'If it had been Hermione,' said Harry softly, 'I?d go after her.'
'But shes not in love with Malfoy,' said Ron blankly. 'Is she?'
Hermione just looked at him.
'Fuck,' he said, and covered his face with his hands.
Harry looked at Hermione. She nodded, got up, and went to kneel by Ron. 'Ron,' she said softly, gently touching his shoulder. 'Shes got the cloak and the Time-Turner. She can get away. She?ll be fine.'
Ron didn?t move. Hermione could hardly blame him. She had no sisters and brothers herself, Ron was the closest thing she had to a brother, and the idea of anything happening to him was too horrible to contemplate.
'I can?t believe she went after Malfoy,' said Ron, finally, in a dry voice. 'Well, I guess we?ll find out pretty soon whether or not hes trustworthy, won?t we?'
'Don?t say that,' Hermione began desperately, when a sudden and explosive gasp of surprise from Harry interrupted her. She turned in surprise to see what Harry was looking at.
He appeared to be staring down at his own shirt front. Hermione wrinkled her brow in confusion. 'Harry?'
'Hermione, come here,' he said urgently.
She got up and walked back over to Harry, followed by Ron.
'The knife,' said Harry, still staring down at his shirt. 'Take it out of my pocket.'
She bent to touch Harrys cheek, and then leaned over and reached into his pocket.
She lifted out the knife.
And paused, staring.
The knife looked much as it had. Closed, the dull edge of the blade glimmered a dull silver. The bone handle was etched with Harrys initials: HJP. There was a faint smear of blood on the side of the blade. But none of those things were what caused Hermione, Ron, and Harry to stare.
Wound around and around the knife, like a vine wrapping the trunk of a tree and glittering pale gold in the blue light of the room, was Dracos Epicyclical charm on its thin gold chain.
1) The song the dwarves were singing was 'I May Be A Tiny Chimney Sweep But Iv e Got An Enormous Broom', lyrics by Rave.
The full song can be found here.
2) 'Minions from hell getting you down?' — Angel.
3) 'Dont look at me like that. Im not the one who needs to brush up on her finger pantomime.' — Angel.
4) 'We could get sushi and not pay.' — Repo Man.
5) 'The covenant that holds the world together calls for opposites: the dark and the light, uniformity and chaos, bodied and disembodied.' Neil Gaiman, The Books of Magic.
6) 'Lets just say I wouldnt want to be in your chains.' — Angel.
Alcohol and fire did not mix, thought Draco, staring into the grate, where the flames had burned themselves down to a bed of glowing red embers. He had now made it through three more Mai Tais since returning to the bedroom, and his surrounding were starting to look a little peculiar. The warmth of the fire, combined with the heat of the alcohol running through his blood, was making him sweat through his clothes, not to mention the fact that his vision was blurring. He wondered if it were entirely normal that the liquor in his glass was staying quite steady while the furniture seemed to be sloshing up and down.
Blurred as it was, the room had started to remind him of his fathers study back at the Manor. The same thick stone walls, ominous tapestries full of snakes and spiders, the same heavy armchairs; how often had he seen his father sunk into a chair by the fire, glass of Firewhiskey Regal in hand, staring moodily into the flames, exactly as he was doing now. He almost felt as if he were back home, or if not at home, at least in some place other than this fortress: a place both foreign and strangely familiar, where reality assumed the texture of a dream.
Through the silence, he heard Slytherins voice in his head again, telling him about the covenant that held the world together, the necessity of opposites, the dark and the light, night and day, good and evil. Freezing cold and furnace heat, deadly blackness and petrifying light. He saw Harrys face, and the expression on it when Harry had looked at him in the cell — not quite rage, not quite disgust, not quite disappointment, but a far worse combination of all three.
Whats wrong with me? Why am I thinking about these things when theres no point? He glanced down, and saw his own distorted reflection in the side of the silver cup he held: the smooth plane of one cheek, marred only by the tiny scar on his cheekbone, the silver of his eye. Or maybe I?m just getting really drunk. He put the cup he was holding down on the table next to the chair, very carefully, and waved a hand at the fire. 'Incendio,' he whispered, and the flames leaped up again as if new. The amber light of the fire lanced through the green liquid in his glass, turning it gold. He leaned back, resting his head on the back of the armchair, very slowly lowering his eyelids so that he looked at the firelight through his lashes, a fringe of silvery grass.
A shadow passed across the fire. He ignored it. The images that danced across his inner lids held his attention. The Mirror of Judgement, its silvery surface reflecting back at him: first his own pale frightened face, then…other things. Afterwards, he?d barely resisted Slytherin dragging him off to examine his 'army.' Which was ridiculously vast. Dementors, werewolves, trolls and various other nasties stretching as far as the eye could see. He had hardly cared. Fleur had told him that Slytherin would show him things so terrible that he might die of them. Well, he hadn?t died, but what he had seen left a white-hot trail across his soul. Some things you don?t recover from.
