'We're looking for Harry, Viktor,' Hermione said. 'It's very, very important that we find him. I know he was in the Floo Hub with you the other day, you must have seen him. Did he come through with you?'
Viktor looked at her. His expression was entirely blank. 'I have no idea what you are talking about,' he said. 'I have not seen Harry since the summer. I am afraid, Hermione, that I cannot help you.'
When Ron finally awoke, it was to the sound of giggling. He rolled over in bed and groaned.
Having spent several days sleeping in filthy clothes on a hard marble floor covered with smashed chess pieces, Ron had been relieved to find that the quarters Rhysenn brought him to were extremely well-appointed. Thick rugs covered the stone floor, and incense smoked in a claw-footed gold brazier next to the four-poster bed. There was a bathtub behind a screen, filled with scented water. There were no windows, but it seemed a small complaint considering that he had been expecting something a little more like the deepest dungeon under the castle moat, and a little less like a nice hotel.
The first thing Rhysenn did was order him to undress and pass his clothes out to her through the door. Ron complied, muttering to himself. He was left with nothing to wear but a long silk robe printed all over with gold and red dragons. It had obviously been made for someone shorter, as it barely reached his knees. 'I resemble a scarlet woman,' Ron muttered, glaring at his reflection in the gigantic gold-backed mirror that hung opposite the bed. 'I wonder if this is the dark lord's idea of psychological torture?'
Wondering if Voldemort was using the mirror to spy on him, Ron took the opportunity to open his robe and do a brief and disrespectful naked dance. Then he bathed, and went to bed.
Later he would realize that he had underestimated the toll that several days spent badly frightened, with little sleep and less food, coupled with the immense stress of his Divination visions, would take on his body and mind. As soon as his head hit the pillow, Ron fell into a profound death-like sleep that lasted for two days. He awoke at intervals, found food placed on the table near his bed, gobbled it down, and fell back asleep, curled in a tight ball, the coverlet dragged over his head.
He had no dreams at all.
When he awoke for good on the morning of the third day, he found Rhysenn stretched catlike along a nearby velvet chaise. She was wearing an apple-green transparent outfit barely held together with black ribbons and a pair of thigh-high stockings. 'Why hello, darling,' she said. 'Did you have a nice sleep?'
'Don't call me pet names,' Ron muttered, pushing himself into a sitting position. His head felt muzzy from sleep. 'We're not… friends.'
'I never said anything about wanting to be friends with you,' she said with a throaty chuckle, and with a wave of one long slim hand, pointed to what looked like a stack of folded fabric on the table next to the bed. 'I brought you clothes. The Dark Lord wants to see you.'
Ron looked at her resentfully. 'Don't you get tired of being half naked all the time?'
'Not as tired as I get of you being dressed all the time,' she replied, examining a blood-red nail for imperfections. 'Now get out of bed.'
Ron pushed the covers back, still glaring at her. 'I'm not getting changed with you watching.'
'Then you're not getting changed at all. The Dark Lord asked me to stay here and make sure you dressed yourself properly. Anyway, it isn't as if I haven't seen it all already.' She waved her hand airily towards the mirror.
'That was quite a performance. I especially enjoyed the high kicks.'
Blushing furiously, Ron flung himself out of bed and snatched up the clothes. He retreated to the other side of the room to get dressed with his back turned, ignoring Rhysenn's giggling. 'Keep your eyes closed,' he snapped, positive she was peeking over her shoulder at him.
'I promise you,' she purred, 'I can't see a thing.'
The clothes were complicated, not quite like any he had seen before. The trousers were a very thick, supple material that laced up the front; then there was a shirt with ribbons woven through the sleeves and lace around the cuffs, a jacket that went over it, and a long cloak that went on over the whole thing. The cloak was a heavy dark blue velvet with a gilt lining, and fastened in front with a number of complicated brass clasps. He had been fiddling with it for a good five minutes when Rhysenn, with an exasperated clucking noise, stalked across the room and batted his hands away from his throat. 'You're doing it all wrong,' she muttered, flicking the clasps closed with her agile fingers.
'And you're acting like my mother.'
Rhysenn backed away, looking profoundly insulted. 'I am nobody's mother.' She tossed her hair back. 'I will wait for you in the corridor.'
She flounced out. Ron wondered what had happened to her promise to the Dark Lord to keep an eye on him while he dressed, then decided that since it didn't matter to her, it hardly ought to matter to him. He pulled the cloak a little tighter around himself and crossed the room to look at his reflection in the mirror, expecting that he looked ridiculous.
He paused, staring at himself. The dark blue cloak brought out the color of his eyes and hair, and the boots made him look even taller. Of course his ears still stuck out, but thanks to the cut of the clothes, the rest of him looked — well, elegant, not so much skinny as slender. Even his posture was better. He had never understood why Draco spent so much money on clothes, but it was beginning to make sense. If they could make you look like this — maybe Draco wasn't all that attractive after all, Ron mused, maybe it was all attitude and a really good tailor. He leaned against the back of a nearby chair, gazing at himself through lowered eyelids, then frowned. Draping himself seductively over furniture and sneering did not have the effect of making him look like Draco; it had the effect of making him look like an enormous prat. It appeared that what worked on a willowy blond aristocrat with languid eyes and a voice that sounded like Galleons clinking together did not work on the red-headed son of a minor public official from Ottery St. Catchpole.
A soft chuckle made him turn around. He was not at all surprised to see Rhysenn standing behind him, twirling a ribbon from her corset in between her long fingers. 'You like how you look?' she asked.
'I look all right,' said Ron.
She took another step closer to him. She swayed when she walked, he had noticed it before, as if her tendons were made of elastic. The candlelight threw a shining net over her black hair and her skin glowed through her thin clothes. Ron half-closed his eyes. 'Don't,' he said. 'I know what you're trying to do.'
'I just want you to help me pick out what I should wear,' she said, her low voice vibrating through his bones.
'I don't care what you wear.'
'I'm sure I could change into something you'd like,' she said, and there was something different about her voice now. Ron opened his eyes and started and stepped back, almost stumbling into the mirror.
Hermione stood in front of him, in her school blazer and short skirt, her hair escaping from a black velvet ribbon. 'Ron,' she said, her voice familiar and a little uncertain. She took a step towards him. 'It was always you, really, that I loved,' she said, and her dark eyes searched for his, held them. A delicate flush stained her pale cheeks. 'I just never realized it before…'
'Stop,' Ron said, his voice uneven.
Hermione laughed, and shook out her hair from its ribbon. It spilled bright silver over her shoulders and suddenly she was Fleur, all moonlight skin and diaphanous robes and the first girl he had ever thought was beautiful. 'Ron,' she said throatily. 'I should never have said no to you when you asked me to the ball,' and she drew the material of her robes tightly around her. 'Let me make it up to you…'
'Quit it, Rhysenn,' Ron snapped. 'You can't get to me this way.'
She smiled again and pushed her hair back and straightened up, and suddenly she was Draco, in his Slytherin Quidditch robes, looking cool and expensive and scornful and very, very blond.
'Yeeaaargh,' said Ron, almost knocking the mirror over in his haste to scramble backwards. 'Okay, now you're really barking up the wrong tree, you do know that?'
'There are ways and ways to seduce someone,' Draco said to him, with Rhysenn's smile. 'You can hit me, if you like, now. Call me names, cough up all those clever retorts you thought up five minutes too late to use them because I was already walking away. You hate me, Weasley. You know you do.'
