cousin Flora to check into the Malfoy family bloodline. I wanted to make sure you and I were not too…closely related.'
'To closely related for what? Marriage?' he said, with sarcasm. Then, seeing her expression, he checked himself. 'Marriage? Are you mad?
I'm sixteen!'
'You won't be forever.'
'Actually, I probably won't live to see seventeen at this rate, so in a way I will be sixteen forever, but that's rather depressing, so let's move on. You mean those veela let me go because they knew you wanted to marry me?'
'Yes,' said Fleur, with exquisite simplicity.
Draco goggled at her. 'That's ridiculous!'
'There's nothing ridiculous about marriage,' said Fleur, looking severe.
'Do you still want to marry me?'
She shook her head. 'As it turns out, we're very distant cousins. So it wouldn't work.'
'That is too bad,' he said, with immense relief.
'However,' she said, stopping dead and turning to put a hand on his shoulder, 'we can still have sex. As long as no one knows about it.'
He nearly tripped over a tree root. 'What?'
'There is the little matter of the favor you owe me.'
Draco blinked at her. 'You want me to have sex with you? As a favor?'
Fleur smiled at him, shrugged, and nodded. 'Yes.'
'Are — you sure?' he said, in disbelief. 'I mean, you could ask me for anything. Anything. Cash? I've got lots of cash.'
In answer, Fleur crossed her arms and looked at him with a wry expression. He wasn't quite sure, but it looked as if she were tapping her foot impatiently on the ground. 'I don't want cash,' she said. 'I want you.'
Draco stared at her in utter disbelief. 'Right now? Right here?'
'Yes. Why not?'
'Oh.' He blinked at her. She was very beautiful in the half-light, and it was rather flattering, and well, he was sixteen years old.
He shrugged. 'Yeah, all right, then.'
Out of unconsciousness, Harry woke suddenly, with a feeling as if he were being suffocated. He gasped for air, and immediately, there were hands on his shoulders and a female voice was telling him to lie back, and breathe. A cool hand touched his forehead, brushing back his hair. He blinked hard, unable to see without his glasses.
'Hermione?' he said faintly, although he knew immediately it wasn't her, knew the feel of the touch of her hand by heart, this was someone else.
'It's Narcissa,' said the voice, gently. 'Lie back down.'
'No,' said Harry, mutinously. He struggled upright and leaned back against the headboard, blinking.
Narcissa watched him with concern. He seemed all right, although very pale. She could feel that she was holding herself back from what she wanted to do, which was to put her arms around this boy -
— who reminded of her son despite the fact that he looked and sounded nothing like him — to put her arms around him and to comfort him and stroke his hair. But to do that would be to make a child out of him, and she could see just by looking at him that he was very nearly no longer that. He would resent it, she was sure. So she held herself back from touching Harry, only reached for his glasses and put them very gently into his hand, and said, 'Can you sit up?'
'Yeah,' he said, pushing his glasses onto his nose and blinking. 'I'm fine.' To demonstrate, he sat up, paling only very slightly as he did so. 'I feel fine,' he said, again. 'Where's Hermione?'
'In the library with Ron, researching,' she said, matter-of-factly.
'And Sirius and Remus went to lock up that thing that attacked you.
They're putting magical wards on one of the cells right now.'
'It's not dead?'
Narcissa shook her head. 'Not dead, but unconscious. Sirius is hoping that when Dumbledore gets here, he can help them figure out what it is.'
'I can help them figure out what it is,' said Harry, making a move to get up. 'I've seen one before.'
Now Narcissa did touch him — she put a hand on his shoulder and pushed him gently back down on the pillows. 'Just rest a minute, Harry. You need to get your strength back. After what you did-'
She broke off as his eyes widened, and she saw him glancing around the room, seeing the incredible wreckage of the room: the crushed wardrobe, the smashed candlesticks and bottles, the burst pillows.
'I-' he began, looking stunned. 'I'll pay for all this, I've got money, I can-'
'No, you won't,' said Narcissa, firmly. 'This your house, Harry. Not that I'm saying that you can go around wrecking all the furniture, and Sirius will probably have you de-gnoming the garden from now until Doomsday, but there will be no paying anyone. Do you understand?'
Harry nodded, looking slightly befuddled.
'Anyway,' she added, 'I think you've punished yourself sufficiently.
You do realize why you fainted, don't you?'
