'An equally opportunity soul-sucker,' said Draco, 'the world needs a bit more of that, doesn't it?' He raised his hand, pointed it wearily at Rhysenn. 'Rhysenn of the Malfoy Family,' he began, 'I hereby undertake to free you from the blood oath that binds you, and from the — '
'Wait!' Someone seized his arm. It was Ginny, her small face flushed scarlet. 'Not yet.'
Rhysenn stamped her high-heeled foot in petulant rage. 'Oh, get rid of her!' she seethed. 'We were so close — and you promised!'
'I didn't,' Draco said, looking down into Ginny's upturned face, 'Hermione did.' Slowly, he lowered his hand. 'What is it, Ginny?'
'Free her if you like,' Ginny said. 'But I need her to do one more thing for us — '
'No!' Rhysenn cried. Draco looked as if he couldn't help but feel a twinge of sympathy. He was probably tired of doing things other people asked him to do himself.
'It's my only chance to save Seamus,' Ginny said. She looked directly at Rhysenn. 'It'll only take moments. Please.'
Rhysenn tossed her hair. 'I don't care about your friend,' she said. 'Ask Draco.'
Draco sighed. He raised his hand and pointed it at Rhysenn. 'Rhysenn Malfoy,' he said. 'I hereby undertake to free you from the blood oath that binds you — when you have completed the task Virginia Weasley asks of you, and not before.' He lowered his hand. 'Do it, and you're free. Do you understand?'
Rhysenn nodded, her gray cat's eyes gleaming. 'Yes, Master.'
'Don't call me that,' Draco said sharply.
'Thank you,' Ginny said, and touched his hand.
It was Rhysenn who undid Tom's shackles, and used her spells to lift him, hanging limply, into the air. He hovered before them, ghostlike, as the four of them — Rhysenn, Ginny, Hermione, and Draco — made their way down the corridor outside the Ceremonial Chamber.
'There's a room at the top of the stairs,' Draco said, 'a sort of study — will that serve your purposes?'
'Most adequately,' Rhysenn said. Her eyes were on Tom. She was looking at him, Hermione thought, like a cat might look at a trapped bird.
'Glad to hear it,' Draco said. He sounded unusually subdued. Hermione wondered if it was Ginny's presence that disturbed him — she hadn't missed the strange looks that had passed between those two — or something else. He was trailing his hand along the wall as they went, almost as if he were steadying himself.
They reached the door and pushed it open. They stood in a tower room whose windows looked out over the valley and the mountains beyond them. The stars grinned down from the sky like naked daggers. The walls of the room were hung with gold and silver tapestries, and in the center of the room was a circular cage, its bars made of gold.
'Huh,' Draco said, raising a curious eyebrow.
'Some study,' Hermione said. 'Nice cage.'
'It was built to hold my mother,' Rhysenn said. She waved her long-fingered right hand, and lowered Tom slowly to the ground just in front of the cage. Her eyes were bright. 'You can leave us now.'
'All right,' Hermione said, backing away, but Draco stayed where he was, his eyes on Ginny as she knelt down by Tom's side and brushed the fair hair back from his face. She brushed the charred ash from the front of his ruined velvet robes, and touched the bruise at his temple. Then she looked up.
'Draco,' she said, frowning a little, as if she'd forgotten that he was there.
'You can't stay.'
He looked at her for another long moment before tearing his eyes away.
He walked to the door quickly and Hermione followed him. She turned back only briefly as the doors shut behind them, and saw Rhysenn kneeling down on the opposite side of Tom, across from Ginny, as if they were doctors and he were a patient they were examining.
The doors clicked shut and Hermione hurried to catch up with Draco.
'Wait,' she said. 'Aren't we supposed to go the other way if we want to get back to the Ceremonial Chamber?'
'Who says I want to get back to the Ceremonial Chamber?' Draco said. His tone was brittle. He was still trailing his hand along the wall, leaning on it more heavily now.
'But Harry — '
'Is busy killing my father,' Draco said. 'Not that I blame him particularly, but that doesn't mean I want to watch.'
'He won't kill him,' Hermione said. They had turned another corner, and she was no longer sure exactly where they were. She looked around anxiously, but one stretch of gray stone corridor looked much like another. This one was very dim, the bracketed torches along the walls unlit. Hermione drew her wand out and lit the tip with a murmur. 'He just wants answers about the antidote.'
'There are no answers,' Draco said. 'There is no antidote. He's just chasing phantoms.'
'How can you be so sure?'
'Because I know my father,' Draco said. 'He doesn't do things halfway.'
There was a bitter pride in his voice. 'Neque enim lex est aequior ulla, Quam necis artifices arte perire sua.'
'What?'
'It was what was engraved on my father's tombstone,' Draco said. 'Nor is there any law more just, than he who has plotted death shall perish by his own plot.' He stopped, then, and struck at the wall with his fist. When he drew his hand back, the knuckles were split and bleeding, raw and silver.
'Justice,' he said, 'it seems, like love, is overrated.'
'Or maybe just cruel,' said Hermione.
'I never had a father,' Draco said, looking at his bleeding hand with a clinical interest. 'Just a taskmaster with a sword in one hand and a whip in the other. Still, he made me what I am. If I lose him, perhaps I might never find myself again.'
'It was no failing of yours that he couldn't love you,' Hermione said, reaching out her hand, but afraid to touch him. 'At least you know that now, for certain.'
'Yes,' Draco said, 'he loves me now — and will die, loving me, with my blade through his heart. I have been trying not to think about that, you know.'
'If you tell Harry not to hurt Lucius, he won't,' Hermione said, alarmed by the whiteness of Draco's face. 'Come on — we'll tell him. There's still time.'
'I can't do that,' Draco said.
'You can — he'll listen to you, I know he will.'
'All right,' Draco said, but when she turned to walk away he didn't follow.
She paused, looking back at him. He was leaning against the wall, looking down at his feet as if they belonged to somebody else.
'What's wrong, Draco?'
'Nothing,' he said. 'I think I just need a moment to rest.'
He had never asked to rest before, not in all their time traveling together, not in all of today, not as he had grown more and more ill during the school term. Hermione turned in alarm, just in time to seen him slide down the wall to the floor.
By the time Harry reached the small door where Ron waited, the weight of Terminus Est in his hand had come to feel familiar, even pleasant. He imagined holding it to Lucius' throat as Lucius begged for his life. 'I will spare you if you tell me where an antidote can be found for the poison in Draco's blood,' he would say, and Lucius would fall all over himself to provide a counter to the poison. Harry would rush to bring the antidote to Draco and Draco, the color flooding back into his face, would' Are you going to kill him?' Ron asked.
