The Lewis House 105 страница

"While you rot," Ginny whispered, her eyes full of tears. He was sick. He reminded her strongly of someone else. Someone equally sick, whose personal bitterness had become a terrible war. "And you won't be Stunned, Malfoy. You'll be wide-awake for over a hundred years - even a hundred and fifty years. Right here in this room. Alone."

Malfoy's nasty laughter faltered. His eyes seemed to focus inward and his face went blank. Apparently he had more faith in Ron's evidence against him than Ron did.

"Look around," Ginny said. "This is all you have. No house, no servants - nothing. What you're wearing is what you'll wear."

He shuddered involuntarily.

"Just this little space until you die. No wand. You'll never do magic again." She paused. It was cruel to say the next thing, but perhaps it would get through to him. "You'll hardly see your mother again."

His eyes glazed. His head dropped.

"Is that what you want?"

Malfoy put a hand over his face.

"Because if you don't help me now, Malfoy, that's what you'll get."

Malfoy went still as stone. For a moment, Ginny wondered if he had somehow been Stunned again. And then he slowly raised his head and pinned his swimming eyes on her.

"Are you saying…" He swallowed. "Are you saying that… if I do help you…there's a chance…"

She had him. Ginny walked as close to the barrier as she dared go. She knelt, picked up the ring, and met his eyes. "Tell me what it can do."

Malfoy was quiet. He looked at the ring for a long time and flexed the hand that had used to wear it. "What would it have to do to get me free?"

"I don't know," Ginny said honestly. "But if you tell me everything it does, then I can bargain for you."

Malfoy was quiet again. His eyes slid away from the ring in her hand and he shook his head.

"No?" Ginny said. "Fine. Then I'll give it to a curse breaker, and he'll sort out how to use it and we'll -"

Malfoy laughed, and the sound was harsh and cruel. "If you want to find yourself short another brother, then please, give it to the curse breaker. The less of you there are, the better."

Ginny tried to ignore the painful hatred she suddenly felt. He was so callous. He held nothing sacred, not even the dead.

"Who can use it then?" she demanded through clenched teeth.

Malfoy's eyes flitted to hers and the ugly light had come back into them. "I am your only option," he said.

Truth and satisfaction flooded the room. Pride. Ginny felt all of it, and wondered at its fierceness. Perhaps control over that ring was the one great talent his father had left him - perhaps it was a magic so Dark that only the Malfoys had been entrusted with the wielding of it.

"Then tell me what it does," she repeated. "You're risking nothing. If I bargain for you and lose, then you can just refuse to help. But if I bargain and win…"

Malfoy's eyes changed completely. There was hope in them. Desire.

"You might get your life back," Ginny finished. She hoped it would be enough.

"My life back," he echoed. He laughed again, but this time there was something pitiful in the sound. "No. I'm afraid that's not within your power." But he glanced at her, and then at the ring, and Ginny felt a shift in the air between them, like something sliding into place.

A decision.

"All right, then," Malfoy said faintly. "You want to know what it does?"

Ginny sat back on her heels and waited, her heart racing. He was actually going to tell her. Ron would never believe it.

"Could you secure my freedom if I…" Malfoy gave her a suspicious look, as if he were testing something. "If I were willing to come back to Azkaban and control the Dementors again?"

"You mean you'd put things back to how they were?"

Malfoy nodded.

But he was holding something back - Ginny could feel it. She narrowed her eyes at him. "I don't know. That's not very much, is it? Is that the most you can do?" she pressed.

Malfoy tilted his head. "Oh no," he said softly, and half-smiled. He seemed amused. "I could always destroy them, if you'd prefer."

It was a moment before Ginny realized that she could hear her own breath. It came in loud, ragged pulls that echoed in the cell. Her mouth was dry. "Destroy - what - the -"

"Dementors." Malfoy crossed his arms and legs and sat back against the wall, looking almost comfortable again.

Ginny didn't believe him. "You can't," she said flatly. "You can't do that."

