He knew this made no sense logically, and perhaps ethically as well, but he didn't care. He wasn't prepared to answer questions about Remus and that was final.
'It's not a pleasant process, being Called,' said Mad-Eye, avoiding Sirius' eyes. 'It's agonizing, and it goes on and on until the one being Called either answers the summons, or dies.'
Sirius looked down, his hands tight on the metal edges of the gurney. The red gem in his bracelet winked as he turned his wrist.
'Is there nothing that can be done for the condition?'
'There was talk of creating a potion to cure it, back when the Dark Lord was in power, but I don't know if anything ever came of that.'
Mad-Eye was still refusing to look at Sirius, who was glad. Mad-Eye cleared his throat. 'And the Weasleys. How are they managing?'
'They're all right. They were frantic at first, still are probably, but the Burrow is knee-deep in Aurors right now. They'll have a constant twenty-four-hour guard of forty Aurors at least, ringed around the house and the grounds. There won't be a safer wizarding house in Britain.'
'And will you be one of those Aurors?' Mad-Eye asked. Sirius suspected that Moody would have liked to be one himself, but in consideration of his age (103, by all accounts) Mad-Eye had lately been restricted to inactive duty.
Sirius shook his head, and looked down again at the body of the man on the gurney. Close up, it was easy to see the telltale signs that marked him as a werewolf: the glassy nails, the slightly elongated index fingers. Alexander Scroton was not the first dead werewolf Sirius had ever seen; nor, at this point, did he think he would be the last.
'No,' said Sirius. 'I'm going home. There's something I have to do.'
Hours had passed. The adamantine room was quiet. Harry was sleeping on a long wooden bench, his arm over his eyes. Draco stood by the wardrobe, looking at himself in the mirror that hung on the interior door.
Normally looking in mirrors was one of Draco's favorite activities, but at the moment he found himself vaguely troubled by the reflected image that met his gaze. He had taken some of the clothes from the wardrobe and changed into them, grateful to be rid of his bloodstained shirt. He now wore a shirt made of some tough, unfamiliar black material, black boots (a size too big, his feet slid around in them) and over that, a long black cloak that fastened across the chest with a silver chain whose links were tiny, interlaced serpents. Dark green piping banded the hem of the cloak. It wasn't that he didn't look good in them (of course he looked good in them!
— dashing and mysterious). It was that these were the clothes he had reached for instinctively when he had opened the wardrobe; the cloak was also the same his dream-self had worn, standing in the center of a circle of demons and bartering away his soul. He heard the demon voices again in his head: There is a natural balance to all things. For every profit in one thing, payment in some other thing.
He raised his head, saw the mirrored image raise its head in answer, the blue light in the room giving his ashen skin and silver hair a dark, gunmetal sheen. When will I have to pay? Or perhaps I should ask: What will I have to pay?
He turned away from the mirror, and crossed the room to look at the tapestries on the wall. They were very beautiful in their own weird way — the largest was woven with silver and gold thread picked out against a background of black velvet; it showed stars and moons and constellations and galaxies and universes, whirling and glittering and drawing in the eye until you forgot what you were looking at and wandered through the spaces between the stars.
Malfoy Manor had always been filled with things that were grand, but not many that were beautiful, and Draco found that looking at the tapestry touched him oddly. He put his hand out and felt the material, which was dusty and stiff and not nearly as nice to feel as to look at.
The other tapestries showed scenes of wizard court life and battle and hunting. There were various magical beasts depicted — dragons and basilisks, hippogriffs and werewolves, groups of veela riding huge beasts with lion bodies, heads like men, and scorpion tails.
Draco didn't know what those were, but would not have wanted to meet one in a dark alley. The last tapestry showed a coat of arms: a silver dragon, rampant, facing to the sinister. The banner that wove beneath its feet bore a motto in Latin: IN HOC SIGNO VINCES. Draco poked at it with his finger, and found the tapestry as cold as ice to the touch.
He backed away, looking over at Harry, who was still sound asleep, and a vague sense of unease flitted over him. He suspected that Harry might have a mild concussion — after Slytherin had Stunned Hermione, Harry had thrown himself at the dark wizard. Slytherin had promptly picked him up as if he had weighed no more than a kitten and thrown him headfirst against the opposite wall. At which point Draco could no longer quite recall what had happened. He had a feeling he and Ron had attacked Slytherin simultaneously, but his short-term memory seemed to be shot and he couldn't be sure.
Nor was he sure exactly what the symptoms of a concussion were.
Harry had certainly seemed lucid enough before, and now that he was asleep he was sleeping soundly, his chest rising and falling with regular, shallow breaths. Of course, maybe sleeping soundly was a sign of a concussion. Suddenly uneasy, Draco got to his feet, went over to Harry, and jabbed a finger into his sternum.
'Ow!' Harry woke up with an indignant cry and fumbled for his glasses. 'Malfoy, you creep. What was that for?' He sat up, looking injured, and rubbed at his solar plexus.
'Nothing. Go back to sleep, Potter.'
'I can't,' said Harry irritably. 'I'm awake now.' He put his glasses on and blinked at Draco. 'What on earth are you wearing?'
Draco shrugged. 'I changed into some of the clothes from the wardrobe over there.'
'You're letting Salazar Slytherin dress you now?'
'Say what you will about the man — he may be a creepy, soulless, undead zombie with a weird thing for snakes, but he's got impeccable taste in clothing.'
Any response Harry might have felt moved to give was cut off by a grinding noise coming from the vicinity of the opposite wall. Both of them spun around to see a dark opening appear in the wall, and a hand reach through it, holding something round and flat. There was a clang as it dropped what it was holding, and before the boys had time to do much more than stare in surprise, the hand was withdrawn and the dark opening vanished as swiftly as it had appeared.
Draco darted over and knelt down by the dropped object, Harry following closely on his heels and looking curious. 'What is it? A bomb?'
