Rhysenn pouted. 'You're very disagreeable tonight,' she said.
'What, you didn't think that was funny? I thought it was rather funny. All right, the delivery was a little off, but chalk that up to the freezing temperatures.'
'It was childish,' she snapped. 'Why are you in such a difficult mood?'
'I've had a hard day,' Draco said tightly. 'And you, with your ridiculous -
' he made a vague, irritated gesture in her general direction — 'outfits, I mean what the hell do you need a feather duster for, it's ten degrees below zero out and there's nothing to dust!'
She looked annoyed. 'I suppose you'd like it better if I wore a potato sack?'
'Knowing you, it'd be a see-through potato sack.'
She rolled her eyes. 'Well, then. There's always the outfit I wore to charm your little Gryffindor friend. Would you prefer pigtails and knee high stockings?'
Draco gave a short bark of laughter. 'How do you know that's what Harry prefers?'
Her lip curled. 'Just look at his girlfriend,' she said silkily. 'Saddle shoes, cardigan sweaters, short wool skirts. A little girl. So I expect, that's what he wants.'
Draco's heart thumped hard and sickeningly against the cage of his ribs.
It had never occurred to him that she would have seen Hermione, or noticed her. But of course, she would have. 'And what about me?' he asked, trying to change the topic. 'What do I want?'
She smiled. 'Only what you cannot have.'
'That explains why I don't want you, then.'
'Oh, very funny.' She laughed, and shook her hair back. 'You suffer,' she said, 'I feel it. Perhaps you are foolish to spurn what comfort I might offer you.'
He looked at her then, as calculatingly as he could, and she looked back at him out of her oddly shaped gray eyes that were like his own. It was strange how she could look quite ordinary from some angles, even ugly, and from others so beautiful that despite his dislike of her he felt his own awareness of her beauty strike through him like a note of music sounded through the depths of sleep. 'You offer me nothing,' he said. 'You never try with me, not like you try with Harry. Why not?'
She stepped away from him. 'Are you insulted?'
'No.' It was true. 'Just curious.'
She shrugged. 'Why do you think?'
'I think my father told you to stay away from me,' he said. 'Apparently Harry's another matter.'
'What I choose to do with Harry, or he with me, is hardly your concern,' she said lightly.
'I don't think he's choosing anything,' Draco said bluntly. 'If he was, he wouldn't go near you. And what do you want from him?'
'Maybe I just like him,' she said with another smile.
'A seventeen-year old virgin with skinny chicken legs? I somehow doubt that.'
Rhysenn burst out laughing, and sat down, still gracefully, in the snow. As she sat, her short skirt fell away from her thighs, allowing Draco to see that, distractingly, she was wearing hot pink knickers. On the other hand, he supposed it could have been worse; she could have been wearing no knickers at all. 'Harry's a virgin?' she said. 'Oh, that's priceless.'
Draco suddenly wondered if this had been supposed to be some sort of secret. Then he wondered if it was even true. He'd always assumed, but…
'I don't really know,' he said, a bit stiffly, feeling somehow that he had lost ground here. 'I was just guessing.'
'That little girlfriend of his must not be much use,' said Rhysenn, and there was a cool contempt in her voice that shot a bolt of ice up his spine.
'Leave her out of this,' he said, his tone clipped. 'As a matter of fact, leave them both out of this. Stay away from Harry from now on.'
'But I like him.'
'No, you don't. You just want something from him. Well, too bad. He's been through enough.'
'Oh, I don't know,' she said, tilting her head back as if she were bathing in the light of the moon. 'I think you underestimate him. All that untapped power, it's attractive. And empirically of course — those eyes, that hair. He's very appealing on his own merits.'
'That's great,' Draco said. 'I meant what I said. Stay away from him.'
'Don't tell me you can't see it,' Rhysenn said, tracing lines in the snow with a bare toe. 'I so enjoyed watching you two fight just now… all that delicious tension. Tell me you didn't enjoy manhandling him about just a little bit.'
Draco looked at her as if she had sprouted an eleventh toe. 'You're a very strange woman.'
She shrugged voluptuously. 'You're fond of him,' she said, 'so why not?'
'I-' Draco spluttered, then paused. 'You just really don't understand people, do you?' he said, sounding weary. 'Have you never had a human emotion, or was it just so long ago that you forgot?'
An odd flicker came and went behind her eyes, and for a moment she looked almost angry. Then her expression smoothed itself out into a mocking half-smile. 'I would have thought Lucius would have told you that it's hardly good manners to mention a lady's age like that,' she said.
'He said I shouldn't mention a lady's age, sure,' said Draco, finally fed up.
'I don't remembering him saying anything about demon bitches from hell.'
She leapt to her feet, her eyes flashing. 'How dare you,' she said, and he shrank back — she seemed suddenly to tower above him, her eyes flashing, her hair whipped by an invisible wind. She came towards him and it took all his self-control not to step away. 'Stupid child,' she said, and her face had taken on the narrow, predatory look of a veela's. 'Stupid, impatient little boy.'
'I am not a child,' he said hotly.
'Oh, you are,' she said. 'So painfully young, and that is why it is so sad,' and she took his face between her long and narrow hands, not sounding sad at all. He did not move away — could not move away. 'Are you cold?'
she whispered, and her breath stirred the hair at his temples. 'Not now, but always? Do you wake up freezing from nightmares you cannot remember? Does your breath come short, does your heart pain you when you breathe? Does your vision begin to blur?' Her hand slid to cup his chin, and she drew his face up, until he met her gray gaze with his own.
My sick and beautiful angel-boy,' she said, and her voice was like liquid silver. 'Too pretty to go mad or blind, and die of it…but it is long past stopping, now.'
'Die of what?' Draco said, and he heard the note of blind panic in his own voice. 'What's long past stopping?'
She took her hands from his face and stepped back from him. 'If you cannot guess, you will know soon enough,' she said, and smiled like a devilish angel.
What is wrong with me? he wanted to ask her, Am I ill, and how ill am I? — but he knew that if he did, she would respond teasingly, with more questions; so instead he turned, and took a few steps away from her. It seemed to him that the horizon had lightened, a paler pewter blue ribbon between the black earth and the blacker clouds overhead. 'Please leave him alone,' he said, finally, without looking back at her. 'Leave us alone.'
He waited, but she did not reply. When he finally turned, she was, as he had known she would be, gone; the snow underfoot showed no marks at all where she had walked.
'Mundungus,' he said, and the portrait door opened. Draco paused a moment to admire the irony of the fact that he now knew the Gryffindor password. Years ago, he would have paid good Galleons to know it. Now, it seemed trivial.
He stepped into the Common Room and the portrait swung shut behind him. The room was not empty: someone was standing over by one of the overstuffed armchairs, apparently putting something into a pocket. He knew immediately it was Ginny, even before she turned around, knew from the flaming-red hair that was currently screwed into a topknot at the back of her head. Curling tendrils escaped and wound around her face like licks of fire. She looked harried. 'Draco, what are you doing here?'