"Can't I."

"But - but there's no -" Ginny spluttered. She stumbled to her feet and began to pace her half of the cell, her brain reeling. "Why would you have bothered?" she finally demanded, bewildered. "Why spend all that time at Azkaban - why work so hard when you didn't have to? If you could destroy them, then why not do it on the first day and spare yourself the trouble?" She stopped pacing and rounded on him. "Why?"

Malfoy smiled up at her. It was almost a real smile. "Come now," he said pleasantly, seeming to enjoy her reaction very much. "Surely the Healer can sense all my reasons."

But Ginny didn't have to sense anything; he had made all his reasons very clear. He had been killing Harry. Wearying her brother and herself. Wasting the Ministry's resources. Making her father look incompetent. It had been nothing but a game of petty vengeance tricks all the time - and all the time it could have been over. But Malfoy had been using Voldemort's leftover powers to indulge every nasty whim in his heart, like the spoiled bully he had always been.

"You're pathetic," she whispered.

He laughed. "Now, now," he chided lightly. "You'll have to show a bit more respect if you want me to do it. Oh - and there's a catch."

Ginny watched him and waited, disgusted.

"If I am freed for my services - given complete liberty, Weasley, not just a shorter sentence - then I will require the participation of several capable wizards to get the job done." He paused. "Note that I said capable. None of your family or your Mudblood friends will do."

Ginny wasn't sure she understood him. "I thought you were the only one who could use this ring?"

"I am." Malfoy smirked. "And the magic requires channeling. Once it is unleashed, I'll need others to do the work while I control the source of power."

"I've never heard of magic working like that."

Malfoy snorted. "Of course you haven't…" His eyes became slits again. "On second thought… why don't you participate?" He looked up at her with eyes full of malicious delight. "Oh yes. You and Potter and Granger. And your excellent brother. All of you."

Ginny was more frightened by his tone and his look than she wanted him to know. "I won't use that magic," she managed.

"Too noble?" Malfoy laughed again. He looked completely relaxed now, and perfectly confident. "Too high and mighty to use the power that is available to you?"

"That's Dark magic," Ginny said shakily. Perhaps this had been a bad idea. Perhaps they shouldn't let him help them. Not if they had to use spells that Voldemort had created. Not if they all had to channel something that was truly evil. And perhaps Malfoy was lying. Perhaps this was the biggest trap, the greatest trick of all.

"But it's fine for me to use it to achieve your ends?" Malfoy sighed as though put upon. "Honestly. The hypocrisy." He drummed dirty fingers on the ground, then tried to get to his feet again. This time, he was successful. He faced Ginny and pushed back his hair - and for a split second he looked like himself again - tall and lazy and cold, full of perfect arrogance.

"Well, why are you still here?" he asked, waving her towards the door. "Go on." He smirked. "Give the Secretary Privy my regards - I'm sure that she will see the value of this bargain better than the rest of you. And I'll… wait here, shall I?" He gave a short laugh, then walked to his rickety bed in the corner and lay down, shifting around on his back as if to find the best position in which to be Stunned.

Dazed, Ginny watched him settle. And then she closed her hand around his ring and walked out of the cell, her head so full of new information and new doubt that she could hardly think.

"Well?" Bill demanded, when she had shut the door.

"Do you need me to take that?" Moody asked, extending his hand.

"No, you can… you can go and Stun him." Ginny looked from Moody to Bill, and then down at the ring in her hand. "And then I think we should go to the Ministry. Right now."

~*~

Chapter Forty-Two

The Prisoners of Azkaban

~*~

A/N: Here's to Molly and Emma, who have been reading this for a long, long time, and whose Aunt Ruth likes to show us their impatient emails. You girls ROX.

An enormous debt of gratitude is owed to Firelocks, who helped with every single bit of this.

Thanks to the incomparable Moey, because… well. 87.

