Кассандра Клэр - Draco Veritas

"Wait," he said, and caught at her arm. The fire had gone out of his eyes; now he looked startled, as if he realized he'd said more than he wanted to. "Harry said I ought to ask you to help," he said quickly. "He was right.

I should have asked before. I wouldn't ask now if it wasn't important."

Now she was slightly alarmed. She sat back down, and Draco let go of her arm. "What is it? Is it something about Harry?"

"Not this time, no. About me." Draco had found a stray thread on the cuff of his pajama sleeve, and was worrying it. She knew he hated asking for help, loathed it more than Harry did. "I've been — having dreams."

"No." She almost overbalanced and fell into him, but steadied herself on a pillow. "Not — the kind you used to have?"

"No." His eyes didn't leave his shirt cuff. "Not about any kind of past life, not that kind of thing. This is in real-time — these are events that are actually happening while I'm seeing them. I'm sure of that now." He looked up. "It's like I've opened a window onto a place I've never been, but it's a real place, Hermione."

She shivered when he said her name. There was an intensity in his voice she had not heard in a long time. "Do you recognize the place?"

He shook his head. "No, but I could describe it to you in detail. It's a dark magic place, I know that. Maybe we could find some reference to it in the Le Grand Grimoire or the Lexicon of Unpleasant Locations. Or — "

Hermione smiled at him. "I know the Restricted Section as well as you do, Draco," she said. "Well, perhaps not quite as well. But well enough. If you give me a good enough description of what you saw, we can go from there. Also," and she began to tick off items on her fingers, noting out of the corner of her eye that he was watching her with an amused expression, "I want to know if you just fall asleep and find yourself in this place or do you have to will your mind there, and if there are people in your dreams, can they see you or not — I want to know if you're dream-walking or having real visions."

He nodded. "All right," he said. "Do you need a quill and parchment?"

"I'll get some," said Hermione, and stood up. His eyes followed her as she went to push the sheet aside.

"There's one more thing," he said. "Don't let me forget to tell you — there's a girl."

Hermione paused, her hand on the bedpost. "A girl?" she asked neutrally.

"Who is she?"

The failing light silvered Draco's eyes as he looked down at the bedclothes. "That's what I want you to find out," he said. "Her name is Rhysenn. Rhysenn Malfoy, but I don't think she's actually human at all…"

"He's lying to us," said Charlie. "Isn't he, Headmaster?"

"Who is lying, Charles?" Dumbledore glanced up from his position behind his desk at the young man in front of him. His eyes, behind the gold-rimmed spectacles, were not twinkling at all, but somber and thoughtful.

"Draco," said Charlie. He got up from where he had been sitting across from Dumbledore, feeling unaccountably restless, and crossed to the north wall, where there was a window that looked out over the grounds.

Well, sometimes there was a window. Dumbledore's office tended, like the moving stairways, to change from day to day. "That was no duel gone wrong that got him that injury," he said, resting a hand on the windowpane. Outside, the sky was heavy and leaden, the pearly gray of a winter seascape. He could clearly see the Quidditch pitch from here, the hoops reaching into the sky like bare, stripped tree branches. There were a collection of small figures gathered down by the pitch entrance, although they were too far away for him to make them out clearly.

"Most assuredly," said Dumbledore. "As a matter of fact, they are both lying."

"Harry, too? I suppose he must be."

"Of course he is," said Dumbledore, his eyes shadowed as he glanced up at Charlie.

"This is what I wanted to ask you, Charles — you were the first teacher to arrive at Draco's side, weren't you?"

Charlie nodded.

"Did you notice how many sets of footprints there were around him?"

"Mm." Charlie nodded, recollecting. "I was just thinking that, Professor. It looked to me, from the impressions in the snow, as if he hadn't walked to where he was. There were only two set of footprints: Harry's, and that Hufflepuff girl's. He must have fallen from somewhere, not walked there."

"Yes. I believe he did. Here, take these," said the Headmaster, and held out to Charlie a battered-looking pair of Omnioculars that had obviously seen much use. His desk was in fact covered with an assortment of useful magical objects — a silver Put-Outer, a Macroscope, and what was clearly a prototype of the next generation Dream Integrator sitting perilously close to an open jar of honey.

Charlie took the Omnioculars and focused them on the view outside the window, sweeping his gaze up from the spot where he had found Draco that morning.

"It's just under the North Tower. Which is off-limits, correct?"

"You say that as if the term had meaning for most of the students here.

Harry and Draco especially."

"But why would they bother going up there?"

"Why, indeed?" Dumbledore shrugged. "Now, if it had been the Astronomy Tower, I might venture an educated guess."

Charlie stifled a snort. It was nice, he supposed, to know that some things hadn't changed since his own school days, including the popularity of the Astronomy Tower for purposes unrelated to Astronomy. "I'll go up the North Tower and look around, shall I, Professor?"

"Certainly, Charlie. That would be helpful."

"In the meantime…" Charlie swung the Omnioculars down so that he was looking at the crowd standing on the Quidditch pitch. Two bright red heads leaped out at him immediately: Ron and Ginny. Seamus Finnegan and Elizabeth Thomas were there too, as were the Creevey brothers. The Gryffindor team must be having its practice. The players were all looking towards the farther end of the pitch, where Harry was standing. He seemed to be pointing from the hoops and back: illustrating some point of game mechanics. Everyone seemed to be paying attention except Ron, who was amusing himself by tying Ginny's long braids together in a knot.

"What shall we do about Draco? Should we look into protective charms, or send him home, or — "

"No," said Dumbledore. "We will do nothing."

Charlie lowered the Omnioculars in surprise. "Nothing? Isn't that a bit dangerous?"

"I cannot help but feel," said Dumbledore slowly, "that any and all efforts made to protect either Draco or Harry in this instance — beyond how they are already protected, by being here at Hogwarts — will in the end, be both gratuitous and counterproductive. Neither boy willingly takes to being protected. You saw how Harry reacted to the suggestion that you were trying to protect him from knowledge he might not like, even though, in that case, you were not. Should we try to constrain them, they will rebel against the constraints, and we may lose them entirely."

Charlie was silent a moment. Then he raised the Omnioculars to his eyes and glanced out the window again, in time to see Harry take off on his broomstick, and soar up into the air above the heads of his teammates.

Charlie wasn't sure if Harry was illustrating another point of game strategy, or if he'd simply decided he couldn't bear to be on the ground any more. Charlie always loved watching Harry fly, because Harry reminded him of himself at that age — the same overwhelming joy in flight, the same bearing that said that in leaving the ground, he had left his cares and troubles behind. He flew like an arrow, straight and true and unswerving, his black hair whipping across his face. He would never be as handsome as Draco was, but when he flew, he was beautiful.