lost Hermione forever, lost her to Draco through his own stupidity and blindness. He remembered standing outside Hogwarts in the pelting rain, holding Hermiones stupid fat cat, which was scratching and clawing at his chest, and seeing her and Draco running down the stairs. And hating them both. And had realized what the worst emotion that could ever be felt was: not sorrow or guilt or physical agony, but the pain of hating the person you loved most in the world.
He?d been wrong, though. He hadn?t lost Hermione. Draco had, and he had loved her as much as Harry did. Or almost as much. And Harry knew, realizing this now, as he would have realized it before had he stopped to think about it, that if it had been him in Dracos place he would never have dealt with the loss of her with half the grace that the other boy had. Maybe pride wasn?t always a flaw, when it gave you the strength to sacrifice what you loved.
A slight flicker of something akin to guilt flared and died under his ribs. He was still furious with Draco for what he had said about his parents. Much more furious with him for telling the truth than he would have been for some lie invented to make him angry. What gave him the right to conceal information like that? That he had met Harrys parents, talked to them? All right, not his real parents, only shadows of them, but still. Harry would have given anything just to see even the shadows of his parents as they had been when they were alive. There was a certain black irony in the fact that it had been Draco they talked to, but Harry was certainly in no mood to appreciate it.
Still there was a tiny nagging voice in the back of his head that said that Draco had only done what he had had to do. He hadn?t looked particularly happy about doing it, either, in fact he had looked gutted. Much as Harry imaged he himself would look if he had to hurt Hermione, or Ron -
He jerked against his chains as his vision suddenly went black and the world peeled down the center like an orange. As if called up by his thoughts of them, he suddenly saw Ron, and Hermione as clearly as if they stood in front of him. He heard the screaming rattle of wind, saw that Hermione was gripping Rons hand tightly and her eyes were searching, darting, looking — she seemed suddenly to see him; she wrenched her hand out of Rons and screamed out his name, 'Harry!'
The world closed itself back up. And Ron and Hermione were gone, vanished as if he had never seen them, and the only sound left in the room was his own ragged breathing and the rattle of the chains around his wrists. He blinked and shook his head hard. Tiny black diamonds of exhaustion flecked his vision, but otherwise he saw nothing unusual. The room was empty, as it had been moments ago.
With something approaching a smile, he remembered Rons voice telling him, Hearing things that aren?t there isn?t a good sign, Harry, not even in the wizarding world.
It took the guards only an instant to drag Harry out of the room. It might have taken longer if he had fought them. But he didn?t fight them. He let them take him, and he looked back at the door, looked back towards Draco but Draco didn?t notice and Harry didn?t seem to see Fleur looking at him, either. She wasn?t sure that she would have wanted to catch his eye, either. She had a feeling she knew how he would look at her. With hate in every curve of his face, as he had looked at Draco…
She turned back to Draco and to her Master, the man she was linked to, who drew power out of her with every breath he took like a spool winding silver thread. Slytherin stood with his Heir over the dead body of the manticore. As she watched, he held out his hand and Draco allowed him to take the sword from his grasp. He raised it high overhead and brought it down, hard and swiftly, and it sliced through the manticores armored belly as easily as a knife slicing a loaf of bread.
Fleur felt a tinny ringing beginning in her ears. She was tired, so tired. Salazar and Draco began to waver in front of her as if she was looking at them through wavy glass. Slytherin drew his sword arm back and the manticores belly gaped open, blood pouring across the floor like a fountain and she saw Draco glance up and over at her as the blood ran towards her and then the world flipped upside down and the floor came at her, hard. And then there was blackness.
Fleur woke up slowly, swimming up out of unconsciousness towards light. She was lying on something soft, and by rolling sideways she realized it was a bed. Very slowly, she sat up, feeling prickling pains in her neck, back and shoulders as she did so.
She knew immediately where she was: the room she had slept in the night before, and the night before that, although the bed had been neatly made and she lay atop the covers, which were a heavy, velvety black material. Great swatches of the same dark material hung from the bedposts, and covered the windows, leaving the room lit only by the sputtering light of the torches that hung in metal brackets on the walls. Dracos silver and green sword stood propped against the wall. A tapestry that depicted a huge green serpent strangling a lion hung over the grate, in which a blazing fire billowed gold and red.
Sitting next to the fire, half-hidden in the depths of an enormous armchair, was Draco.
He had obviously had time to wash and clean himself up: his silver hair shone clean and bright and curled in damp tendrils against his temples, and he had washed the blood from his hands and face. He was very pale, his eyes dark and smudged underneath with blue shadows, but he looked composed. She remembered having seen him, that first time she had come to Hogwarts, sitting at the Slytherin table next to Viktor Krum. She hadn?t told him when she had seen him again this summer that she remembered him, because he was so much changed as to be nearly unrecognizable. Not that he looked so very different but he simply was different, in some odd and inchoate way she couldn?t quite define.
He raised his eyebrows at her. 'Awake, are you? That was quite a dramatic faint you accomplished. Well done.'
She sat up, hugging her arms to herself, and shivered. 'What are you doing 'ere, Draco?'
'I was told this was my room.'
'This is my room.'
He grinned, a narrow grin like a knife blade. 'Apparently we?re meant to share. Isn?t that sweet? I would have registered a complaint about the rooming situation, but I was too busy trying not to be killed by Dead Guy to get to it.'
'Don?t call him that.'
Draco swung a leg up over the arm of the chair and leaned back.
The torchlight struck bright sparks off his silver hair. 'I?ll call him what I like.' He slid his eyes sideways, past her, and he grinned unpleasantly. 'Isn?t that right?'
Fleur glanced where his gaze had gone, and saw, without surprise, one of the gray-robed servants of Slytherin standing in the corner of the room, silent, face hidden by his hood. They were always there, these servants, she had stopped noticing their presence.
