and formfitting summer tops. She had a feeling this schoolgirl outfit had been adjusted as well.
Also, unusually, it was branded with the badge of a House — the infinitesimal black skirt was buttoned with small gold lion's head buttons, and the badge of Gryffindor adorned the tight white shirt. She rolled the thigh-high stockings up and twisted her long red hair into plaits and was done. No makeup, she'd been told, no cosmetic charms of any kind.
Barefoot, she went down the long hallway to the door of Room Twenty-Eight. She tapped her charmed cube against the door and it melted away just long enough for her to step through it.
It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the darkness inside the room.
Her customer sat on the edge of the bed, haloed by the pinkish light coming from the rose lamp behind him. He raised his head as she came in.
'Hello,' she said, and paused there in the doorway.
He stood up. She was taken aback. He was young — very young — and surprisingly good-looking. Dark blond hair, eyes a clear and definite blue.
A narrow, firmly set mouth and a lithe, muscular body. His clothes were dark, nondescript. There seemed no cunning in his face, but his eyes were old, belying his age.
She wondered what he wanted. Without a cue from him she did not know if he would prefer her to pretend to be naive and terrified or precocious and daring. She lifted her hand and slowly pulled one of her plaits forward so that it fell down against her breast. Then she looked at him, coyly, through her hair.
'Come here,' he said, and held out a hand.
Barefoot as he had requested, she went across the room to him. She took his hand and he drew her up against him. His hands slid down her body to her waist and held her there, lightly but firmly. 'You will call me by my name,' he said. 'I am Tom. Say it.'
'Tom,' she said.
A faint little shudder ran through him. The air in the room seemed to her to be thickening somehow although she assumed it was merely the light in the lamp dimming. His hands ran restlessly up her body. He tilted her head back, touching her face with his fingers as if he were creating the shape of it himself out of the textures of the night and the air between them.
She held still as he touched her. She was used to peculiar reactions from customers. Given the business she was in, she supposed it could only be expected. People did not come to the Midnight Club for sex alone — what the brothel really dealt in was dreams and fantasies, the dark materials of the human soul. Lust brought people there, but so did love, and so did grief. She was used to being wept on, clasped, worshipped and adored, hated and despised. It was all in a day's work.
'Ginny,' said Tom now, his thumbs under her chin, tilting her head up.
'Look at me.'
She looked up at him. The room was definitely darker now. She could see only the outline of his features, the shadows cast by his lashes, the blue eyes.
'Are you afraid of me?' he said.
She took a guess at what he wanted her to say. 'Yes.'
Another shudder went through him and his arms tightened around her.
He bent and pressed his lips against her cheek. They were cold and she shivered unaccountably. 'Love,' she heard him whisper, and she didn't think he was talking to her. 'Such a selfish emotion. It makes the body a slave, and shackles the will to its narrow desires — and yet it is thought ennobling, why is that?'
She did not know what he meant but his tone made her nervous. Her relief at seeing him was rapidly beginning to drain away. This boy was beautiful, but he also seemed to be more than a little unhinged. 'Your hands,' she said. 'So cold — '
'Be quiet.' He shook her once, hard, by the shoulders, and she quieted instantly, startled into silence. Almost immediately the anger went out of his eyes and they went soft again, dreamy, unfocused. 'Tell me you love me,' he said.
This was more familiar ground. 'I love you, Tom,' she said.
'And you belong to me.'
'I belong to you, Tom,' she said, because he seemed to like the sound of his own name.
'And you'd die for me,' he said.
'And I'd die for you, Tom.'
'Beg me,' he said.
She flicked her gaze upward, and was sorry she had. She did not like the look in his eyes at all. 'Beg you to what?'
'Beg me to hurt you,' he said.
She had had enough. She jerked away from him. 'No. No — that's against the rules. You can't hurt me.'
The dreamy look in his eyes intensified. 'I think you'll find I can do whatever I want.'
He was no longer holding her. She stepped away from him and he watched her, the same look in his eyes, unsettling, distant, familiar. She whirled around and ran for the door -
And found him standing in front of it. Leaning against it, in fact, his back slightly arched, a faint smile playing on his elegant mouth. 'You don't want to run away from me, Ginny,' he said. 'You want to be with me. You wouldn't have brought me back to you otherwise, would you?'
A frightened sob caught in her throat. She stumbled back, away from him, whispering under her breath, 'Excubitor, excubitor — '
He began to walk towards her. 'The guards won't come,' he said. 'I've dismantled all the safety charms in this room. You can scream and scream. Go ahead. I want you to.'
She tried to take a step backward, but her feet wouldn't move. They seemed bound to the floor. She whipped her head up and stared at him.
He was walking towards her, his left hand held out and she saw that his lips were moving as he walked. The air in front of him seemed to shimmer…wandless magic? But how -
'Cry out if you like,' he said. 'No one will hear you. It will make no difference to me. You are mine to break. Look up at me, now. Look up at my face.'
She obeyed, looking up at him through her terror. His face seemed illuminated by some savage inner light — his eyes glowed, a clear and lambent blue. She recognized the look in them now, and why it had seemed familiar. It was the look of a cat batting at the body of a dying mouse.
'Don't hurt me,' she whispered. 'Please, please don't hurt me, I'll do whatever you like — '
'Yes,' he said. 'You will.' He took his left hand from his chest then, and touched her face, and smiled. Then he put his hands around her throat.
She tried to scream, but the pressure of his fingers cut off her breath; as the darkness opened like a pit beneath her feet her she heard the clear sound of his laughter following her down into unconsciousness.
Hermione was impressed by the spell on the front door of the Midnight Club. It seemed to her to be an interesting combination of an Unplottable Charm and a Distraction Spell. The building was there, quite visible, if a bit nondescript — it was sandwiched between two warehouses in a cul-de-sac several streets down from Knocturn Alley — but unless you knew it was there, and were looking for it, you couldn't see it at all.
If you did know what you were looking for — as Draco plainly did — the view revealed, shimmering slightly through a distortion in the air, a set of double red doors with black-bracketed smokeless torches burning on either side of the stone steps that led up to them. The building that rose above the doors was grey stone, windowless, imposing.
'So,' Draco said, unnecessarily. 'Here we are.'
Hermione cut her eyes sideways at him. He had changed in the hotel room, out of his old clothes, and the sight of him now made her uneasy.
