Кассандра Клэр - Draco Dormiens

And when you rip that first razor through your stubble, that´ll go with it forever."

She tilted her head up and kissed him on the cheek.

He looked down at her. His eyes were inches from hers. "Hermione," he said, "Who are you talking to?"

"I don´t know," she said, and this time she kissed him on the mouth.

Whatever misgivings he might have had, they didn´t show. He caught her by the shoulders and kissed her back fiercely, and any half-thought she might have had that it was Harry she was kissing vanished, she had never kissed Harry but she knew that if she did it wouldn´t be like this. This was kissing a stranger, or a near-stranger; every touch of his lips on hers sent bolts of fearful excitement zinging through her nerve endings. He didn´t smell like Harry either, he smelled like Draco: lime juice, pepper, cold night air.

But when he said her name, it was in Harryś voice.

She didn´t care. They rolled over and over, kissing in the cramped confines of the wardrobe, banging off the sides, so preoccupied that neither of them noticed that someone was opening the wardrobe door and letting in the light from outside, so preoccupied they didn´t stop until a voice spoke and shattered their absorption with a sharp and furious finality: "WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?" said Harry.

Hermione was quite miserable. Harry wasn´t speaking to her, and it looked like he might well have decided never to speak to her again. Oddly enough, he was still talking to Draco, although not with what could be termed great enthusiasm.

Draco and Hermione had sprung apart violently the moment they had recognized Harryś presence, but it had been way too late. Hermione had stumbled out of the wardrobe, half-hysterical and very sticky from butterbeer and kissing, and tried to take Harryś arm, but he had only looked down at her hand as if it was a Blast-Ended Skrewt that had landed on his sleeve, and said: "Don´t. Touch. Me." in a very flat, very cold, and very final voice. Then he said, "Come on out of the closet, Malfoy. I need to talk to you."

Draco had crawled out of the closet looking apprehensive, apparently certain that Harry was going to throw a punch at him, but Harry hadn´t. Harry seemed convinced that the person who was at fault here was Hermione, who was now perched miserably on the end of Dracoś bed, watching the two boys craft a plan to get Sirius out of the dungeons.

"We´ll both have to go," Harry was saying flatly. He had explained Siriusśituation, now he and Draco had their heads bent over a sketchy map Harry had drawn of the Manor and its underground passages. "You have to let me in down there, because I need someone with Malfoy blood to open the doors. We could both fit under the invisibility cloak, but itś probably easier if you wear it and I go a little after you. If doors start popping open all over the place with no one operating them, questions might be asked. And stay under the cloak-you're Public Enemy Number One around here, the way you look."

Draco nodded. "Itś better if we go soon," he said, "pretty soon they´ll be expecting Harry Potter to show up and if you don't…"

"Yeah," said Harry shortly. "I was thinking we´d go right now."

"Good plan," said Draco. "What about Hermione?"

Harry gave Hermione a long, cold, unfriendly look. "Letś lock her in the wardrobe," he suggested.

"I´m not staying in the wardrobe," said Hermione flatly. "I´m coming with you."

"No, you aren´t," said Harry, not looking at her. "Itś going to be risky, and I can´t be constantly worried that you´re going to do something stupid and jeopardize your safety."

"You know perfectly well that I don´t do stupid things," said Hermione, furious "I think you´ve just proved that you do," said Harry, taking no trouble to conceal his contempt.

Without pausing to consider what she was doing, Hermione took five quick steps towards Harry and hit him hard across the face. The map fell out of his hands and he stared at her, looking as astonished as if his wand had jumped out of his pocket and started singing the national anthem.

Draco was grinning. "You might want to sit down, Harry," he said. "The last time she did that to me I saw stars for days."

Harry and Hermione turned on Draco simultaneously. "Shut up, Malfoy!"

"Fine, then," said Draco. "I´ll just go sit over here." And he stalked off towards the far end of the room. He sounded resentful, but Hermione had a feeling he was eager to get away and let them go on with their argument in peace.

"I´m not going to apologize," she said to Harry in an icy tone. "You deserved it."

"Yeah." Harry, still looking quite shocked, took Dracoś advice and sat down on the end of the bed. "I guess it isn´t any of my business."

He looked so miserable, Hermione felt guilty. "Harry….I know what you must be thinking….."

"Oh, no you don´t."

"I know you don´t like Draco-" "Don´t like him?" Harry sounded as though she had just told him she was going out to dinner with Voldemort. "This is Draco Malfoy, Hermione, you do realize this is Draco Malfoy we´re talking about here? The one who tried to get Hagrid sent to Azkaban about a million times? The one who calls you a Mudblood? The one whose father got Ronś dad fired from the Ministry of Magic?"

"I didn´t know about that!" said Dracoś voice from across the room.

"Shut up!" said Harry, not taking his eyes off Hermioneś face. "The Draco Malfoy who said he wished you were dead? Do you remember that, Hermione?"

"Heś different now," she protested, knowing how stupid this sounded. "Heś changed."

"Changed?" repeated Harry, now sounding as if she had just told him she was going out to dinner with Voldemort and bringing a nice bottle of wine. "What would Ron say, if he knew you were making out in a closet with the guy whose father took his dadś job away and practically bankrupted his whole family? If it wasn´t for Fred and Georgeś joke shop they´d be out on the street and you know it!"

"Thatś not fair," said Hermione, stung by this mention of Ron. "That was Lucius, not Draco. I don´t blame you for what the Dursleys do, now do I?" She dropped her voice to a whisper. "Harry…" she said again, "heś different now. When we were trying to get into the house from outside, he jumped in front of an arrow that was aimed at me. He saved my life. Doesn´t that mean anything?"

Harry looked at her. Her brown eyes were huge in her white face and her lips were trembling. "Itś the Polyjuice spell, Hermione," he said. "You know that. You sound like Hagrid, adopting some horrible monster and insisting it's well-behaved. One of these days, he´ll bite your hand off. Either when we take the spell off him or before."

"How do you know itś the spell, Harry?" said Hermione, casting an anxious glance across the room at Draco.

"Because," he said, paused, and looked up at her. She could tell he was trying to decide whether or not to tell her something. "Because I can feel the opposite happening in me, all right?"

"You mean….you can hear what heś thinking?"

He shook his head. "No. Something else." He took his wand out of his pocket and beckoned her to come closer to him. "Watch this, Hermione," he said, and pointed the wand at a pair of spiders who were scuttling across a gap in the flagstones.

"Cruoris!" he hissed.

A jet of black light shot out of his wand tip and hit one of the spiders. Instantly, it turned and savagely attacked its companion, biting off its head and proceeding to devour it. Harry watched the carnage with a grim look on his face.

Hermione felt her eyes widen. "Harry," she said, dismayed, "that was….Dark magic, wasn´t it?"

"That wasn´t even that nasty of a spell," said Harry woodenly, watching the remaining spider, which was now much fatter than it had been, scurry away across the floor. "Most of them are loads nastier."