Кассандра Клэр - Draco Veritas

She looked at him with somber eyes. "Of course it's me."

"Prove it."

"I could tell you more about my dream," she said. "You were wearing vinyl in it."'

"Vinyl?" Draco echoed, slightly appalled.

She nodded. "Vinyl trousers."

"This sounds like a nightmare."

They were at the stairs that curved up to the Gryffindor Tower now.

Hermione led the way. "Not exactly," she said over her shoulder as they ascended.

"Well, you weren't the one who had to suffer the slimy touch of vinyl against your skin, now were you?"

"I think you might have been wearing glitter makeup as well," she added thoughtfully.

"Tell me any more about this dream, Granger, I'll leave you here to fend for yourself."

Hermione made a face at him. They were at the portrait of the Fat Lady now. Draco scooted behind Hermione in hopes of going unspotted, but the Fat Lady seemed to be asleep anyway. Hermione took a deep breath.

"Mundungus," she said, and the portrait swung wide. Draco looked at her, but she gestured that she should go first; with a deep breath, he stepped through the portrait hole.

"How dare you?" Rhiannon gasped, staggering back against the wall, clutching the tattered remnants of her garments about her with trembling hands. The ragged strips of damp cloth did nothing to obscure the heaving, womanly curves of her bosom. Tristan feasted his eyes on the moist orbs as he advanced, his wand outstretched stiffly before him. It was, he thought grimly, not the only stiff thing in the room. He dragged his mind back to the matter at hand. "How dare you approach me thus?"

she cried.

"You scorned to speak with me otherwise," he growled. "But I will force you to listen!"

"You abandoned me years ago," she snarled, her eyes flashing like furious emeralds. "I never thought you would return."

"But now I have!" he cried.

"And now I am married to Montague!" she replied, with a heave of her honey-colored breasts. "And he is a good man, a fine man."

"But you do not love him," Tristan snarled, advancing upon her, and pressing her back against the stone wall with his firmly muscled arms. She writhed within his grip, but could not escape. "Not as you loved me!"

"I love you no longer," she spat. "I hate you, I despise you, nay — I loathe you!"

"And yet you cannot keep yourself from wanting me," he breathed, and plunged his lips against hers. She struggled, but it only brought her lush, ripe feminine frame into more insistent erotic contact with his rock-hard masculinity. His wand clattered to the ground between them, unheeded, but he no longer needed it to keep her at bay. She had begun to return his insistent kisses, panting desperately against his rather thick neck, "Oh, Tristan! Oh, Tristan! Oh! Oh! Oh!"

"My flower," he whispered into her hair. "My angel, my flame-haired vixen…!"

Ginny looked up from Passionate Trousers and frowned. The fire in the grate had died down again, and there was no longer enough light to continue reading. She was reluctant to light the candles in the wall sconces, not wanting to attract anyone else downstairs. She preferred the common room empty at this late hour of the night; she had only come down because she had been unable to sleep, and was afraid that reading in the dormitory would have woken Elizabeth or Ashley.

With a sigh, she got up, took her wand from the small table next to the couch, and poked the end of it at the grate. "Incendio," she whispered, and the fire roared up in the grate with a loud crackle that almost obscured the sound of the portrait door swinging open. Almost, but not quite.

Ginny looked up in surprise. Who could be coming into the tower at this late hour of the night? She did not get up from where she was sitting, knowing that the couch in front of her hid her from view — not even when she saw who it was stepping through the portrait hole, and had to cover her mouth with a hand to choke off a cry of surprise.

It was Draco Malfoy. He ducked into the common room, straightened up, and looked around. Through the high bright glow of the fire he seemed outlined in gold, his pale hair turned the color of candlelight. He looked tired, and less immaculate than usual — his hair was too fine to tangle, but it was rumpled around his head, and his clothes looked as if he had slept in them. He hesitated for a moment, glancing around- even now he appeared to be looking down his elegant nose, as if mentally ticking off all the ways the Gryffindor common room was inferior to its Slytherin counterpart. Then he turned, and held out his hand, and Hermione stepped into the room beside him.

Ginny blinked in astonishment. Hermione? And Draco? What were they doing? The obvious answer presented itself, but she rejected it, a little too firmly. Hermione wouldn't do that to Harry, and furthermore, neither would Draco. Of that, Ginny was positive beyond all other doubts. He would slice off his own left hand, quite cheerfully, before he would let anyone touch a finger of Harry's; he would hardly hurt Harry himself and he would know he was doing just that. She remembered Draco in the rose garden, the night of the Pub Crawl, telling her, "Everyone has one weakness. He's protected elsewhere. Not where she's concerned."

Hermione had straightened up beside Draco, and was looking not around the room but at him, as if for guidance. Ginny had never seen Hermione look like that — as if she were quite lost. She was always so confident. She, too, looked rumpled, and her face was marked with the traces of recent tears. "Draco," she said very softly, and he turned to look at her. "Are you sure I should go up with you?"

Draco's expression, already serious, did not change. "Yes."

"But he said he didn't want me coming near him."

Who? Ginny thought. Who said that?

Draco glanced up towards the ceiling in exasperation. He seemed to be counting to ten in his head. "Hermione," he said. "You need to tell him what we just saw."

"You could do it," said Hermione in a small voice.

"I suppose I could," Draco acknowledged. "But I won't."

"Draco…"

"Either you come willingly, or I knock you down and drag you."

Hermione almost looked as if she might smile. Ginny didn't blame her.

There was something amusing about Draco's look of total determination.

"You'd hit a girl?"

"Chivalry is dead," Draco said shortly. "I'm the proof."

Now Hermione did smile. It wasn't much of a smile — wobbly and tearful both. But it was a smile. "All right," she said. She held out her hand, and Draco took it, almost absently. She began to walk towards the stairs that led to the boys' dormitory, and Draco followed her. As they started up the steps, he turned, and glanced back at the common room. For a moment, Ginny thought he saw her — a look almost of recognition flitted across his face. Then his expression darkened, as if a shadow had come between him and the firelight. He turned back to the stairs, and followed Hermione up into the darkness.

Harry lay flat on his back, staring up into the shadows. He wasn't exactly sure how he had gotten back to his bed, put his pajamas on, and lain down, but here he was. The events of the evening were fuzzy in his mind after the point where Hermione had rushed out of the common room, holding the watch he had thrown at her. He remembered turning back to Ron, who'd looked white and sick and on the verge of throwing up.

Neither of them had said anything, and a moment later, the professors had begun pouring in through the portrait hole. Charlie had been there, Lupin, McGonagall….Harry remembered being taken down to Lupin's office, and Charlie walking Ron off the other way, an arm over his shoulder, casting worried glances back at Harry as he did so.

There hadn't been much discussion of punishment, not that Harry remembered. He was fairly sure he'd told Lupin what happened, and that there had been a lot of shocked silence, and some discussion of calling on Sirius, which Harry had nixed. He didn't want to talk to anyone right now, and that included Sirius. He wondered if Lupin had walked him back to the Tower. He really didn't remember. Much of the evening was like a long howl of static, punctuated by short lucid bursts of sound. Are you all right, Harry? Do you need anything? I'm fine, I just want to go to sleep.