She glanced up at him, eyes clear and curious. 'What? Oh, no, not bothered. Bit bewildered.' She glanced around. They were standing in an ornately decorated corridor, which was currently deserted. It hadn't been when they arrived, but at the sight of the troll bodyguard, the few club denizens there had melted away. One of them, a tall woman in backless silver robes wearing a cat mask, had pinched Draco in a very inappropriate place on her way down the hall. 'I did feel bad for Filch when we saw him in the sauna room. He looked so embarrassed. I'm sure he recognized us both.'
'Maybe it wasn't really him,' Draco suggested, leaning back against the red-wallpapered corridor wall. Seeing Filch hadn't bothered him much.
He'd been to the Midnight Club before, as a child, although at the time he hadn't quite understood why anyone would pay money to 'play' with Polyjuiced celebrities, or Polyjuice themselves into a celebrity. But then, of course, he was Draco Malfoy, and until he'd met Harry Potter it had never occurred to him that he might ever want to be anyone else.
Hermione rolled her eyes. Draco tried not to look sideways at her. She was leaning against the wall next to him, idly playing with one of the buttons on the top half of her blouse. He wondered if she had forgotten he was there or if she simply didn't realize that from this angle, when she did that, he had a clear view down the front of her shirt. Not that this was of interest to him in any way.
'You honestly think people are paying good money to sleep with a Polyjuiced Filch?' she said dubiously. 'I mean, the warts alone…'
'There is no need to be judgmental and dismissive,' Draco said. 'Sure, to you, Argus Filch might be a barmy old coot with an unsettling cat fixation and enough ear hair to choke a walrus. But to someone else out there, he might be a radiant sex god.'
Hermione looked at him through her hair. 'Would you sleep with him?'
'Don't be disgusting,' Draco said. 'I'd rather die.'
'AUUUUUUUGH!'
Both Draco and Hermione jumped. Thorvald had hurled his ring of keys to the floor in exasperation and was swearing in Trollish. It was an unpleasant language and sounded like a bag of grapefruits being dumped down a well.
'Is there a problem?' Draco inquired.
'Door charms broken,' the troll muttered. 'Talk to manager. Get counterspell. Be right back. You stay here.'
He glared at them.
'Of cou-' Hermione began.
Draco quelled her with a glare. 'Si le poisson, ou jeudi matin!'
Hermione blinked at him, then shut her mouth. With a confused glare, the troll lumbered away. Draco leaned back against the wall.
'You're not supposed to speak English,' he reminded her sternly.
Hermione was looking at him curiously. 'Did you just say, 'Either the fish goes, or Thursday morning'?'
'Possibly,' Draco admitted. 'I didn't know you spoke French.'
'Well, you never said you spoke it, either.'
'I never said I didn't.'
Hermione shot him a considering look. 'And you were looking down my shirt just now,' she said, in a mildly observational tone. 'I did, actually, notice.'
Draco jumped and cleared his throat. 'I was being in-character.'
'Congratulations.' She sounded annoyed. 'It was very convincing.'
Draco ignored this. 'I feel like we've been at this for hours, and all I've learned so far is that there are a lot more uses for Fizzing Whizzbees than I ever thought there were. And still no sign of…'
'Harry,' Hermione said. 'Can you not even….sense him, a little bit?'
Draco shrugged. 'A little. Maybe. I'm not sure.'
The tramp of heavy feet approaching cut off any reply that Hermione might have made. It was Thorvald, carrying what looked, from a distance, like a crowbar. He waved the bar at them as he drew closer. He seemed slightly sheepish, although Draco thought he might perhaps be imagining that. 'Door charms broken,' he said. 'Got crowbar.'
'That much is evident,' said Draco, stepping back. 'Go to it, then.'
With a grunt, Thorvald wedged the crowbar into the crack between the door and the wall and pushed. Hermione winced at the sound of splintering wood. She glanced at Draco. He looked distant, distracted, as if he were doing sums in his head. The guard threw his weight against the bar, and this time the door tore away from its lock with a rending noise.
Thorvald backed up, and Draco crossed in front of him, pushing the door wide with a gloved hand. He took a step forward.
Hermione could not see into the room, but she could see Draco's face. It went from the blankness of distraction to the blankness of shock in less than a second. He whitened, and staggered back with a little cry as if something had hit him.
'Draco?' Forgetting that she wasn't supposed to speak English, Hermione flung herself towards him. 'What is it, what's wrong — '
He stiff-armed her away, hard, and gripped her arm. 'Don't look — stay back.'
'No. Let me go.' She struggled, but he only held her tighter. 'Let me go. Is it Harry — is it Harry?'
'No,' he said. 'It's not Harry.'
Knowing he wouldn't lie about that, she stopped struggling briefly, and stared at him. His mouth was a twisted line and he didn't seem able to look at her. 'You're hurting my arm,' she whispered. 'Let me go, Draco.'
He loosened his grip. She tore her arm out of his grasp and pushed past him, almost knocking him back against the door. She heard him call after her, but not what he said: she was inside the room now, and her heart was hammering in her chest.
It was a room like the others. Plain wide bed, fireplace, bricked-up window, neat rug on the floor. A rosy lamp burned atop a chest of drawers. The mirror behind it was cracked in half. On the floor lay Ginny Weasley, on a bed of torn clothes and tangled hair, her neck twisted at an impossible angle. She was obviously dead.
Hermione crumpled down on her knees beside the body. She felt numb and floating, as if she were very far away. There were marks on Ginny's throat: finger-shaped bruises, ugly and dark. Her white shirt, open at the throat, was stained with blood. Something glittered in her outflung hand.
Hermione said, 'Draco. Come here.'
'No,' he said. She looked up at him. He was inside the room, leaning back against the wall near the door, chest rising and falling quickly under his shirt. He looked pale and sweaty, like someone who was about to throw up. 'I can't.'
'It's not her. It's not Ginny,' Hermione said. 'It can't be. This is a Polyjuice brothel, Draco. What's the chance it's actually her?'
'I know that,' Draco said. He was still not looking at her. Hermione noticed dimly that the guard seemed to have vanished. 'But I can't. If it was — '
'It wouldn't be your fault,' Hermione said.
Now Draco did look at her, slowly, as if his gaze was being dragged in her direction. 'Liar,' he said.
Hermione could not hold his gaze. Her own flinched away. 'I don't have my wand,' she said, looking down at her hands. 'I can't change her back without you. We could wait — '
There was a rustle. She heard Draco move away from the wall, and whisper something: there was a flash of light, and the girl on the floor began to change. Hermione held her breath as the long red hair faded and withdrew into the scalp, the pale freckle-dotted skin darkened, and the clothes tightened as the body inside them swelled. Within a few moments a tall girl with a mop of short dark hair lay on the floor, her hazel eyes wide and
