Кассандра Клэр - Draco Sinister

"You know what I don't understand?" said Hermione. "How Sirius and Harry's father ever could have been friends with you in the first place. You're disgusting."

She thought, but could not be sure, that she saw him flinch. A moment later, though, his smile widened, and he took several more steps towards her. She saw, with a sinking sensation, that in the hand that wasn't holding the goblet, Wormtail was gripping his wand. "My Master has given me permission to hurt you," he said.

"Just give me the chance, and I will."

Hermione was silent.

"Quiet now, are you?" he said nastily. "Throat dry? Here." He held out the goblet to her. "Have a drink."

She stared down into the intricately carved cup, which held a bluish-red liquid that swirled and steamed and popped with bubbles. It had a strong smell — not a bad smell, actually, rather a pleasant one, like lemons and roses and freshly baked bread.

"I'm not thirsty," she said tightly.

Wormtail grinned. "It's up to you," he shrugged. "You can either drink it, or I can put the Cruciatus Curse on you and torture you until you no longer have the use of your limbs. Then I'll force you to drink it anyway. But if you want to be stupid and brave, I'm all for it. Because I really want to torture you."

Hermione could feel her heard beating in ugly, pressurized thumps against her ribcage. She remembered how Lucius had used the Cruciatus Curse on her back at Malfoy Manor, trying to get her to tell him where Harry was… remembered wishing she could die. It wasn't something she would ever forget.

Dully, she held out her hand and let Wormtail put the goblet in it.

She considered dashing the contents of it onto the floor, but Wormtail was gazing at her with an expression that looked horribly like hunger. He was itching to hurt her. She could tell.

She raised the cup to her mouth, and drank.

It tasted of bitter sugar, sweet and stinging. She coughed, looking up to see Wormtail watching her avariciously as she swallowed.

The world seemed to tilt around her. Somewhere, Wormtail was giggling, but Hermione barely heard him. A dizzy whirring noise had started in her ears; it sounded like there were a thousand trapped butterflies struggling to get out of her head. She could feel the potion burning its way down into her stomach, as if she had swallowed fire or pure light; she almost expected her skin to start glowing like a torch. She was terrified, and at the same time, felt a strange sort of dizzy and sickening pleasure, which was almost worse. "Was that…" she gasped out, "Was that poison?"

Wormtail laughed harshly. "Not at all," he said, leaning forward and deftly plucking the cup from her loosening fingers. "That, my dear, was what is commonly termed a love potion."

Her eyelids were so heavy they felt like stones, but she dragged them open and stared at Wormtail with dimly realized horror. "Love potions…they're not real…they don't work…"

"Oh, but they are, and they do," said Wormtail. "That was one of the oldest. The use of it is quite illegal, of course. Life sentence in Azkaban. But," he shrugged, "that hardly matters."

"I can't," gasped Hermione, as the world tilted around her, "I can't stay awake…"

"That's right," said Wormtail in a singsong voice. "The potion takes a few hours to work. When you awake, the first person before your eyes will be the person you will love from that moment on, desperately and unconditionally and forever. Dark magic," he smiled, showing his little rat teeth. "There's nothing like it. Sleep tight, dear girl," he added, as Hermione sank back into the straw.

"And when you awake, the face of Salazar Slytherin will be the first thing that you see."

"So, do mum and dad have the least idea where you are?" said Charlie, fixing Ron with a look so terrifying it almost made Harry glad that he had no older brothers.

When they had arrived at the camp — and it really was a camp, a collection of tents of various sizes, most of which were occupied by Charlie's dragon-studying colleagues — the first thing Charlie had done was to call for several medic wizards, who had carted Draco away to the tent that apparently served as an infirmary.

This left Harry, Ron and Ginny to face the music. The music, in the case, was an extremely irritable Charlie Weasley, who wanted nothing more than to immediately owl both his parents and tell them that Ron and Ginny were in fact, not at home, but wandering at large around some rather distant forests with Lucius Malfoy's son and Harry, both of whom were supposed to be at school.

"Charlie, don't," said Ron, sounding rather desperate. "They're on vacation in the Lake District…I didn't want to bother them."

Charlie shook his head. "You're up to something, Ron," he said.

"Remember, I'm related to Fred and George as well as you. I know that up-to-something expression."

"Like you've never been up to anything," said Ron heatedly. "All those times when I was a kid and you swore me to secrecy, I never grassed on you, not once."

"You're still a kid, Ron," said Charlie. "Your safety is my main concern. Your safety, and Ginny's."

"Don't talk about me like I'm not here!" snapped Ginny. "And you're being totally unfair to Ron!"

Charlie looked taken aback.

"He's not Fred or George," she stormed. "When Ron does things, it's because he's got a good reason. He doesn't take stupid risks. And neither does Harry!"

"Mum and Dad wouldn't be happy if — "

Ginny cut Charlie's protest off with a wave of her hand. "I remember when you decided you wanted to work with dragons, and Mum cried for a week," she said sharply. "She was sure you'd be killed. They don't like your job or Bill's hair or Percy being a workaholic either, but they trust us, all of us, and especially Ron. Why don't you?"

Charlie opened his mouth, with the stunned expression of someone who just knows there's a loophole in the logic he's just heard, but can't quite put a finger on what it is.

"Ginny…"

"Just trust us, Charlie," she said.

Wearily, Charlie raised a hand and rubbed at his bleary eyes. Then he sighed. "Anyone want to come and see the dragons?" he offered, rather abruptly.

"I do," said Harry and Ginny immediately — Ginny, because she truly liked dragons and Harry because he had a feeling that this was the way to get on Charlie's good side. Ron, still looking thunderous, agreed more reluctantly.

They followed Charlie through the camp, casting each other uneasy glances as they went. Despite Charlie's sudden offer, they had a feeling he was still in a fairly apprehensive mood.

Several meters past the last tent was a large cleared area, about the size of two Quidditch fields, ringed around with magical barriers.

Inside the cleared area were several dragons, none of them as large as the Hungarian Horntail Harry had faced his third year. Harry thought he recognized one of them as a Swedish Short-Snout.

Charlie pointed at it. "That's the dragon that told me about Draco's Patronus," he said.

"Dragons talk?" said Ron, looking startled.

"Well, you have to learn Dragonish to communicate with them, and even them it's unrewarding," said Charlie. "Mostly it's a lot of reminiscing about the good old days when villagers used to leave girls tied to stakes for them to eat, and complaining about why don't they get to fly more, and wanting to be told how pretty their scales are. But," he added, "every once in a while they've got a useful piece of information. Like tonight."

"We told you," said Ron. "It wasn't a real dragon. It was a Patronus."

"Helped me find you, didn't it?"

Ron looked as if he wasn't sure whether or not this was a good thing.

"Would you look at that," said a voice behind them. It was Draco, having emerged at last from the infirmary tent. His clothes were as battered and dirty as they had been before, but the cuts and scratches on his arms and face were mostly gone, and his leg, obviously, was back to normal — although the medic wizards had cut away his left trouser leg below the knee, presumably to get at the broken bone. Draco didn't seem to mind, though. He had a rapt expression on his face as he gazed past them at the dragons.