want me around. So…' He laid her hand down on the bed. 'So I'm just going to go. Unless…' He stood up, his hands stuffed in his pockets. His wide blue eyes pleaded with her to say something — to ask him to stay. 'Unless you want me not to.'
Ginny took a deep breath. 'Just go, Seamus,' she said wearily, picking up her damaged throw pillow and cradling it to her chest. 'Ashley and Elizabeth will be back any minute and it would probably be better if you weren't here.'
He nodded, and bit his lip. 'Will you be — '
'I'll be fine.'
She watched him walk to the door with an odd ache in the back of her throat. If someone as kind and sweet and generous as Seamus couldn't be understanding about this, then maybe she'd been right — there was nobody who could. He opened the door and paused there, looking at her, handsome in a boyish way with his tousled hair and tired, sleepy blue eyes. 'I won't repeat anything you told me,' he said, his voice very serious. 'I promise.'
She nodded, holding her pillow, not trusting herself to speak as he went out and shut the door behind him.
'Potter! Potter, wake up!'
Harry struggled groggily into a sitting position. 'Are we there?' he demanded, reaching into his pocket and pulling his glasses out. He put them on, and blinked as the blur in front of him resolved into Draco, sitting on the end of his bed looking agitated, and waving something in his hand…a rolled-up newspaper. 'You going to hit me with that?' Harry asked, hauling himself into a sitting position. 'If so, what did I do exactly?'
'I want you to look at something,' Draco said, pulling up his legs to sit cross-legged on the bed, and spreading the newspaper open on his lap. He jabbed at an article with his finger. 'Stupid Muggle papers…the photos don't move…but I recognized it anyway.'
'Recognized what?' Harry cocked his head to the side, examining the indicated article, capped by a prominent headline:
The Art of Art Theft
Art theft is no longer just an elitist crime funded by unscrupulous collectors, but has become a billion dollar industry linked to crime cartels and illicit arms dealing. The theft of a collection of priceless medieval antiques, including a mirror, reportedly valued at as much as ?500,000 (pictured, at left) and believed to have belonged to Louis X of France, from Sotheby's earlier this week is believed to be the latest incident in this trade, now worth more than ?3 billion annually.
There have been a spate of raids on European art collections in the past year, with the total value of art and antiques stolen estimated at 300 to 500 million. The raids have often been violent; early last year robbers tied up the night watchman at Frankfurt's Schirn Gallery before taking paintings with a combined value of… ('Okay,' Draco interjected, 'I'm skipping this bit because it's boring…')…By contrast, the robbery at Sotheby's apparently took less than ten minutes to execute and was entirely bloodless. Within a ten minute period between routine sweeps by security guards, the priceless artifacts simply disappeared. The prevailing theory remains that either the robbers must have been very organized, or they must have had help from inside. 'We will be questioning our staff very closely,' asserts Sotheby's head of security Keith Fraser, visibly distraught by the recent events. 'It is impossible that these robbers could have evaded our security systems without considerable assistance from someone possessing inside knowledge.' When asked if there was another way the security could have failed, Fraser was indignant, 'Well, I suppose they could have used magic!'
Draco crinkled up his nose in confusion. 'Wait, I thought they didn't know about magic…'
'He's being sarcastic, you tit,' said Harry, craning his head over Draco's shoulder to get a better look at the paper. 'And I still don't get why you wanted me to look at this.'
'See the mirror there, Potter?' Draco demanded, jabbing his finger at a color photograph of what looked like a silver hand mirror, very old-looking. The handle and back of the mirror were elaborately carved all over with birds, flowers, and graceful whorls of silver. It reminded Harry a bit of the work on his Gryffindor scabbard, if slightly less colorful.
'Yeah?' Harry looked sideways at Draco. 'So what?'
'So, that is the mirror from my dream, that's what,' Draco said, staring at the photo. 'It's unique — I'd recognize it anywhere.'
'From your dream…oh. That dream.'
'Yes, that dream. As far as I'm concerned, this clinches the question of whether the dreams are real. In the dream, Wormtail told Voldemort that he'd only gotten the mirror that day…and this robbery was a few days ago. The question then becomes, why does the Dark Lord want this mirror so much? If he's sending his henchwizards out into the Muggle world to get it, he must need it for something.'
'You don't think he just wants to admire himself in it?' Harry asked.
Draco snorted. 'No, he has minions for that. 'Oh, Voldemort, your skin is such a luminous shade of green today, and your eyes are so radiantly red.' Potter, he wanted that mirror for something, and knowing him, it probably wasn't a gift for his dear mum.'
'Well,' said Harry, and yawned, 'if you want to know what it was about, you know what to do.'
'What?'
'Go to sleep and have another dream about it.'
Draco looked offended. 'I can't just dream on command, you know.'
'No? Not a very useful talent, then, is it?'
'You just want to nap. Despicably lazy, you are,' said Draco, and turned to look out the window. 'Fine, we can talk about this when you're awake, then.'
Harry followed Draco's gaze through habit, and saw the outside world flashing past at dizzying speed, trees and buildings bending to get out of the way of the Knight Bus. Only the night sky seemed to be remaining still, high and cold and as clear and transparent as a sheet of black glass.
Harry almost imagined he could look into it and see no end. He spoke then, without thinking.
'Do you believe in God, Malfoy?'
Draco started, and turned to look at him in disbelief. 'Do I what?'
'You heard me,' said Harry, uncomfortably. 'Do you believe in God — at all?'
Draco looked dubious. 'I guess I believe in God,' he said. 'Sometimes I think he has some pretty strong reservations about me, though.'
'What about heaven? And hell?' Harry asked.
The other boy shook his head. 'What is this about? Anyway, of course I believe in hell…we saw Slytherin get dragged off somewhere by those demons. Where did you think they were taking him? All-expenses-paid balloon tour of the Urals?'
'What about heaven?'
Draco shrugged again. Harry had a feeling he was making the other boy very uncomfortable. 'Stands to reason there's a heaven, if there's a hell.'
'Well,' said Harry, sitting forward, 'what do you think it's like?'
Draco leaned back against the wooden post of the bed, his mouth a crooked line of bemusement. 'You're asking me what heaven's like, Potter? Come on, you've had your name down for entry there since before you had your name down for Hogwarts. Whereas I…'
'Whereas you are going to hell in a handbasket, I know,' Harry interrupted. 'In the meantime, use that ferocious imagination of yours for a second, will you? I really want to know what you think.'
'Do you?' Draco's eyes were the color of quartz crystals, and about as readable. 'I think heaven would be different for everyone who goes there.
For you, it's probably bunnies and Christmas and optimism and everyone shoving flowers in their ears.'
'And for you?'
Draco was silent a moment, looking out the window at the dark world flashing by. 'A place to rest, I think,'