We bow in obeisance to the betas: Caroline, CoKerry, Firelox, Honeychurch and Moey

Oh, right - and about that whole "42 chapters and an epilogue" thing? Slight miscalculation. 43 will be the last chapter, and it will be followed by an "epilogue".

~*~

"So there's no way of telling who drank that portion of the Polyjuice Potion?" Ron searched through a haphazard stack of papers, all of which were eyewitness accounts of the battle on the Hogwarts lawns. He scanned his wand over each one, looking for his own name.

"No way at all," Sirius replied from behind a scroll of parchment, which had just come up from the M.L.E.S. "They've done every spell they can think of to track who touched that jar last, but no trace of evidence was left."

"Course it wasn't," Ron muttered. It made him feel sick to think of Malfoy parading across the Hogwarts lawn in his body - opening the gates to the Death Eaters with his hands. "Are you the only one who saw me twice?" he demanded, exasperated. None of the other eyewitnesses had mentioned seeing his double down at the gates.

"Snape saw it," Sirius said.

"That's hardly helpful."

"Well, he very rarely was."

Ron snorted, though it had been a long time since he had really thought badly of Snape. Not for the first time, he wished that Snape were still around. It would have been helpful to have his word on this. But he wasn't around, and there was no one's word but Sirius's, and now everyone thought he was even madder than before.

"All I can do is wait for Ginny to finish easing her conscience and start telling me what she knows," Ron said, slamming shut the file he had been digging through. It wasn't worth it. He'd been through it five times and there was nothing in it that was useful.

Sirius lowered the parchment to look at Ron. "Do you really think Ginny knows something?"

"Oh, I know she does." Ron pointed his wand in irritation, bringing a file box flying from a distant corner towards his desk. It slammed to the floor, the lid came off, and several papers fluttered out. "Might as well go through all this," he said, annoyed. "I doubt it's anything much, but I've seen all the rest of it so many times I feel like it's all burnt into my eyes, to be honest."

"What's in that one?"

"The files on that jeweler, Galfrid Thinstone."

"I didn't know you'd found anything."

Ron hefted a few of them onto his desk. "Well, it wasn't easy," he said. "Thinstone disappeared with all his money about a month before Voldemort was defeated, and he left these files in his Gringotts vault."

Sirius groaned. They both knew how long it took to get anything out of someone else's vault at Gringotts. Legal orders didn't mean much to the goblins.

"Is that everything he had?" Sirius asked.

"There's practically a library of financial records, but from what I've seen so far, his receipts were unspecific. The date and the cost of each item are listed, but not what was actually purchased. And yeah, these are the only other papers." Ron peered at the label of the first file in his hands. Women's Hair Ornamentation, it read. He rolled his eyes.

"Well, is there a file on Malfoy, anyway?"

"No, he's got it organized by jewelry type." Ron flipped through the next few. They weren't alphabetized at all - Mr. Doyle in the Archives would have had a field day reorganizing them. Functional Ornamentation (Wand Cases, Watches, Locks), read one file. Rings, read another. Intrigued - he'd just purchased a ring, after all - he flipped open the file and studied the top page.

It was a beautiful drawing of an incredibly ornate, bluish-silver ring. The ring was detailed so completely that it almost looked real… it seemed to sparkle and flash. It was obviously meant for a woman, though if the drawing was to scale, then the ring itself must have been huge - it would have covered the whole bottom half of Hermione's ring finger - and there must have been thirty diamonds in it. There were a few, disjointed notes jotted beside the picture. Imbue white gold with tears of veela… Temper over purple flame… And scrawled in the bottom corner of the paper were a few numbers - at first, Ron thought they were the date. Then his jaw dropped.

"People don't really spend this much on rings," he said in outrage.

Sirius laughed. "Of course they do," he said, in a tone that suggested that he might, perhaps, have once known a few such people.

