Кассандра Клэр - Draco Veritas

“Wait,” Harry said urgently. “Wait for the alarm.” He paused, a look of intense concentration on his face. “Draco says he can do it,” he added, and a moment later an ear-piercing shriek reverberated through the room: a howling, terrible, mournful sound. A banshee wail, Hermione thought. She almost screamed herself as Ron nearly tumbled sideways, catching at the side of the glass to steady himself. Only Harry seemed unperturbed. “Now!” he called up to Ron. “Now!” — And Ron drew his hand back, wrapped tightly in a fold of his cloak, then slammed it forward into the front of the display case.

The sound of the glass shattering was completely buried beneath the howling wails echoing through the room. Ron reached into the case, pushing aside the other objects — the glass bottle, the bone knife, which flashed briefly blue when he touched it — that shared a shelf with the cup.

“No, don't touch anything!” Hermione shouted loudly, but Ron couldn't hear her, her voice was muffled by the sounding alarm. He pushed the knife aside and took hold of the cup, tossing it back to Hermione, who caught it one-handed, and shoved it in her bookbag. She drew out the transfigured Cup, and tossed it to Harry, who handed it up to Ron. Ron placed it carefully on the shelf, then leaped down to the floor. Harry raised his right hand, and pointed at the case. Hermione saw his lips shape the word, Reparo, and the glass flew up and reorganized itself just as the sound of the alarm was mercifully cut off.

The three of them looked at each other, all out of breath, with identical looks of amazement. “It worked,” said Ron, and whooped out loud. “We did it!”

“I know,” whispered Hermione in disbelief, staring down at the cup in her hand. It was very beautiful up close, and strangely light, even the row of emeralds lining the handle didn't seem to weight it down. Very, very carefully, she placed it inside her bookbag, and snapped the bookbag shut.

“We'd better get out of here,” said Harry, practically, and beckoned Ron and Hermione to his side. “Let's get back,” he added, tossing the Invisibility Cloak over all three of them. They hurried from the room, holding each other's arms under the cloak, moving on tiptoes. Almost at a run, they re-entered the Cursed Artifacts exhibition, huddled under the cloak…

And came to an astounded stop. Ron dropped the edge of his cloak, and Harry made a grab for it, but fortunately no one in the room noticed the brief reappearance of Ron's head — they were too busy staring at the scene taking place in the center of the room. Two huge, gray-skinned burly security trolls, the like of which Hermione had only seen stomping around in book illustrations, stood facing each other across the heads of startled and milling students. Each was tightly gripping the arms of a struggling figure in its huge hamfisted hands: the one of the left gripped Draco, and the one on the right seemed to be having difficulty controlling a kicking and squirming Seamus Finnigan.

“I didn't know Seamus knew about the Plan,” said Ron.

“He doesn't,” said Harry grimly. “Oh, hell.”

“I don't think we need this cloak,” said Hermione, not even bothering to whisper, “nobody's looking at us, anyway.”

She pulled the cloak off of them, and stepped forward, the Cup in her book bag banging against her leg like a guilty reminder. She was right, nobody noticed them. There was far too much excitement going on already: Professor Flitwick was running and fro like a garden gnome that had been subjected to the Tarantallegra curse, the museum staff was urging the students to stand away from the broken glass that covered the floor so that the Reparo charms could be performed, the Canadian tourists were screaming, and the students were gawking in awed wonder at all the chaos. Meanwhile, Seamus appeared to be trying to claw his way out of the troll's grasp in order to get at Draco, who was making no such effort, and was staring back at Seamus in bored amusement. He might have been in the middle of buffing his nails for all the expression he showed, except that he was covered in blood and scratches — and so, for that matter, was Seamus.

Harry shot Hermione a look. “Did you know he was going to do this?”

Hermione shook her head. “I don't even know what happened…”

“He kissed me,” said Ginny's voice in her ear.

Hermione spun around and saw Ginny standing behind her, looking very pale and startled. She paused for a moment to wonder how Ginny had managed to get behind them without her noticing, then dismissed it.

“Who kissed you?” Hermione asked in surprise.

“Draco,” said Ginny dolefully. She did not look pleased.

“Oh,” said Ron, twigging. “I get it. So Seamus clocked him one, then?”

“Actually, I think he hit Seamus first…possibly not. It was a bit hard to tell,” said Ginny glumly. “I feel terrible about the whole thing.”

Hermione was about to tell her not to be ridiculous when she was interrupted by Professor Flitwick's high twittering voice ordering all the students to get in an orderly line and file out of the room after the security trolls, heading towards the Portkeying platform at the museum's center. Hermione almost felt herself collapse in relief; the sooner they were back at school, the less the likelihood that anyone would notice their jiggery-pokery with the Cup.

She caught at Harry's sleeve and pulled him forward; all four of them fell into step with the other students. Ron and Ginny were conversing quietly behind her and Harry seemed distracted. “Harry…are they all right?”

A small line of concentration had appeared between Harry's eyebrows.

“Draco says he's fine,” he reported after a pause, “and he says Seamus is fine as well, they both look worse than they are.”

“I'd no idea when we asked him to cause a distraction that'd he'd go quite that far.”

Harry laughed low under his breath. “That's Draco. Never does anything by halves.”

They were passing through the Enchanted Objects room now. Hermione tightened her hold on Harry's sleeve. It looked perfect, untouched, as if they'd never been in there at all. She resisted looking towards the transfigured cup behind its sheet of glass. “When we get back to school,” she whispered softly, “I've got to go hide the cup, right away.”

Harry nodded. “You can borrow the Cloak, then,” he said. “Draco says he's meant to go straight to Dumbledore's office; after that, I was supposed to meet him in the armory for fencing practice anyway. I mean, it is Monday.

I guess I'll just go wait for him there.”

Hermione nodded. “Make sure he's okay.” They were in the center of the museum now, in the small garden. In groups of five the students were being herded onto the platform, handed their wands back by museum staff, and hurriedly Portkeyed back to school. Draco and Seamus must have gone first; they were nowhere to be seen. “I feel like we ought to…”

“Celebrate?” said Ron, from behind her. “Massive post-caper booze-up?”

“Ron, shh,” she said, but she smiled. “Yes, exactly. Celebrate.” She paused.

“Before we figure out what on earth to do next…”

“I'll meet you guys in the common room before supper,” Harry said. “We can celebrate then.” They were up on the raised dais now, about to step onto the platform that was the Portkey out of the museum. Harry looked towards Hermione, and checked at her hesitant expression. “Hermione…?”

“Harry,” she said, very quietly, and glanced back towards the museum.

“You don't think that maybe…”

“Maybe what?”

“Maybe it was a bit too easy?”

“You must have a different definition of 'easy' than I do,” said Harry, stepping forward, and took her hand as the Portkey whirled them away.