Кассандра Клэр - Draco Sinister

Besides — I might not be an Heir, but I do have Hufflepuff blood."

Draco scoffed. Hermione nudged him with her elbow, to make him be quiet.

"All right, you lot go together," Sirius said. "With the Heir of Slytherin is probably the safest place to be, and I'll likely have an easier time sneaking around the castle on my own." He looked at Draco. "And when you have the Orb, guard it with your life."

"Certainly not," said Draco, with the ghost of a mocking smile. "I plan to guard it with my really big sword."

"All right, then," said Harry. "Letś go."

* * * * *

It was sunset, and the sky was golden streaked with silver threads like the threads in a tapestry. Ginny sat by the fire that Ben had made that afternoon, shivering very slightly. It was autumn in the time they were in currently. In the distance, she could see many small campfires burning around an assortment of tents. Clouds like dark red roses scudded high across the amber sky. The air smelled of oncoming frost, and rather strongly of dragons. Actually, dragon, as in the one that Gareth had lent them earlier that day, or what she thought of as that day, even though it had actually been on a day over a decade later than the one she was now reaching the end of.

His name was Feroluce, he was a Common Welsh Green, and he smelled distressingly of sheep, even when he was tethered many yards away as he was now.

She squinted slightly, and saw a figure coming towards her from the camp. She hoped it was Ben. He had been gone most of the day, talking to the army, and here they had come across an obstacle she hadn´t been expecting: she couldn´t talk to the soldiers, and they couldn´t talk to her. It appeared that her ability to communicate in the past was limited to speaking with Heirs, since both Ben and Gareth had understood her perfectly, and when they spoke, she had heard perfectly sensible English. But when she tried to converse with anyone else, she heard a gabble with an occasionally understandable English word salted in. She had eventually given up in high dudgeon, and, she was sure, to Benś amusement. She had gone to wait for Ben and read Helgaś book on Time-Turners, while Ben used all his charm and his Heir of Gryffindor status to try to convince the army of his objective, and to assure them that if they didn´t come to the future, they were sure to be vaporized by Slytherin anyway.

"Itś destiny," he told them, looking very serious and important in his full Gryffindor regalia: red cloak lined in gold, scarlet tunic sewed with the emblem of a dragon, and, of course, the sword and the in a scabbard that was woven all over with flowers and leaves.

Ginny thought it was rather cute. She wondered if this was what Harry would look like when he grew up. Then she remembered why she´d had such a terrific crush on him in the first place.

The figure coming towards her resolved its shape as it neared. It was Ben. He waved, looking exhausted, and collapsed by the other side of the fire. "Success," he announced. Then he made a face. "That dragon smells," he observed gloomily.

"Don´t I know it," agreed Ginny.

"Have you been here all this time?"

"I haven´t had much else to do. And I didn´t think it was a good idea to mangle time by inventing Quidditch or something." Ben looked at her blankly. "After your time," she added, smiling.

"No, I think I know that word. It reminds me of your brother somehow." Ben shivered, probably from the cold, and moved closer to the fire.

Ginny suddenly realized that she didn´t know anything about Benś family. Professor Binnsćlass was all about battles and dates, and if he ever talked about the Founders, she must´ve slept through class.

"Do you have any brothers, or does being the Heir mean you´re the only guy, or in my case, girl, in your generation? Harry, Hermione and Draco — they´re all only children, and I´m the only girl in my family. Is that how this Heir thing works?"

"Well, Helga has a few daughters, and the oldest is the Heir. There is only one child who carries Rowena ś blood, and I do have a few half-brothers and a sister, but…"

"What about Gareth?"

"I don´t even think he knows how many children Slytherin created.

The Snake Lord selected him as the Heir when he was about five, I think. Gareth doesn´t talk about how it happened. We used to play together when we were children," he said. "I think he still feels a pretty heavy burden about his father being responsible for so much death. Even though itś not as if they really knew each other."

"I´m surprised you all let him live," said Ginny, and Ben turned a very surprised expression on her.

"Kill Gareth? I´ll give you that heś annoying, but…"

"Itś not that, itś just that heś the Heir of Slytherin, isn´t he? Kill him, and you could end the line. Slytherin might never rise. I´m not telling you to do it, obviously," she added hastily, "since it would screw up history anyway, I´m just surprised that it never came up.

In fact, why does the spell to open the Orb call for the presence of all four Heirs? Why the Heir of Slytherin? Isn´t the prophecy that the ultimate Heir of Slytherin will be evil?"

"You ask a lot of questions," said Ben, his voice faint with tiredness.

"Why is that?"

"I´m a girl with six older brothers. I´ve always had to ask a lot of questions, just to get one straight answer."

She heard Ben roll over onto his stomach and sigh. When she glanced over she saw him looking at her, resting his chin on his folded hands. "My father went to see Slytherin to ask him to give up the battle he was waging," he said, in a remote sort of tone.

"Slytherin invited him into his library, and when my father turned to shut the door, stabbed him through the back with his sword.

There were servants there who witnessed some of what happened next. Slytherin bent over him where he lay on the ground, watching him die, but as my father died he left his curse — . The dying curse of one of Gryffindor blood is always potent. The curse was that as Salazar, his own cousin and once best friend, had murdered him, so he cursed Slytherin that he would one day be destroyed by his own blood and flesh." He sighed again, and put his hands over his face.

His next words were muffled. "Rowena was mindful of that when she created the Orb spell. I think she also was being a little protective of Gareth. He was only eight at the time, and she would have been looking for a way to make sure he was protected after his father was…removed."

"It seems so complicated, and like it hinges on so many tiny little things," said Ginny doubtfully. "How can you hang a whole spell, a whole prophecy, on the choices of someone who hasn´t even been born?"

" If it seems complex thatś because it is. And even making it simpler wouldn´t make time and the flow of destiny any easier to manipulate. Helga told me once, 'Time bears destiny towards its inevitable realization. You can neither raise your hand to turn it aside, nor raise your sword to hold it back. Even the wisest man cannot know what tragic flaw may in the end prove essential to the whole.´"

"A tragic flaw?" Ginny let her head fall back as she gazed up at the sky, which had darkened to charcoal. She thought of Draco. If anyone was tragically flawed, he was. Oh boy, was he flawed. Well, not physically.

She grinned to herself in the dark, and rolled over onto her stomach. "Ben?" she said, and was about to ask him if they would be leaving right away or waiting until first thing in the morning, when she realized, from the light sound of him snoring, that he had already fallen asleep.

* * * * *

Hermione had been worried that they would run into guards on their way to the Orb; she had been worried that the resident monsters of the castle would delay them, or worse yet, they´d bump into Slytherin himself. The biggest obstacle to progress however, turned out to be the fact that Ron and Draco flatly refused to get along. Every few feet they would stop and snap at each other. Ron stepped on Dracoś toe on purpose; Draco stuck out his foot and tripped Ron. And so on. Hermione glanced over at Harry as they turned a corner, and he rolled his eyes. "I thought Draco was supposed to be walking ahead of us, making it look like we belong here?" she hissed at Harry, who sighed and whirled around.