Кассандра Клэр - Draco Sinister

"No," snapped Draco, "the last thing he'll expect is for us to obtain round fur hats and go caroling up and down the halls of his stronghold, spreading Christmas cheer. And your plan makes about as much sense. But thank you for sharing."

"Arry," said Fleur gently. "It does not make sense. He 'as thousands of minions 'ere. Even if you could beat 'im, you would 'ave to deal with them. The best thing we can do now is escape."

Harry looked at Draco, and Draco could see from the expression on his face that Harry wanted to tell him something, but couldn't because anything he said, no matter how he said it, would be overheard by Fleur. "Potter-" Draco began.

The grinding noise interrupted him. Behind Fleur, a large dark opening was appearing in the wall. She tossed her silver hair back, and held out a hand to them, looking impatient. "Come on," she urged, backing towards the "door." "We must go."

With one last glance over at Harry, Draco went after her. And, after a moment, Harry followed suit.

"Reparo."

Snape watched as the shattered bits of his record fitted themselves back together. Within a moment, it looked as it had before Draco Malfoy had broken it.

Snape was sitting at the desk in his dusty living room. The windows were closed firmly against the dark night air outside, and the room was full of dull light. He had not been in here for several days. Not since he had found his favorite student sitting on the floor there, eyes like blank mirrors, playing Bach's Goldberg Variations by spinning a record above his hand.

He wondered if he should regret telling the boy so harshly that his father was dead. But no, he had had to do something to snap Draco back to reality. He had looked as if he were drifting off, unmoored.

Snape had seen that look before in the eyes of Voldemort's servants.

Sometimes one could come back from that. Sometimes not. Draco had come back, but for how long?

He knew the boy had gotten the package he had sent containing a flask of the new Willpower potion he had developed, and the note explaining what it did — that it was stronger, lasted longer — because his owl had returned. But it had brought no note with it. He realized with an odd sort of pang at the heart that he was worried about the boy. It had been a long time since he had been worried about anyone.

Bang. Bang.

It was a moment before he realized that the insistent pounding noise was coming from the front door, and not from his own head. Slowly, he got to his feet, drawing his robes tighter around him. It was cold in his house. He liked it that way.

He went quickly down the hallway towards the front door, where the pounding was growing louder and more insistent by the moment. He reached out his hand for the knob-And paused.

He had never loved anyone so much that he could simply sense their presence, or recognize them instantly in a crowd no matter how changed they might be, although he had heard of such things.

But hatred he knew intimately, and so he knew who was standing on his porch even as he reached out for the knob and drew the door open, knew by he change in the air around him, knew even from the sound of his visitor's knock.

The man standing on the porch looked exhausted. More than exhausted. His dark eyes were ringed by blacker shadows, his black hair disheveled and awry, his mouth set in a tense hard line. And yet somehow this made him look not older, but younger than he was, reminding Snape of the boy he had known at school. So you really want to know where James and Remus and Peter and I go when we sneak off the grounds? Well come on, then, Severus. I'll show you.

Sirius Black raised his head, and for the first time in twenty years, looked Snape straight in the eyes, and Snape saw that in his hand Sirius held a folded white piece of paper with Snape's own handwriting on it.

"I need your help," he said.

References:

1) "We'll always be stupid." He paused. "Okay, not everybody rush to disagree." — Buffy

2) " Scrumdidilyumptious Chocolate Bar." Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl.

3) The best-selling autobiography "Why I Like to Do It With Girls'" -

Blackadder

4) “It is Strygalldwir. Conjure with it and I will eat your heart and liver." — Roger Zelazny, The Guns of Avalon.

6) "I was going to stick this end in the ground," said Ron, gesturing, "and then I was going to start digging. I'd tell you more, but after that it gets a little technical." Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time 7) Bindings and Summonings: Neil Gaiman's Books of Magic

8) When there is fire in me then I am still cold.

When I own your true love's face then you will not see me.

To all things I give no more than I am given.

In time I may have all things, and yet I can keep nothing. — a classic riddle

The sleep of reason brings forth monsters.

"I need your help," Sirius Black said.

Without a word, Snape shut the door firmly in Sirius´ face.

It was so clingingly wet in the corridors under the Burrow that Ginny felt as if every breath she took filled lungs with water. She could hear Ron, Hermione and Charlie behind her, splashing through the puddles that became increasingly deep, Ron muttering under his breath as he went. They were talking, but she didn´t join in. She was concentrating on following the very slight, very insistent tugging sensation in the center of her chest, pulling her forward.

"So what exactly happened to Helga Hufflepuff?" Charlie was asking.

He was holding his wand high above their heads, lighting the path in front of them. Of all of them, he was the driest, since his tough dragonhide trousers kept off the water.

"Slytherin killed her," said Hermione, who had given up trying to stay dry and was splashing through the puddles as if she enjoyed it.

"He killed Godric, too. And Rowena, but that wasn´t on purpose.

Not," she added hastily, "that that makes it all right. I´m just saying."

"He seems to have regarded homicide as not just a job, but a hobby," said Ron, still keeping a watchful eye out for spiders.

"Well, he was a general," said Hermione. "He had his own army. He killed people all the time. I suppose he just," she shuddered, "got a taste for it."

"Not to mention," put in Charlie, "that when you can flatten entire cities at a whim, a tendency towards quiet reflection and seeing-things-from-the-other-fellow's-point-of-view is seldom necessary."

"Thatś true," Hermione agreed.

Ginny suddenly paused, and the rest of them paused with her. They were at a place where the corridor split off into a triple-branched fork: left, right, and straight ahead.

"Whatś up Gin?" Ron demanded.

"I can´t quite feel which way to go," said Ginny, a little anxiously.

The tugging feeling seemed to have gone for the moment, and she suddenly felt cold and rather damp.

"Well, you must have some idea," said Ron, a bit peevishly.

"Ron," said Charlie, warningly.

Ginny shook her head. "No, I…"

"Well, letś go straight ahead then," announced Ron, walking past her. Ginny hesitated for a moment, and was about to follow after him when, having taken no more than twenty steps down the corridor, Ron suddenly vanished.

"And you trust her?"

Draco rolled his eyes as Harry hissed in his ear. They stood side by side, flattened against the wall of the wide stone corridor outside their erstwhile prison cell. Fleur was down at the end of the corridor, peering anxiously around the corner.