."

Draco glanced up. The ceiling of his bedroom was oddly angled, slanting so sharply down towards the far side that he had to crouch down to climb into the window seat. Small windows were cut into the wall above his bed, but they had been bricked up on the far side and lent a claustrophobic air to the proceedings. He did, however, have a working fireplace, which had always pleased him.

Draco closed the door behind him, and bolted it against intrusions.

"Yeah," he said. "I call the architectural style 'early maniac.' It was a working dungeon once, you know." Draco gestured towards the fireplace, and a small fire shimmered to life in the grate. "Anyway, Potter — what are you doing here? Is something wrong?"

"I needed to talk to you about our homework," Harry said.

Draco stared. "You what?"

"The homework for DaDA," Harry elaborated. "The end-of-year project."

"This couldn't have waited until tomorrow?"