other hand sliding up under her hood to run itself over the wet planes of her face, her damp hair. The look on his face was indescribable — a glazed sort of desperate hunger, as if he were holding himself back, but just barely. She could feel the tremors running through the tense young body pressed against her, and the wild hard beating of his heart. 'I knew it,' he hissed under his breath, 'I knew you couldn't stay away….'
Oh, bloody hell, Blaise thought, mortification mixing with her horror. He thinks I'm Ginny.
'Seamus,' she said, and oddly, his body relaxed at that, as if he were surprised to hear her say his name. 'Seamus, I'm not Ginny. It's me, Blaise, so…' His grip on her relaxed further, although he did not release her. Blaise bit her lip. This was certainly very awkward. Perhaps he had been drinking? 'Mistake anyone could have made, really,' she assured him. 'Is…is Pansy anywhere about?'
It was a moment before he replied. 'You're not Virginia?' was all he said, and Blaise blinked. Did anyone actually call Ginny that? Well, apparently Seamus did. There was no accounting for boyfriends.
'No,' she said lightly, 'although after a greeting like that, I can't understand why she ever dumped you. I wouldn't have thought you had it in you, Seamus. You always seemed so stolid.' She tipped her head up towards him, and her hood fell back, exposing her face. 'Appearances can be deceiving, I guess.'
At that, he smiled, his soft mouth curving upward suddenly into a hard malicious grin. He leaned towards her, his pale curling hair falling forward over his forehead, and a spark of apprehension lit in the back of her throat, making her swallow hard.
'You have no idea,' he murmured, and, still holding her where she was, his free hand came up to trace again the contours of her face, the shape of her mouth. 'Perhaps you are not her,' he said, 'but you'll do just as well for the moment. In fact,' he said, raising his hand, a gesture which slammed the front door closed so hard that the hinges shook, 'in fact, you'll do very well indeed…'
A muffled noise woke Harry: it sounded like a bag of wet sand striking against a wooden surface. Blearily, he pried his eyes open and looked around.
Surely it couldn't have been more than a few minutes since Hermione had left. Draco, however, was apparently now awake, and was several feet away, down on his hands and knees, trying to get something out from under the bed. Harry rubbed his eyes. 'Did you drop something?' he asked. 'I thought I heard a noise.'
'Go back to sleep,' Draco said ungraciously, and dragged what he had been looking for out from under the bed. It was his sword, the one Sirius had given him. The dark steel seemed to part the moonlight, like the gleam of a fish's back breaking the surface of river water. 'I'll be out of your hair in less than a minute.'
'You're not still blithering about leaving, are you?' Harry got slowly to his feet, yawning. Being so very tired had the effect of making him feel a little drunk. 'I thought maybe you'd have slept that off.'
'Right, because, you know, I didn't mean it in the first place. I was just being melodramatic for kicks.' Draco straightened up. 'Get out of my way, Potter.'
Harry realized that he had, whether deliberately or inadvertently he wasn't sure, put himself between Draco and the door.
'No,' he said.
Draco paused and blinked at him. He had slept oddly on his hair and it was sticking up wildly all around his head; in another situation, Harry would have been tempted to laugh. 'What do you mean, no?'
'If you want to leave you'll have to go through me,' Harry said.
'Potter.' Draco looked pained. 'Tell me you're not really doing this. 'If you want to leave you'll have to go through me?' Who says that? This is just embarrassing.'
'I don't care,' Harry said, and found that he didn't. Far from feeling mortified, he felt merely resolved, absolutely adamant, and it was nice, finally, to feel something that wasn't subject to question. 'Hit me if you want. You already did once today.'
'And then what? You'll hit me back and we can scrap like we used to, make each other bleed? And what does that prove? This denial problem of yours is becoming tedious. Just get out of the way, Potter, it makes me sick to look at you.'
'Then look at something else,' Harry said. 'I don't care — you're not going.
I don't even care what you stay for, it doesn't have to be me, but this is where you should be — '
'Because you say so?' Draco took a step forward. His eyes were flat, glittering with fury. 'Get out of my way.'
'No,' Harry said, again.
'Move, Potter,' Draco said, and tried to step around Harry; his shoulder knocked Harry's, and Harry, already strung up and tense, threw out an arm to block his way. Draco moved to shove him sideways, and Harry pulled back so hard that he toppled over; he grabbed at Draco, and they went over together, landing on the carpet in an unpleasant and awkward heap, the sword clattering to the floor just before Harry.
'Ouch — ouch!' Harry yelped as Draco's sharp elbow dug into his arm. He had landed with Draco on top of him and crosswise, and it hurt. 'Malfoy -
'
Draco, going very pale, pulled back. 'Are you all right — are you cut, are you hurt?'
'No, I'm fine. Your elbow — '
The pallor vanished, followed by a flood of angry red. 'Potter, you stupid bastard,' Draco snarled, and started to get to his feet.
Harry, moving with a greater speed than he would have thought himself capable of, threw out a hand and caught hold of the front of Draco's shirt and hung on like grim death. 'I said you weren't going anywhere,' he panted, 'and you aren't.'
'Let me go.' Draco was panting too, the breath knocked out of him by the fall and his own blind fury. 'I said let me go, Potter!'
'Don't call me that.'
Draco spat at him. 'Harry.'
'Swear you won't run if I let you go.'
'I won't swear anything of the sort.'
'I'm happy to stay here all night like this. It's more uncomfortable for you than it is for me.'
Draco changed tack. 'I thought you said you were still my friend,' he said, his voice acidly bitter, 'I thought you were going to let me have a choice -
'
'I don't know if we're friends. I don't know anything for sure, except that you can't leave like this.'
'I can do whatever I want!'
'No,' Harry said, 'you can't.'
'What gives you the right to tell me what to do?' Draco snarled.
'I love you,' Harry said. 'That's what.'
Several things happened after that in quick succession. Draco's eyes went almost impossibly wide and his mouth dropped open; Harry had never seen him look like that, and in another situation he would probably have found it funny. He didn't now. He found it even less funny a moment later, when Draco, going rigid all over, jerked away from Harry so violently that his shirt tore. His face was a white mask of astonishment and dawning anger.
'That,' he hissed, glaring at Harry, 'is so — you're so — that's so bloody unfair!' and his voice cracked on the last word, but before Harry had a chance to respond the bedroom door tore off its hinges with an explosive screech of splintering metal and shattering wood.
It crashed to the floor an inch from Harry's feet, sending dust and splinters flying through the air. There was the sound of shouting, and a moment later hands had caught hold of Draco and flung him off Harry.
He hit the far wall and crumpled; Harry began to struggle to his feet, but one set of hands caught hold of his arms, while another hand pressed a sharp blade to his throat. Something dark was flung over his eyes, cutting off his vision. 'Get his hand — his right hand,' he heard a voice bark just by his ear, and his wrist was grabbed and held. He felt himself being pressed back against the floor, the hilt of the sword jamming painfully into his back. He
