'Oh,' she said into the silence. 'Seamus, I….'
Her voice trailed off. He was sitting, looking at her very steadily, his hands in his lap. The firelight played shadows over his just-mended, bruiseless pale skin, the strong straight nose, the lightly freckled arc of his cheekbones. He was handsome the way picture-book heroes were handsome — he looked like he ought to be slaying a dragon with one hand, and carting off a fainting maiden with the other. And yet his handsomeness didn't touch her — not the way Harry's melancholy-prince looks had touched her once, or Draco's fallen-angel beauty, or Tom's….
She shook off thoughts of Tom. 'Oh,' she said again, softly, and then, to her own great surprise, she added, 'I have to go find him.'
Seamus' eyes widened. 'Find who? Harry?'
'No — my brother.'
'Ginny — '
'I can't now, Seamus,' she interrupted. 'I need to find Ron.'
Seamus nodded without looking at her. 'I saw him come up the back stairs and go into his room.'
'How did he seem? Was he all right?'
'All right? — no,' he said, and then at her expression, amended himself.
'He looked pretty devastated. But physically, yes, he looked fine.'
She sighed — in relief, in fear, in despair, she didn't know. She went to Seamus then, and kissed his cheek, and he let her. But he did not look at her. 'Thank you,' she said.
He didn't reply, and Ginny did not stay to ask him why. She made a beeline for the boys' staircase, all her thoughts now focused on her brother.
Draco ran down the front steps of the castle and out onto the snowy path without looking where he was going. He shivered, but did not stop walking — it was an icy night, and he had not brought his cloak. Throwing his head back, he stared up at the sky — it arced above in black and silver, the moonlight a steel-colored shriek raining shards of light down onto the snow. For the first time in days, there were clouds: heavy as blocks, they seemed about to collide with each other. He wondered if that meant it was going to snow again soon.
He had reached the bottom of the path, where the Quidditch pitch was, and veered off sharply towards the right, alongside the Forbidden Forest.
Some part of him knew he was following a route that Rhysenn had set for him, that he had often followed to meet her. He did not think about why he was going this way: he wanted to be alone, he wanted to be far from the castle, and he wanted…what did he want?
He was at the low wall now, that ran perpendicular to the forest's border.
He leaped over it and landed on the other side, silent as a cat in the deep snow. This was where he had met her all those weeks ago, that night he had bumped into Harry and they'd gone to get drunk in Hogsmeade. His boots sank up to the ankles in the snow as he took a few steps forward into the clearing, and paused. He stood there for a moment, gasping in lungfuls of icy air, trying to still the pounding of his heart. There was no way for him to know it, but the same thoughts that had run through Harry's mind earlier, in the dark, ran through Draco's now. Inside him, too, was the same lion on a chain, and its roaring was loud in his ears.
Iron control had been drilled into him since he was a child — hours spent locked in dark places, waiting for his father, hours spent in enforced silence without speaking. Over his emotions he had laid his own will, like heavy bars of steel, keeping everything contained. And yet….he visualized for a moment the steel bars snapping, the rage and grief inside him breaking free, how he could tear down the trees with the force of his anger, crack the world in half.
But of course he could do none of those things, not in reality. Instead, like a petulant child, he flung himself face-down in the snow, and buried his head in his arms.
The cold bit into him instantly; the snow freezing under his body, his bare hands. He ignored it, hearing his own voice in his ears. Stay here and rot, for all I care. Ruin everyone's life. Ruin your own!
It was better, still, than hearing the things Harry had said to him. Horrible things. Not that no one had ever flung insults at him before, but it was worse, coming from Harry. Especially since he suspected that Harry had been right about most of what he'd said.
'Draco?' said a voice in his ear. 'What are you doing? Did you fall out of a tree?'
He knew that voice. He supposed he should not be surprised that she was here, but he burrowed his head further into his arms anyway, willing her to go away.
She didn't. 'Poor baby boy,' she said, her voice lilting with amusement.
Her breath tickled the back of his neck, and when she spoke again it was in a theatrical tone. 'How art thou fallen from heaven, oh Lucifer son of the morning?'
Draco sighed, and rolled over on his back. Rhysenn was kneeling above him, her hair tumbling down, a tent of black silk around them both. She was cloakless, her shoulders bare and white under the moonlight. Draco spat snow out of his mouth, and sat up. 'I'm hardly an angel,' he said.
'Maybe a fallen one,' she said, and smiled. 'Now get up.'
She stood, in a rustle of silk, and he got to his feet as well, mostly because he didn't want her standing over him. He had been right, she wore no coat, or any covering against the cold. She was dressed in black with her black hair loose down her back. Her feet, where the black dress ended, were bare on the snow, and where she walked, they left no marks behind them. The bodice of her dress was tightly corseted and above it her breasts and shoulders were very white.
'It is going to snow,' she said. 'Why did you summon me here, when it is going to snow?'
He looked at her, breathing hard, as if he had been running — he was exhausted. 'I did not summon you here,' he said.
'I heard you crying out for me.' She made a little pirouette, her skirt flying out, and suddenly her clothes had changed — now she was wearing a French maid's outfit, complete with fishnet stockings, a feather duster, and a peaked cap. 'I came as soon as I could.'
Draco blinked at her, and took a step back. 'So you came here to help me?'
She lowered her eyes. 'Of course I did.'
'Good. I know exactly what you can do to help me, then.' She looked up inquiringly. 'You take messages from my father, to me,' he said. 'I know you do. Now I want you to take a message back.'
'Back?' she laughed. 'I do not take messages back.'
'You'll take this one,' he said, and there was something in his voice that made her look at him sharply. 'Tell him,' Draco said, 'tell the Dark Lord, and my father too, that I know that they had something to do with what happened tonight. They did this. And I will find out why, and how, and they will regret what they have done. They will regret what they did to my friends.' He paused. 'I will make them pay for it.'
Rhysenn smiled her cool little smile. 'Is there any more to that speech?'
she asked. 'You could add a bit about drowning them in their own blood, or some stuff about cold vengeance — up to you of course.'
Draco's voice was clipped. 'No, I think it's fine as is, thanks.'
'It's just a long list of unspecific threats,' said Rhysenn, sounding disappointed. 'Honestly, if you could add something about ripping out their spinal columns, or roasting them over an ever-burning fire of pitch and molten lava…'
'No,' said Draco, coldly.
'Oh all right.' Rhysenn looked vexed. 'But it's a very boring message, if you want my opinion.'
'The only thing I want less than I want your opinion, is syphilis,' said Draco pleasantly.
'Well, your father won't like it.'
'Fine. I don't like him.'
'But he's your father.'
'So he is.”
