Ah, thought Harry. A ghost servant. This was fine. Harry was used to ghosts.
'Your mother wanted me to bring you this,' said Anton-the-ghost, handing Harry the cloak. It was long and looked expensive, with a big silver clasp at the throat in the shape of a snake. Harry thought he would be happy if he never saw another snake-shaped ornament in his whole life after this. 'You left it in the drawing room last time you were here.'
Harry stopped stock-still in the act of pulling on the cloak. What the ghost had just said had set off something like a firecracker in the back of his mind. The drawing-room. There was something significant about that phrase, something huge. What was it about the drawing-room that was important?
'I suggest, young Master Malfoy,' said the ghost, 'that you fasten that clasp in front of the mirror. It is complicated.'
If he thought Harry's struggles with the cloak were either amusing or suspicious, he didn't show it.
Harry went over to the mirror, still pondering the question of the Malfoy drawing-room, and made a disgusted noise. If Harry had been a girl, he would have thought the reflection staring back at him was alluring and sophisticated, the white-silver of Draco's hair contrasting beautifully with the black of his cloak and the silver embroidery bringing out the gray in his eyes. But Harry was not a girl, and he merely thought that he looked like a transvestite. Ruffles! Satin! Buckled shoes! Yech!
They were sitting on the platform at Hogsmeade station, waiting for the train, when Draco began to laugh. Hermione twisted around to look at him. 'What's funny?' she asked, frowning.
'Harry,' said Draco. 'He's wearing my clothes and he hates it…Hey!' he added, irritably, 'I like that shirt. It is not effeminate!'
Hermione was staring at him. 'Malfoy, please stop channeling Harry,' she said. 'It makes me sickeningly nervous.' She fiddled with the strap on her bag. 'Can he see what you're doing?' she asked finally.
'He can, a little,' said Draco, 'but he thinks he's just dreaming it.'
'Why?'
'Harry's got a stronger will than me,' said Draco neutrally. 'He projects more.'
'Does he…' said Hermione, now fiddling with the strap harder than ever, 'does he think about me?'
Draco looked at her. His green eyes were unreadable. 'Sometimes.'
Hermione opened her mouth to ask more, but at that moment the train came chugging into the station. It was painted bright red and had HOGSMEADE-LONDON picked out in sparkling letters across the side. She and Draco hopped to their feet and boarded. They were the only passengers in their compartment.
'Hermione,' said Draco as they settled into their seats, 'How did you know I wasn't Harry?'
Hermione bit her lip. Why was he asking her this now? She didn't have a good answer; it would sound silly to say that he hadn't smelled right when he kissed her, not like Harry. She studied his face, but couldn't read his expression.
Maybe that's it, she thought.
'I always know what Harry's thinking,' she said. 'He never bothers to hide anything he feels. But when I was looking at you, it was like I was looking at his face, but Harry had gone away. I couldn't tell at all what you were thinking.'
Draco didn't say anything to that, only stared out the window. They were leaving the heavily wooded area around Hogsmeade now and rolling into an area of dark fields dotted with small farms. A huge white moon had risen.
'Do you want to know what I'm thinking now?' he asked finally.
'No,' said Hermione, 'I'm sure it's really unpleasant.'
She immediately regretted having said this, but was unsure how to take it back.
They lapsed into silence.
Harry would never have imagined that a big gathering of Death Eaters could have been so fantastically boring, but so it was. They were a grim-looking bunch of men, even with their ugly masks off. Lucius Malfoy presided at the head of the table; Harry recognized some of the names: Crabbe and Goyle were there, just as big and ugly as their unpleasant offspring; there was Nott, Zabini, Rozier, and Franz Parkinson as well.
He had rather hoped there would be some talk about Sirius, but there was none. It seemed likely that McNair and Draco's father were the only ones who even knew about the plan. And Wormtail, of course. They probably didn't want to share the glory.
Harry sat squashed between Hugo Zabini (brother of the Zabini who had tried to send Harry an exploding broom) and Eleftheria Parpis (the only Death Eater who was not a man) an enormous-bosomed woman in black satin robes who was obviously quite taken with Lucius Malfoy: she laughed at everything he said and kept leaning across the table to give him a view of her expansive bosom. Narcissa, who was kept busy carrying trays of food in and out of the kitchen, didn't notice.
Zabini, on the other hand, was more interested in talking to Harry about all the fun he must be having as a Slytherin at Hogwarts. Harry, to whom the idea of fun now seemed a faint and distant memory, was kept quite busy inventing all sorts of activities for Draco and his Slytherin pals. 'Well, we study a lot, of course,' he said, 'and we play with the torture instruments in the dungeon, and, uh, someone gave us a basilisk egg and we're trying to get it to hatch.'
'Is that wise?' said Rozier, a tall old man with very thin eyebrows.
Harry, thrown by the fact that someone had actually paid attention to what he was saying, stammered, 'Well, McNair said he'd kill it for us if it got too big.'
'I, for one,' said Eleftheria, 'like to see children learning for themselves. That is why I sent my sons to Durmstrang where they have already mastered Level Five of the Dark Arts.'
'Is it true they chain the Durmstrang students to glaciers for days if they do badly on their OWL's?' Harry
