myself if — if I could,' she finished, lamely.
'You could break his black little heart,' Rhysenn said cheerfully. She had stopped spinning, but her hair still wrapped her, like swipes of black paint against the white of her dress and skin.
'No one dies of a broken heart,' Ginny said crossly.
'I wouldn't say no one.' Rhysenn tilted her head to the side. 'He is curious, that one. At times he seems to radiate pure darkness, but at other times I think I catch a flicker of humanity in him…'
Seamus, Ginny thought. Something tickled the back of her mind. 'You suck souls out, right?' she said. 'I mean, that's why you're called a succubus, isn't it?'
Rhysenn blinked. 'Your etymology is poor, but you are not entirely incorrect. I draw the souls of men into myself, and feed from their power.'
'Ah,' Ginny said, her mind suddenly busily at work. 'That's very interesting…'
The force of the blow sent Harry reeling back, Voldemort's malevolent laughter in his ears. Automatically he looked down, saw the dagger sticking out of his chest, and felt a strong urge to vomit.
Yet — there was no pain. Strangely, no pain at all. The dagger had gone through his jacket, just over his heart. He expected to see blood spreading out across the fabric. But there was nothing.
Voldemort had stopped laughing. He pointed a long, spidery finger at Harry. 'You,' he hissed. 'This is all because of you. You are the reason the ceremony failed me! And your death — oh, such a death I had planned for you! Your tortures would have lasted for eternity!' He raised his left hand again, flung it towards Harry, hissing, but nothing happened. He howled again, raising his fists to the sky. 'And now I am cheated even of this — the chance to strike you down with my own hand!'
He means that his Magid powers are gone, Harry realized. His thoughts were so clear, so strangely lucid. Maybe this was shock. He took another step back, closed his hand around the hilt protruding from his chest, and pulled. The dagger came free with a scraping noise.
'Master!' It was Wormtail again, having crawled, burnt and bleeding, nearly to Voldemort's feet. He reached out to catch at his master's robes, a terrible wheezing sound coming from his throat. 'Master, you can help me, please, help me!'
Voldemort tugged at his robe, an expression of distaste twisting his lipless mouth. 'Release me! You dare to touch me without my permission?
Remove your filthy hands from my robes immediately — '
'But Master — Master, I am dying — ' Wormtail whined, clutching harder.
'Water, please, Master, just some water — Master, you promised I would live forever — Master!'
Harry looked down at the dagger closed in his fist. There was no blood on the blade. He put his hand to his chest. He felt no pain, only the rip in his jacket where the dagger had entered — and something under it, something flat and hard. The inside pocket of his jacket. Taking another step back, he plunged his hand into the pocket and drew out — a book.
The Malfoy Family Code of Conduct. With a hole through it, now, where the dagger had gone in.
'Draco's going to murder me,' Harry said, aloud, just as Voldemort, lips curled back from his teeth, drew back his foot and kicked Wormtail brutally hard in the head. Wormtail crumpled, and fell like like a stone.
Voldemort turned, fastening his gaze on Harry. His eyes narrowed in surprise. 'What…?'
Harry dropped the dagger, then kicked it, sending it skittering away across the floor. 'If you want to kill me,' he said, 'you're going to have to do better than that.'
Tom, being in much better health than Draco, could run quite a bit faster, and would have escaped quite handily if it weren't for the fact that Draco knew the layout of the fortress much better than he did. So it happened that when Tom had reached the foot of the stairs and stalked his way to the great double doors that led to the front gate, he found Draco leaning up against them, holding Terminus Est in one hand and waving insolently at Tom with the other.
'Leaving so soon?' he asked.
A snarl rose in Tom's throat. All his plans, so well-laid, so gorgeously constructed, had just come down around his head. He could still taste the ashes of burning on his lips and hear Voldemort's screams in his ears. The mistake, he knew, had been in leaving the details of the ceremony to his older self. He had no idea what the Dark Lord had done wrong, but it seemed clear it had been something significant. The ceremony that had been meant to catapult them both to ultimate dominance had instead left them both half-dead, their magic paralyzed.
All in all, Tom was in no mood for the stupid insolence of teenagers.
'Get out of my way,' he hissed, advancing on Draco.
'Dear me, no,' Draco said, raising the tip of Terminus Est so that it pointed directly at Tom. 'I'm afraid you can't pass — which, coincidentally, is what Snape always says to us before Potions exams.'
'Cease your driveling and get out of my way, or I will — '
'Or you will what?' Draco replied, mimicking Tom's inflections with a sort of savage glee. His gray eyes were clear, burning like hot silver — his father's eyes. Though Lucius had never looked at Tom with such hatred.
'Your magic has abandoned you, if I'm not mistaken, and I doubt you ever were much of a physical fighter.' He brought the sword up a little higher; Tom could see, now, the pattern of black roses burnt into the blade. 'If you've got a threat to make, I suggest you make it a good one.'
'I have no wand, no weapon,' Tom pointed out. 'You wouldn't — '
'Oh, but I would,' Draco said, and laughed shortly. 'You've mistaken me for Harry.' He moved forward then, so quickly that Tom did not even see the movement, only heard the faint rustle as the cloth over his shoulder slipped and parted, gaping open where Draco had cut it, leaving a patch of bare skin. As Tom stared, blood welled up from the thin cut bisecting his shoulder. 'I will cut you down as I cut down your guards,' Draco said, his voice flat and emotionless. 'Only I will take a pleasure in hurting you that I did not take in killing them.'
'But — ' Tom flung up his hands in a gesture of distress, but his sharp mind was ticking quickly over his options. Draco was armed, it was true, and his skill with the sword was undeniable; but he was also weak, near death, and likely half-blind. Escape was still an option — as was snatching up a sword from one of the fallen guards and counting upon greater strength and the element of surprise to allow him to run Draco through. 'To kill a man unarmed, that's a cowardly, despicable thing — your father would be -
'
'Don't you bring up my father,' Draco spat, his eyes flashing before he collected himself. 'And I suppose strangling unsuspecting prostitutes is an act of bravery? I saw what you did to that girl in the Midnight Club.'
'She was only a whore,' Tom said, backing up another step until his heel bumped against the prone body of a guard.
'But that was in another country, and besides, the wench is dead.' The sword glinted in Draco's hand as he turned his wrist. 'Is that your best excuse?'
'Don't quote Marlowe at me,' said Tom. He glanced down. All he needed to do was bend, reach down, and the soldier's short dagger would be within his grasp. 'It was an accident. I didn't mean to kill her. Rough play
— '
'And Pansy? Were you playing with her? You do seem to have a predilection for killing little girls.'
'She was in my way,' said Tom. 'And she belonged to a family that had betrayed me. I killed my own family. Why not hers?' He grinned, cocking his head to the side. 'I find your recriminations surprising, I must admit.
If the memories of Seamus Finnegan do not lie, you were not so unlike me yourself, once.'
'Once,' Draco said. His voice was steady, but the tip of the sword trembled just a little.
'But that was in another country?' Tom chuckled. 'Before love cured you of your nasty ways. Touching, that.'
The sword trembled a bit more, and Tom's confidence increased. If he could anger Draco enough that Draco rushed at him, he could duck him and seize the dagger. An angry man was an easy man to defeat.
