'I saw some scones down in the espresso bar,' opined one of the troll-guards helpfully.
Draco grinned delightfully. 'Were they the kind with the little chocolate bits in?'
'Be quiet, Thorvald!' The Manager shot a glare at the troll behind him, then jerked his sharply pointed green chin towards Hermione. 'And who is she?' he demanded poisonously. 'Why is she along for this inspection tour of yours?'
Draco lazily slid his feet from the desk and turned to look at Hermione.
'You mean Hepzibah? She's my personal secretary,' he said smoothly, and winked at Hermione. 'Charming girl.'
Hermione opened her mouth to speak.
'Unfortunately,' Draco added swiftly, 'she doesn't speak a word of English.'
Hermione's speech turned into a gasp of outrage. She shot Draco a violent glare, which he ignored. He was gazing at her with a bland smile.
If the green incubus manager had had an eyebrow, he would have raised it. 'One might question the efficacy of a secretary who doesn't speak English,' he said.
'One might,' Draco agreed, 'but I've never had any complaints about her performance.' He examined his fingernails. 'You should see her take a memo,' he added conversationally. 'When she bends over the desk — '
'Right,' interrupted Blackthorpe with a moue of distaste. 'Tell me, Mister Malfoy, just exactly what kind of inspection did your father have in mind?'
Draco smiled, a lazy cat smile, and slowly uncurled himself from the leather armchair, rising to his feet with arrogant grace. 'A thorough one,' he said. 'I'd like to take one of your guards and search all the rooms.
Check the surveillance spells…among other things.'
Mr. Blackthorpe began to open his mouth.
'All the rooms,' said Draco firmly.
The manager's shoulders sagged. 'As you wish,' he said.
Harry had finally succeeded in falling into a light doze on the floor when the door burst open. He sprang to his feet, flinging his hand out -
'Stupefy!'
There was a small burst of light and a muffled cry, followed by a thump.
'Don't! It's me!'
Harry blinked. The boy-who-looked-like-Draco-but-wasn't was sprawled on the floor near the door, nursing his arm. He looked at Harry resentfully, which had the side effect of making him briefly resemble Draco far more closely than he had so far. 'Ouch! Why did you do that?'
'You burst in,' Harry said, feeling a bit silly. 'I didn't know who you were.'
'I brought your bag,' the boy said, pushing it towards Harry with his feet.
'But that's not why I ran in here. Listen, you have to go. There are inspectors here. They're searching the rooms. They say Lucius Malfoy sent them. I think they might be looking for you.'
Harry grabbed for his bag and whispered the spell that would shrink it down to pocket size. He stowed it, yanked his glasses off the mantel, and turned around. 'How do I get out of here?'
The boy chewed his lip nervously. 'I'll take you down to the Portkey room. It's for clients who want to come in and out without using the doors. You can Portkey away, just lock the door behind you.' He unbuttoned the cloak he was wearing and handed it to Harry. 'Here, put this on, and pull the hood up.'
Harry did as instructed, already on his way out of the room. In the corridor outside they kept to the shadows, walking single file. Harry had to walk quickly to keep up, his fingers slipping on the unfamiliar cloak buttons as he did them up. The cloak itself was heavy wool, and smelled of cigar smoke and dirty snow.
By the time they got to the staircase they were almost running. The boy fled down it, and Harry followed. There was another, smaller, staircase leading down from the ground floor, which they took at a run. Harry kept one hand on the railing as he ran. He was finally beginning to realize that the dizziness he was feeling was more than exhaustion. I'm ill, he thought, as his feet hit the last step, really ill. Damn. This is not convenient.
This level of the club was all businesslike wood walls and a polished wood floor. Harry kept a hand on the wall as they went, steadying himself. His skin felt dry and feverish and his eyes prickled. They reached the door at the end of the hall and the boy once again used his lighted cube to open it. He pushed Harry through and then stood in the doorway, looking tense and nervous.
'The Portkey is in there,' he said, pointing. The room itself was almost completely bare, with slick stone walls. The only item of furniture in it was a round walnut-wood table with gilded legs. A thick rope of gold chain wound around the table and was attached at the top via a padlock to a round, heavy-looking bronze ring. The other end of the chain was sunk into the wall. 'The ring is the Key,' said the boy. 'It's the kind you don't have to take with you. Just touch it, and it should work.'
Harry nodded. He turned around and cleared his throat, wanting to say, Thank you, but the words seemed stuck behind his teeth. In the dim light, he could see only the outline of the other boy looking at him, that he had blond hair and was thin, and if Harry squinted he could imagine that the resemblance to Draco was no more than a superficial similarity of coloring and build. But if he stepped closer…no. Harry couldn't thank him. 'Look,' he said, finally. 'Have you got a name? An actual name?
Because…'
But there were footsteps in the corridor outside, and the boy, with a startled look, fled, slamming the door so hard behind him that Harry jumped. A moment later there were more noises outside the door and Harry saw the doorknob twist and heard the unmistakable click of a bolt sliding home: he was locked in.
Not that this was necessarily a bad thing. At least it meant there was no immediate pursuit on his trail. He turned to the table, reached a hand out to touch the Portkey — and paused. He leaned closer, examining it: it was nothing more than a round, solid-looking bronze ring, padlocked to the last link in the gold chain that wrapped the table. He could, of course, simply touch it and be flung to whatever destination it led to, but wouldn't that make it awfully easy for anyone following him to know exactly where he'd gone? Much better to take the Portkey with him, and cut off — or at least slow — any chance of pursuit.
He dug into his pocket and pulled out the penknife Sirius had given him for his fourteenth birthday. One of the attachments was a thin-bladed short knife, which Harry had discovered early on doubled spectacularly as a lockpick. Leaning forward, careful not to touch the Portkey, he went to work on the padlock.
Next to the door of Room Twenty-Eight was a small gilded table on which rested a cut-glass candy bowl full of colorfully wrapped, tiny packets that looked like bags of Fizzing Whizbees. On closer inspection, however, Hermione discovered that the contents of the bowl were not in fact edible.
'Every Flavor condoms,' she muttered under her breath to Draco. 'Do the Bertie Botts people know about this?'
'Perhaps a strongly worded letter to them is in order,' Draco murmured back.
'And downstairs — so many Oliver Woods!' Hermione added, sounding bewildered. 'Whoever thought there was a need for thirteen Oliver Woods?'
'I never saw a need for one Oliver Wood,' Draco pointed out.
'And that one that was wearing the tutu…'
Hermione trailed off, shaking her head. Draco shot her a sideways look, trying to hide his concern. He hadn't actually really paused to think, before charging into the club, how its attractions (so to speak) might affect her. Bookish though she was, Hermione was not actually very prudish. He supposed it came from having spent most of her adolescent life with boys for constant companions. Still, the Midnight Club would shake anyone up. They'd walked through rooms where the writhing shadows in the darkness had looked up at them with familiar faces, winked and smiled and beckoned…
He dropped his voice to a whisper so that Thorvald the troll, who was currently fiddling with the lock on the door of Room 28, which did not seem to want to cooperate with his efforts, couldn't overhear. 'Hermione, are you bothered?'
