'Thank you,' she said. 'And — no luminous shorts?'
He smiled faintly. 'No,' he said.
She turned away. She was already on the pavement and heading down the street when she heard her name called. Not by Draco. A girl's voice. She turned around and saw Hermione hurrying towards her, her dark winter cloak clutched around her.
Blaise frowned. 'What do you want?'
Hermione halted, a little breathless, in front of Blaise, and raised her chin.
'To show you these,' she said, and, under her hood, pushed a dark curl of her hair back so that Blaise could see the glitter of the green barrettes caught in her hair. 'I just wanted you to know I was wearing them.'
'Good,' said Blaise. 'It's nice to know all Gryffindors aren't as moronic as they look.'
This didn't seem to faze Hermione. Blaise supposed she was used to Draco.
'I wanted you to know that I trusted you,' she said.
Blaise had nothing to say to that. She just nodded, awkwardly, at Hermione, and turned away before the other girl could see her blush.
Slytherins didn't blush. Blaise walked away quickly.
Harry had never given much, if any, thought to what a room in a wizarding brothel might look like, so it was perhaps slightly odd that his first thought upon seeing one was, Well, that's hardly what I would have expected.
It was, however, hardly what he would have expected. Even in his dazed and feverish state Harry found that he was surprised at how bare it was, especially compared to the richly decorated corridor outside. His guide had taken him to the door farthest down the hallway, which bore a plaque proclaiming it to be Room Thirty-Four. It had no lock: instead the boy tapped the glowing cube he'd been holding outside against the knob, and the door swung open.
Inside was a room that was nearly austere in its simplicity. Clean wood walls, a bare wood floor, a fireplace and a desk. On the desk was a small, elegant gold writing set: quills, parchment, and inkbottle. A window, heavy silk curtains drawn closed across it, let in no light. And, of course, there was a bed. Draped across the bed was the only object in the room with any color: a dark violet velvet bedspread with the letters TMC intertwined across it in gold. Staring, Harry heard Draco's voice in his head, tense and weary, speaking to him on top of that frozen tower at the Manor, I've always known my father was into some nasty stuff…dragon's blood bars, unicorn smuggling, polyjuice brothels…
'No one's going to be using this room,' the boy said, standing a little awkwardly in the doorway. 'The silencing charms need repairing. You'll have to be quiet.' He shifted his weight. There was something about the way he stood and looked at Harry that Harry thought of as odd, but since Harry couldn't stand looking at him directly or for very long, it didn't seem worth following up on. The boy reached out and shut the door behind him. 'I'll check in on you,' he said. 'But I can't stay.'
'I don't really want you to,' Harry said. He was still looking around the room. There was a framed painting on one wall of a woman in a blue dress which was slipping down around her shoulders. She winked at him, and he looked away. 'I need sleep,' Harry said, thinking out loud. 'At least a few hours, until I can go. Will I be safe here that long?'
'I don't see why not — I can't promise anything, but I'll try. I'll come here and let you out of there are any problems — '
'Fine,' Harry said, shortly. 'Will you still look — like that?'
'Yes. I have to. Do you hate it that much?' The boy looked at him, nervously, and this time Harry forced himself to look back. It turned his stomach a little — although it wasn't as if he hadn't played with Polyjuice himself, before; he knew it was no more than a glamour, a thin skin of enchantment drawn over reality. But that didn't change the fact that this stranger looked back at him with Draco's eyes and frowned at him with Draco's mouth and that as he looked at Harry, Harry saw something in his face that he had never seen in Draco's when Draco looked at him, and that was fear.
'I hate it that much,' Harry said. 'Are you afraid of me?'
'Yes. Isn't everyone?'
Harry leaned against the mantel over the fireplace. The warmth that came from the fire barely seemed to penetrate his clothes. His bones felt as if they were made of ice; his head was heavy, and ached. He wanted to lie down and wrap himself in blankets. He could hardly remember what it felt like not to be tired and cold. 'Is that why you're helping me? Because you're afraid of me?'
'No.' The boy moved forward, a little hesitantly, and then, to Harry's great surprise, knelt down on the floor at Harry's feet. Harry's hand tightened on the mantel. 'You're Harry Potter,' the boy said rapidly, looking down, 'everyone knows who you are. The Dark Lord would have killed us all, if it wasn't for you. I used to celebrate your birthday, when I was growing up — we all did. You might think because I work here, I'm one of them — the Death Eaters — but I'm not, none of us are, we're just ordinary wizards and witches. It's just the money, and we're not hurting anyone, not really. I don't want the Dark Lord coming back any more than you do — than anyone does. Any one of us would help you. Almost anyone in the wizarding world would. I'll do whatever I can.'
Harry knew he should say something gracious, but he couldn't. The idea of anyone kneeling at his feet was too horrible, and that it was Draco, or at least wore his face, was more horrible still. 'Don't,' Harry said, feeling supremely wretched, 'don't do that — get up off the floor, please get up.'
The boy looked up at him. 'You knew I wasn't him,' he said. 'You knew it right away, how did you know?'
'Almost right away,' Harry said. It was the way you said my name, he thought, but that was not what he said. 'You kissed me,' he said.
'Ah,' said the boy. 'No truth to the rumors, then?'
Harry made a faint sound in the back of his throat, and moved away from the fire. Instead of being cold all over, he was now very hot on one side of his body, and freezing on the other. 'I wish you'd get up,' he said. 'You're making me uncomfortable.'
'Sorry.' The boy got to his feet with a scramble that lacked any of Draco's usual grace. Harry winced a bit inwardly, but hid it. 'I just wanted you to know that you could trust — '
'I trust who I have to trust,' Harry said. 'If you really want to help me…'
The boy nodded. 'I do.'
Harry reached into his jeans pocket and drew out a small iron key. 'You know where King's Cross Station is?'
Apparently, he did. He took Harry's key, and, after promising repeatedly to return as soon as he possibly could with Harry's things, he left, to Harry's great relief. He was probably a perfectly nice bloke, Harry thought dizzily, sinking to the floor in front of the fire, outside of the whole being a prostitute and possibly not even a bloke business, not that that mattered one way or the other. Nor did it matter if he was nice or not -
Harry couldn't stand looking at him without wanting to be sick.
He remembered being polyjuiced himself, the oddness of looking down and seeing a body that wasn't his body, hands that weren't his hands. The little things that would give him pause and startle him: the new length of his eyelashes, even, the wider span of his fingertips' reach. Every day had been a thousand tiny shocks. But that was nothing compared to looking at the face of someone you knew, knew as well as you knew your own face, and seeing it animated by a stranger's spirit and intelligence. He wondered if it had been like this for Hermione when he and Draco had switched bodies and felt a momentary flash of guilt over what an ass he'd been to her about it.
The fire was making him drowsy. Unable to bear the thought of going anywhere near the bed, he stretched out on the floor next to the fire, put his head on his arms, and closed his eyes.
