Кассандра Клэр - Draco Sinister

She nodded.

"Then run," he said, and broke into a flat-out run, Fleur and Harry close at his heels, They flew through the Nightmare Grass, reached the far tower, and hurtled through the door, slamming it hard behind them.

They found themselves in a dimly lit entryway — there was only one window, and it was nearly overgrown with ivy. A long corridor snaked away into darkness to their right. Still shaky from exertion and adrenaline, Harry started off down it at a run, the others behind him. Or so he thought. Having gone no more than a hundred paces, he came up short at a tall wooden door. He grabbed the handle and tugged; it was locked.

"Fleur, is this the way — " he began, turning. And blinked. Draco was standing behind him, looking curious, but there was no sign of Fleur. "Malfoy? Whereś Fleur?"

Surprised, Draco turned. "I thought she was behind me."

Harry lowered his hand from the door. "We´d better go back."

Draco opened his mouth to say something — and a cry echoed through the corridor, originating back where they had come from. It was a sharp, distressed cry, and the voice was obviously Fleurś.

Both boys bolted back down the corridor. They burst out into the entryway, and stopped dead.

Fleur, holding a thin-bladed knife, was backed against a wall by one of the guards: a tall man in a heavy cloak, a short sword in his hand, his back to them. His shadow, in the pulsing torchlight, clawed at the ceiling. Fleurś eyes flew wide when she saw her companions, and she gave a little cry of relief.

A little cry, but it was enough. The guard spun around, raising his sword, and advanced on Draco and Harry.

Hermioneś stomach dropped down into her shoes. "Ron?" she shouted, running forward and nearly elbowing Ginny aside. She could hear Charlie right behind her as they approached the spot where Ron had disappeared. "Ron! Where are you?"

A very irritable voice spoke out of the darkness. "Down here."

Beside her, Charlie raised his wand, flooding the corridor with light.

The uneven walls were suddenly thrown into sharp relief, the muddy floor that stretched in front of them…and ended, rather suddenly, in a gaping, jagged-edged hole. Hermione raced to the edge of the hole and peered down.

Ronś pale, annoyed face looked up at her. He seemed completely unharmed. Hermione sagged in relief. "Ron, are you all right?"

An expression of distaste crossed his face. "Mud," he said succinctly.

"And itś dark." He glanced around him, squinting. "Could somebody toss me down a wand? I think I dropped mine into the mud and I´d like to find it."

Hermione tossed her wand down to Ron, who caught it.

"Lumos," he said.

Bright light burst from the wand, illuminating the space around Ron. Hermione watched as his expression changed to one of gratified amazement. Instead of the disgruntled look of someone who had fallen off his broomstick in the middle of an important game, Ron now looked like someone who had fallen off his broomstick in the middle of an important game, only to land in a hot tub full of veelas.

"You have got to come down here," he exclaimed.

Doubtful, Hermione peered over the lip of the hole. Before she could move to do anything, though, Charlie had leaped down beside Ron in the pit, landing on his feet as lightly as a cat. Then he turned around and held his arms up to Hermione. "Your turn. I´ll catch you."

Taking a deep breath, she jumped. Charlie caught her easily and lowered her gently to the ground. She stifled a smile — the rough feeling of the dragonhide against her skin made her think of Draco.

She heard the sound as Ginny jumped down after her, but didn´t turn — she was too busy staring around her. The expression on Ronś face suddenly made sense.

It looked as if they were in some sort of underground vault. The floor was covered in mud, but stone shelves ranged along the walls held overflowing piles of valuable-looking objects — jewels, gold coins, bolts of tapestry, silver plates, cups and bowls. To be sure, much of it was ruined with age — the cloth rotted through, the silver tarnished — but the majority of it was surprisingly intact.

Hermione looked over at Ron, who was still staring around himself in shock. She could read the look on his face as clearly as if she were reading a book: All this was down here all these years, and we never knew.

A sudden burst of sympathy for him propelled her to his side.

"Ron…"

But he was examining something in his hand. "Look at this." He held out a gold coin to her; she took it without much interest-then stared. The face stamped on the coin was… familiar. "That looks like Harry," she said blankly.

"Itś Godric Gryffindor," said Ron. "Itś a Gryffindor Galleon. Really old. They´re worth loads." He looked at it a bit wistfully. "I wish we could show it to Harry — he´d think it was hilarious, him on a coin."

"He´ll get to see it," said Hermione firmly. She slipped it into Ronś breast pocket, and patted the pocket closed. A gleam at the corner of her eye caught her attention, and she turned and picked up a tiny round mirror, edged with silver. It reminded her strongly of the Mirror of Erised, with a very slight difference -

"I think we probably shouldn´t take anything from here," said Charlie from behind them. Hermione turned and looked at him. He was wearing an expression of mingled amazement and wariness. He pushed a stray lock of dark red hair back from his eyes, and sighed.

"I know itś tempting, but you never know what kind of spells -

Ginny, what are you doing?"

Hermione and Ron both turned, and saw Ginny. She was standing in a corner of the room, staring quite fixedly at the wall. Exchanging looks, Hermione and Ron hurried over to her. "Gin, what is it?"

Ginny pointed. She was looking at a wall of even, gray stone bricks -

or so it looked from a distance. Up close, it was possible to see that one of the bricks stood out. It was a pale silver color, metallic. All around it the wall was thick with dust, but it was clean, untarnished.

Etched across the side of it was a sentence of what looked like poetry in thin, engraved letters:

To be gold is to be good to be stone is to be nothing to be glass is to be fragile to be cold is to be cruel.

Ron made a little groaning sound. "Another riddle?"

"It looks like it," said Charlie, ever the cautious voice of reason.

"Anyone want to venture a guess?"

I know the answer, Hermione thought to herself. But instead of speaking, she looked at Ginny.

Ginny hesitated. She took a step forward. Then she raised her hand, and with her right index finger drew, in the dust that covered the wall beneath the silver brick like a thick powdering of flour, the shape of a heart.

Hermione thought she heard a faint chiming noise, as of distant music — and the brick slid out of the wall and toppled into Ginnyś outstretched hands.

From which it was immediately removed by Charlie, bent on examining it. It turned out not to be a brick at all but a sealed silver casket, rectangular in shape. The top was engraved with a raised emblem: a magical creature with a lion's body, the head of a man, and a scorpion's tail. The tail was curved into the shape of a sideways 8. Infinity. Under its feet stretched a line of words in Latin.

"What do those mean?" inquired Ron, staring suspiciously at the box.

"I think it translates roughly as "My hovercraft is full of eels," said Charlie, looking wise.

"It does not," snapped Hermione, taking the box from Charlieś hands. "It means 'This belongs to time and the dark places.´

Thereś also another word here, which looks, well, a bit like the word for 'death´…but it might not be."

"Death?" said Ron. "Er…that sounds like the sort of translation one ought to be sure about before…"