Кассандра Клэр - Draco Sinister

"Thereś just one thing, Ginny, if you wouldn´t mind; I´d really rather not be by myself right now, so…"

Ginny stared at him. "Yes?" she said in a tiny voice.

"Could you ask Ron to come up? I don´t feel like going downstairs, but I´d really like to talk to him."

"Oh," she said. She stood up. "Oh. Of course. I´ll — I´ll go get him right now."

On the first floor landing, she passed Draco, who was carrying a large green book in his arms. She had a sudden, savage urge to kick him in the ankle, but knew it was unjustified and restrained herself.

"You´re in that bedroom," she said, pointing down the hallway toward Charlieś room, which was next to hers. "There are blankets in the cupboard. And don´t ask me to make your bed, because I won´t."

He looked at her curiously. "Whatś bothering you?" he asked.

"Potteritis again?" He didn´t change expression, but she could tell just by looking at him that there was a smirk chasing around inside his tidy blond head, trying to find its way out.

"I violently despise you," she said. "I just thought you should know that."

"And I really don´t care," said Draco, stepping neatly around her and heading off down the hallway to Charlieś room. Ginny stood for a moment, staring after him. For some reason she couldn´t decipher, she now felt even worse than she had before.

He was standing in a chamber that was somewhere underground -

he didn't know how he knew that, but he did. He wore robes of black and green and silver, and boots of black dragon-hide leather.

He could tell without looking down that several inches had been added to the bottoms of his shoes to give him extra height. But he could still feel the heat that radiated from the floor burning through his bootsoles.

He was not alone down here. They stood around him in a semicircle. There were seven of them. And Draco recognized them immediately; recognized their long two-fingered hands, their smooth and earless heads. Demons. Only they wore long robes of black and red, and the tallest of them all, the one in the center of the half-circle, carried something in its outstretched hands.

A long silver sword whose hilt was set with a multitude of green jewels.

"You have come here to make an exchange with us," said the tallest demon.

And Draco heard himself speak. His voice was not his own voice, but the voice of a man much older. "Yes, I have."

"And do you know what this exchange entails?"

"I give you what you want," the Draco-who-was-not-Draco said. "And you give me the sword."

"With this sword a man could work miracles," said the demon.

"I have no interest in miracles," said the Draco-who-was-not. "I have an interest in power. I have been told such a sword will give me power. Is that the truth?"

"There is such a thing as too much power," said the demon.

And the dream-Draco laughed. "I don't believe that," he said.

"You must at least believe that there is a natural balance to all things," said the demon. "For every profit in one thing, payment in some other thing. You will profit greatly by the use of this sword, but first it must be paid for."

And Draco felt his hands — which seemed solid and real, hardly like dream-hands at all — go to his throat, and loosen the pin there, and he drew his cloak back and the shirt that was under it so that his chest was bare.

"Take your payment," he said.

The demon reached out its spatulated hand, and flexed its long fingers. Then, like a boxer punching his way through a flimsy cardboard wall, the demon plunged its hand into Draco's chest. The agony was immediate and intense and terrible, but it lasted only a moment. Draco screamed, and the demon drew its hand back. It was clutching something in its blood-streaked fingers — something that glowered and flickered weakly like candlelight through a screen.

The demon smiled. Its incisors were long and sharp and pointed.

"The sword is yours," it said. "Hell is now satisfied."

"Malfoy! Malfoy! Wake up!"

Someone had him by the shoulder and was shaking him. He twisted away, covering his face with his arms. He was vaguely aware of someone screaming. There were hands tugging at his arms, trying to pull them away from his face. "Wake up!" said the voice again, despairingly, and then, "Malfoy, please!"

He opened his eyes. The screaming stopped, and it was suddenly, blessedly quiet. That was me screaming, Draco realized. That was me.

It was dark in the bedroom. The only light was silver moonlight pouring through the window: it illuminated the girl leaning over him, her anxious, dark eyes and long, curling hair. In the half-dark, she looked like-

"Hermione?" he whispered, only half awake.

"No, it's Ginny."

He drew his arms away from his face slowly. "Of course," he said.

"You wouldn't be her. She calls me by my first name." He blinked and stared at her. "What are you doing in here?"

"What am I doing in here?" echoed Ginny irritably. "You were screaming like a banshee, that's what I'm doing in here. I thought someone was murdering you. Look where you are, Malfoy."

Draco sat up and looked around him in surprise. He was no longer on the bed but half-lying on the floor, in a welter of tangled bedsheets. He didn't remember falling off the bed, but then he didn't remember screaming either. What he did remember was his dream. He sucked in breath through his teeth, remembering the pain, the demon's hand punching through his chest. The heat. The sword.

When Ginny spoke again, her voice was uncertain. "Malfoy…"

"What?"

"You're bleeding."

Startled, he glanced down and saw, on the front of his shirt, just over his heart, a spreading red stain the size of a dinner plate. Draco put his hand to the stain and his fingers came away red. Not old blood, but new.

He looked up at Ginny. "Get Harry," he said hoarsely.

Ginny scrambled to her feet and headed for the door.

Halfway there, Draco called out to her. "Wait!"

She turned around. He was kneeling amid the blankets. He had taken his shirt off and was looking down at his chest, which was quite a bit paler than the rest of him in the silver light. It was also completely unmarked; there was no wound there at all. "Never mind," he said. "It looks like I´m all right after all."

"Was that…not your blood?" she said, bewildered.

He looked up at Ginny, and the moonlight struck cold sparks from his silver eyes. "I don't know. But I think I'm beginning to have an idea. And I'm not liking it much."

"Does it have to do with your nightmare?"

"Yes," he said, then shook his head. "I mean, no. I mean, I´m not sure it was a nightmare. I think it was a flashback. Or maybe a delusion. Or maybe I had a flashback in the middle of a delusion. Is that possible?"

Ginny could feel her eyes widening. "I should go get Harry," she said, but Draco shook his head.

"Don't bother Potter," he said. "Just sit here with me for a minute."

Ginny hesitated. It was very hard to read Dracoś expression. In the darkness, his eyes reflected light like a cat's. Slowly, she walked over and sat down next to him on the blankets. But she didn´t want to look at him, because he had his shirt off and it gave her an odd feeling, so she stared fixedly at the nightstand instead, and said the first thing that came into her head. "Does it hurt?"

"It did when I was asleep," he said. "It doesn´t anymore." He was looking down at his shirt now; the front of which was stained dark crimson. There was blood on his hands as well. Ginny looked at them curiously, noticing something odd. He had nearly the same hands as Harry — the same shape, the same bitten nails, the same long fingers and sharp articulation of bones. She had looked at Harryś hands often enough and with enough attention to have memorized them; she would have known them anywhere. The matching scars only added to the strangeness.