Harry half-twisted around and stared. 'Malfoy?'
Draco, who had one arm across Harry's chest and was gripping the back of Harry's cloak with his other hand, smiled tensely. 'Try to contain your joy at seeing me, Potter. It's embarrassing.'
'Let me go,' Harry said. 'I'm fine.'
'You're being chased by eight vampires,' said Draco, 'obviously your definition of the word 'fine' is not the same as mine.' His grip on Harry had not loosened. He pulled him back, and Harry realized Draco was dragging him into the pale circle of light cast by the street lamp overhead.
'Give me your sword,' Draco said, his breath stirring the hair on the back of Harry's neck and making it rise up.
Harry could feel the hammering beat of Draco's heart even through the several layers of fabric — shirt, cloaks — that separated them. The vampires remained where they were, looking curiously at the both of them, and Harry wondered why it was that he felt so uneasy when after all it was Draco holding him there and he trusted him beyond almost anyone else in the world. Later he would wonder why he'd never doubted for a moment that this was Draco, holding his arm and demanding his weapon in a sharp, harshly urgent tone, but doubt had never entered his mind.
This was Draco, the sound of his voice, shape of his thoughts, the familiar, electric quality of his presence. Urgency flowed out of him, crackling Harry's nerve endings, setting his teeth on edge. 'Draco,' Harry whispered, 'how did you get here, how did you find me — ?'
'Just give it to me.'
Harry let go his grip on the sword and Draco caught it with a swift and fluid grace, not by the hilt but by the blade. Harry felt him wince.
'Malfoy. Your hand-'
Draco raised the sword up, under the lamplight, and the shadow of the hilt was thrown clean and black and elongated across the pavement at their feet. The rough shape of a cross. The vampires hissed among themselves and stepped backward, too quickly for their usual grace, giving the offending shadow a wide berth.
Only the tallest, the first vampire who had spoken to Harry, did not move back. 'You,' he said, looking at Draco, 'I know you.'
'No. You know my father,' Draco said.
'Arati exact ca tatal tau,' the vampire replied, his pale lips quirking into a grin. 'You look just like him.'
'Nu sunt ca tatal meu,' Draco said, and Harry twisted around to look at him in surprise, but Draco didn't glance at him; he was staring past Harry at the vampires.
The vampire chuckled. 'You speak Romanian? Your friend — ' and he indicated Harry — 'does not.'
'He is my friend, yes,' Draco said. 'Daca vii aproape, de el, te ucid.'
'That is your business,' the vampire said. 'What of the girl?'
Draco stiffened. 'There is no girl,' he said.
Harry felt a sense of bewilderment and increasing agitation — what were they talking about? He was obscurely annoyed that Draco had never mentioned that he spoke Romanian although to be fair it had never come up.
'You say you are not like your father,' said the vampire. 'But he is a liar, too. Even now Lord Voldemort believes your father moves against him.'
Draco chuckled low in his throat. 'My father's loyalty cannot be bought,' he said, 'because he has none. The Dark Lord has more to fear than my father.'
'You mean yourself?'
'I mean Harry,' Draco said.
The vampire's eyes slid to Harry. Even from this distance Harry could feel the coldness of the ancient creature's gaze, the bleak tunnels of its eyes.
'The protection you carry is strong,' it said, 'one of the oldest. But your charms of love, your runes and dragon's blood, they will not save you when you face the Dark Lord, and he will send the terrors of the earth against you before he is done.'
'Let him send them,' Harry said.
'Just don't let him make you pay for the delivery,' Draco said, in Harry's ear, 'he's a cheap bastard, the Dark Lord is.'
Harry laughed, and after a moment, Draco did too, and the vampires stared at them. The first vampire looked at Draco. 'You stand against the Dark Lord then?' he said. 'Against your own father?'
'I thought you said my father moved against the Dark Lord,' said Draco.
'Perhaps, but if you stand with the Potter boy, you most assuredly stand against them both,' said the vampire.
'He stands with me,' Harry said.
'I stand for myself,' Draco said, as if Harry hadn't spoken. 'And not my father.'
The vampire grinned, for the first time, and its fangs flashed bright and terrifying. 'I have known Malfoys,' he said. 'For hundreds of years, I have known them, wizards like you — those eyes, that face, those manners — '
'Manners are learned,' Draco said. 'Not like blood.'
'Sangele apa nu se face,' said the vampire. 'And I know blood better than most. Blood calls to blood, youngest of the Malfoys. You will not so easily escape the demands of your inheritance. Bufnita nu cloceste privighetori -
'
Draco raised an eyebrow. 'Did you just warn me against having sex with pigeons? Because I wasn't really considering it. Dirty, horrible birds. Rats with wings, my father used to say — '
'I said,' snapped the vampire, looking annoyed, 'that eagles do not generally breed doves. It is an old proverb of my country.'
'You know,' Draco said, 'my Romanian is really pretty much limited to
'Are these snakes poisonous?' and 'Hey, cute thing, can I buy you a beer?' so I'm afraid you'll have to take your long-winded proverbs elsewhere.
Not that this conversation hasn't been fascinating, but Harry and I have to be going.'
'I don't recall saying you could go,' the vampire snarled.
'And I don't think you can come near us, or you already would have,'
Draco said. 'There's something stopping you, isn't there? Something about Harry?'
There was a short silence. The vampire hissed something in Romanian; Harry suspected it was something rude. 'What about me?' Harry muttered under his breath to Draco, who shrugged. 'Why can't he come near me?'
'You're just special, Potter,' he said, 'I would have thought you'd be used to that by now, at any rate.'
'Very well,' the vampire said at last, its tone unpleasantly petulant. 'You will be seeing us again, children, before the — '
'Wait,' Harry said.
The vampire blinked at him. 'Wait?'
'There's something I want you to tell the Dark Lord for me,' Harry said, and stepped away from Draco and his outstretched protecting arm so that he was standing alone under the lamplight. 'Tell him that I am coming,' he said. 'Tell him I'm going to kill him. And if he hurts Ron, I'll do worse.
I'll burn his body to ashes and scatter the ashes all over Leicester Square so that Muggles dance on the body of Lord Voldemort for the rest of eternity, tell him that.'
There was something about the hard viciousness in his tone that made the vampire smile at the same time that it made Draco tense up against Harry so that the arm around Harry felt suddenly like tensile steel. 'I will tell him,' the vampire said, and drew its cloak around itself, and vanished, followed in quick succession by the rest of its followers.
For a moment, neither of the boys moved. Harry stared down the empty street, seeing the shadows, the
