'I told them I knew who you were,' said the boy. 'Or, at least, that I knew you weren't Harry Potter.'
'And they believed you? I find that hard to imagine.'
'You wouldn't,' said the boy, 'if you knew where we were. They were very apologetic — very embarrassed, actually. Everyone knows the Midnight Club. No one's supposed to interfere with employees or customers. They know that.'
Harry blinked rain out of his eyes. 'Customers?'
'It would be a lot easier if you'd come inside with me,' said the boy. 'I could show you — '
'Show me what? I don't trust you — '
'I could have turned you over to those Death Eaters if I'd wanted to!'
'I don't see why you'd help me,' said Harry, crossly, and shivered. 'You don't even know me.'
Some kind of guardedness fell away from the boy's face. 'You're Harry Potter,' he said. 'Aren't you?' As if that somehow explained everything, and there was something plainly and briefly vulnerable in the way he looked at Harry. Draco would never have looked like that. 'And you're freezing. If you stay out here, you'll die of the cold.'
Harry tried to shake his wet hair back, but it was too sodden and heavy with icy water. He scrubbed the back of his cold hand along his cheekbone and hesitated. He could, of course, flee again — but the Death Eaters were still out there, and he had no desire to run into them again, as he had no idea what lie the blond boy had told them to get them to go away. He looked at the stranger, who had his hand on the wide bar of the heavy metal door in the wall.
'Have you got a name?' Harry asked.
The boy looked briefly surprised, then shook his head. 'I keep forgetting you don't know. I can't tell you that.'
'I won't call you Draco,' Harry said stiffly.
'I know. That's all right. You don't have to call me anything, then. Just -
come on.'
The boy gestured for Harry to follow him. Harry hesitated for a moment.
Then, casting a last glance behind him at the empty frozen alley, he followed.
'Ben,' said Gareth in an irritable tone, 'your underaged female admirer is being extremely peculiar about my runic band. Would you mind detaching her from my arm?'
Ben looked curious. 'Is she underage? I hadn't thought about it.'
'I am not,' said Ginny crossly, releasing her grip on Gareth's sleeve. 'And I'm not an admirer, either. I wouldn't dream of it. I think you two are very cute together.'
At this, Ben looked startled and Gareth heartily amused. 'I always wondered what the history books said about us,' Gareth said.
'Most of the good stuff is in the footnotes,' said Ginny. 'I've got a lot of books about Founder history — '
'I want to read one,' Gareth said.
'No,' said Ben, very sharply and unexpectedly, 'you don't.'
Now it was Gareth's turn to appear startled. He did not, however, argue the point.
'Now what's all this about Gareth's runic band?' Ben said to Ginny.
'Harry has one just like it,' Ginny said. 'Nobody knows where it came from or what it does. I've been worried all this time it was something dangerous. If there's another one like it — '
'I can't imagine there would be,' Gareth said. 'My father made this specifically for me when I was born. It must the same one. I suppose it had to go somewhere after I died,' he added, matter-of-factly, 'although odd, it ending up in the hands of a Gryffindor heir.'
'Not that odd,' said Ben. He did not appear disposed to elaborate and Ginny did not press him. There would have been no point. Ben said what he wanted to say when he said it, and not a word more.
'What does it do?' Ginny demanded of Gareth, who seemed quietly amused to have found himself the center of attention.
'Even I don't know entirely,' Gareth said. 'It's a rather complex protection charm, from my understanding. It repels demonic activity -
vampires, hellhounds, succubi and such forth. In addition, when the wearer is lost, it guides him towards the nearest aid, without his knowledge that he is being guided. It's a handy item, and no mistake.'
'So it'll keep Harry safe?' Ginny said.
'Well, not entirely,' Gareth said. 'It'll guide him towards help, and it'll keep demons away, but other than that, it won't save his life, or heal his wounds, or protect him from malicious spells. Not as far as I know, anyway,' he added. 'I know there are some complicated charms woven into the runes around the band. I doubt anyone other than my father could tell you what they all do.'
'Can I see it?' Ginny asked.
'I can't take it off, if that's what you mean,' Gareth said. 'I can't ever take it off — but if you want to look at it, you can.'
He held out his arm, drawing the sleeve back as he did so. Ginny went over to him, a little nervously. He gave off the same impression that Draco sometimes did, that it was not entirely a good idea to stand too close to him. 'Turn your wrist over,' she said, and he did. What she had thought was another bracelet on his arm was in fact a tattoo of a brightly colored serpent, gold and green and blue. Its tail coiled around his wrist and its head curled in the crook of his arm. She lightly touched the runic band, feeling, as she had felt before when she touched it in the Gryffindor common room, no sense of Dark magic emanating from it. 'It will guide him when he's lost?' she said.
'It will bring him to the closest person willing to aid him,' Gareth said.
'I've met some interesting people that way.'
Ben chuckled under his breath but said nothing. He had seated himself on Ginny's desk again and was watching them curiously, elbow propped on his knee.
'Why can't you take it off?' Ginny asked, still looking down at Gareth's wrist. She had a slight urge to ask him if she could touch the tattoo, which looked unbelievably alive, but had a feeling he'd take it the wrong way if she did. And he was already so jumpy. It hardly seemed worth the risk.
He withdrew his wrist from her grasp and touched the runic band himself with long, careful fingers. He looked at her sidelong. His eyes were not the same color green as Harry's, although they had the same startling quality.
'Because I can't remove it while I'm still living,' he said. 'It won't come off my wrist until the day I die. It's enchanted that way.'
'Draco,' protested Hermione, tugging at the sleeve of his robe. 'What are we doing here? This is the most expensive hotel on Diagon Alley!'
Draco shrugged. 'So?' he inquired, scanning the front of the building with a look of blase satisfaction in his gray eyes. It was a lovely building, Hermione had to admit — it had once been the offices of the Ministry of Magic before they had outgrown it. It was too expensive a hotel even to have a name. It just had a street address and a silk awning, protected from the damp with Impervio charms.
'So, I thought we were going to try to be low-profile.'
'I agreed to be low-profile. I didn't agree to slum. You can't expect me to stay in some flophouse.'
'I didn't say flophouse — what about the Leaky Cauldron?'
Draco wrinkled up his nose. 'The Leaky Cauldron? So declasse. All the stairwells reek of stew, and you can't honestly expect me to sleep on sheets someone else has already slept on. That way lies skin disease and unsightly rashes.'
'The sheets in the Leaky Cauldron are perfectly clean.'
'By plebian standards,' said Draco.
Hermione shot him a ferocious glare.
