Кассандра Клэр - Draco Sinister

"I did what?" Hermione gasped.

"It was you who created the spell that broke the charm that held me captive," said Slytherin. "Surely you did it on purpose?"

She looked desperately away from him, and saw Wormtail gazing at her. "Your Whirlwind Charm," he said. "Very clever, that. But perhaps not entirely sensible. It may have had," he leered coldly, "unintended consequences."

"I don´t understand," she panted, looking from one of them to the other.

"Don´t you remember?" said Slytherin, gazing at her out of his empty eyes. "When I told you that I would never truly die?"

"No!" said Hermione sharply. "I don´t remember, because I´m not who you think I am." She looked desperately at the skeletal face before her. "Rowena Ravenclaw is dead," she said. "Sheś been dead a thousand years."

In reponse, one of his gloved hands shot out and seized at her neck.

For a moment, she thought he was going to choke her. Then she realized, with horror, that he had seized the Epicyclical Charm and was holding it in his fist. "You wear my descendantś life around your neck," he said. "As once, Rowena wore mine. When I awoke, the first thing I saw was your face, through his eyes. And I saw that he loved you, just as once I had loved her. History repeating itself. I saw Godric, too, through his eyes," Slytherin said, with a snarl.

"When she left me for Godric, it destroyed everything that I had worked for, everything I had nearly achieved. I won´t let that happen again, my love."

"I´m not your love," said Hermione, with desperate fury.

"Maybe not yet," said Salazar Slytherin. "But you will be."

Ginny was sitting in the kitchen listening to the wall clock tick when the door opened and Harry, Ron and Draco walked in, carrying their brooms and looking utterly exhausted. At least, Draco and Ron looked exhausted. Harry looked a degree worse than exhausted, as if he'd been wrung out by some terrible ordeal.

Ron and Draco tossed their brooms into the corner; Harry leaned his carefully on the wall next to the door. Ginny watched him from the kitchen, her heart aching with the suppressed desire to run over and put her arms around him; he looked so unhappy.

Ron walked over to her and put his hand on her shoulder.

"Anything?" he said quietly.

Ginny shook her head. "No word from her."

None of them looked particularly surprised. "Thanks for waiting, Ginny," said Harry in a deadly tired voice.

"Did you — learn anything?" asked Ginny anxiously.

Harry shrugged. "Yes and no."

"Is she all right?"

The answer to this question was a dead silence. Harry said, "I'm going to go wash up. I'll be right back," turned, and went upstairs.

Ginny looked miserably at Ron. "What happened?"

Ron sighed. He looked over at Draco, who was leaning against the kitchen wall. "We talked to Krum," he said, and told Ginny exactly what had happened. "I guess we were pretty lucky," he said, after he had finished telling the story. "Nobody caught us, and when I took the spell off Viktor, he seemed fine. Couldn't remember anything he'd told us under the Veritas curse. Couldn't even remember why we were there."

"I had to get his autograph," said Draco, trying to sound light. "It was very embarrassing."

"Is Harry okay?" asked Ginny, looking up at her brother. She tried to read his eyes, as she had been able to do when she was younger.

Right now they said Harry's not all right and I wish you didn't care.

"He needs to sleep," said Ginny. "You all need to sleep."

"Good luck convincing Harry of that," said Ron.

"He's really upset about Hermione, isn't he?" said Ginny.

"He's upset about Viktor," said Draco. "He's upset by the thought of what he's capable of when he's pushed."

Ron looked at Draco bitterly. "What do you know?" he said.

"More than you think," said Draco, with a touch of his old scornful drawl. He shrugged and walked out through the screen door, letting it bang shut behind him.

"I'm going to see if Harry's all right," said Ginny, ignoring Ron's expression, and went upstairs.

Draco stood in the Weasleys´ garden, letting the silver moonlight run down over him like milky rain. It was a cool, wet night, and the garden smelled like mint and dirt and rosemary. It was nothing like the gardens at Malfoy Manor, which always smelled of metal and leaf mold and blood.

He turned and faced south, the direction of his home, and reached into his pocket, realizing in sudden irritation, I don´t have my wand. Then he thought: that doesn´t matter. Magids his age weren´t supposed to perform wandless magic; that was true. Then again, neither were they supposed to sneak away from school in the dead of night for the purpose of putting powerful and illegal curses on famous international athletes. Wandless magic seemed minor in comparison. Sod that stupid rule, he thought, and raised his left hand, holding it straight out before him. The moonlight picked out the vivid silver lightning bolt scar across his palm as if it had been drawn there in liquid mercury.

Strange that the hand that Harry chose to cut is the hand that I do magic with. And the same for him. Was that conscious, I wonder?

He shrugged off the question and concentrated hard, thinking of the object he wanted, picturing it where it had lain the last time that he had seen it. For a summoning charm to work, it didn´t matter how far away the object to be summoned was, but one had to know where it was, and he did: on his fatherś desk. He pictured his fatherś study as he had last seen it, building the image in his head, even the smell of it: books and brandy and black magic. He shut his eyes and raised his left hand.

"Accio!"

Ginny found Harry in Percy's old bedroom, sitting on the edge of the bed, untouched since Percy had last been there with its plain blue sheets and hospital corners. He had taken off his glasses and was sitting with his legs drawn up, his head on his knees.

Ginny sat down next to him, feeling the bed sink under her weight.

"Harry," she said. "You need to get some sleep."

He raised his head slowly. "I´m not tired."

She was always startled by how different he looked with his glasses off. Younger, of course, but less gentle somehow; colder, and more capable of hardness. There was a line etched between his eyebrows now, that smoothed itself out as he looked at her, trying to smile.

She wondered how many years it would take for that line to become a permanent dent between his eyes that never vanished, whether or not he was smiling. She wondered if she would be there to see it.

"Of course you´re tired," she said. "You´ve been up for hours, flown for miles. You need to sleep. You won´t be any good at all to Hermione if you fall off your broomstick and drown in the Channel."

"I´m not any good to her anyway," said Harry bitterly. "This is all my fault."

"Itś not your fault!" said Ginny, outraged. "How could it be your fault? Itś more my fault than it is yours — I should never have left her alone with Viktor in the Leaky Cauldron — "

"No," said Harry, shaking his head. "Thereś no reason for Wormtail to kidnap her except to get at me. Sheś only in danger because of what she means to me. Just like Sirius was, and Ron, and everyone else I care about."

"Well," said Ginny, trying to sound light, "At least Malfoyś safe."

Harry forced a laugh. "I guess so," he said, and reached up to push his hair out of his eyes. "Ginny…"

"Please, Harry," she said. "Promise me you´ll get some sleep. We can put Malfoy in Charlieś old room and you can stay here. Then we can get started on whatever needs to be done first thing in the morning."

Harry hesitated a moment, then nodded. "You´re right," he said. "I know you´re right." He smiled at her, and her stomach flipped over.