Ron couldn't imagine it. "That's just - just pretentious," he spluttered. "Well, I'm glad Hermione doesn't think -"

He heard the words before he could stop them, panicked, and clamped his mouth shut. Hermione was going to kill him. She wanted her parents to know first - so badly that she had been putting an Invisibility Charm on her engagement ring every morning, so that no one else would see it. Ron had suggested that she just take it off, but Hermione said she never would, and even though Ron thought she was insane, he was incredibly touched.

"Hermione doesn't think what?" Sirius asked keenly, hunkering over his desk and looking across the office at him. "Hmm?"

Ron looked back down at the file and didn't answer. He closed the folder, put it aside, and looked at the next one. Dangerous Objects, said the label, and Ron felt a tiny surge of hope. Surely if Malfoy had purchased something from Galfrid Thinstone, it would be sketched somewhere in here. They might be able to match things up, though what good it would do, Ron wasn't sure. He opened the file and began to flip through the pages. They were all the same - sketches with notes jotted alongside them and prices scrawled in the corners.

"Interesting reading?" Sirius asked innocently.

Ron looked up at him. "Actually, yeah," he said. "It's a file on dangerous objects - do you have Malfoy's receipts over there?"

Sirius nodded and began to dig through his own mountainous stacks of parchment, but before he found anything, green light flared up in the office fireplace. Ron glanced over and saw his father's head, floating disembodied in the flames. Perhaps it was just the firelight, but his eyes seemed unusually bright.

"Hey, Dad."

"Ron, I need you in my office." His father's voice was tense. Excited. "Your sister is here. She's just come from Culparrat."

Ron stood so quickly that he banged his leg on the desk and let out a curse. "Be right there," he said. "See you, Sirius."

"Actually… Sirius." Arthur's eyes flickered to him and he seemed to be considering. "You really shouldn't be here," he pointed out.

Sirius bowed his head slightly. "I know."

"But… since you are…"

Sirius's head came up. His eyes glinted. "Yes?" he asked hopefully

"Please come along with Ron."

Sirius jumped up with twice Ron's energy, and Arthur sighed.

"This doesn't mean you're off suspension," Arthur warned.

"No, no, I know -"

"I'm consulting you for your opinion only."

"Yes, I understand -"

"Good." Arthur nodded. "Then hurry, both of you." His head disappeared and the flames flickered out.

Ron and Sirius wasted no time in locking the office. They practically ran down the Ministry's polished corridors and Ron nearly crashed into Lawrence when they reached Arthur's door. Lawrence gave an indignant sort of squawk and leapt to the side.

"Sorry!" Ron said breathlessly, as he and Sirius ran into the office without bothering to wait for their announcement. They skidded to a halt and stood together, panting.

"We - hurried -" Ron said, looking around the room. Moody was there, and Bill, and Rose K. Brown. They all looked shocked and still.

And there, in the chair beside their father, was Ginny, looking extremely pale and confused. For some reason she was wearing sleek black gloves, and her right fist was clenched so tightly that Ron thought she must be very nervous - though about what, he couldn't imagine. She raised her head and met his eyes.

"You'll want to sit down," she said quietly. Her eyes shifted to Sirius. "You'll…" She shook her head. "You'll need to sit down."

Then it was bad news. Ron felt his heart drop like a stone into his stomach - Malfoy hadn't told her anything and she wasn't going to talk. This was going to take weeks, and she was going to force them to drag it out of her. He couldn't believe it. "Ginny," he began, feeling his irritation rise. "Just tell us if he -"

"Sit down, Ron," she repeated in the same quiet voice. "I already told everyone else the main thing, and you need to hear it."

Ron glanced at his father, who gave him a vigorous nod. He and Sirius both took chairs.

"All right," Ron said when he was comfortable. "Let's have it, then."

Ginny pressed her lips tightly together. And then she raised her clenched hand and opened it, palm up, revealing something golden. "Do you recognize this?" she asked, and placed it on their father's desk.

Ron leaned over and peered at it. "No," he began, and then an unwanted memory flashed into his brain. The gaudy shape. The curly M. "Yeah," he corrected angrily. "I recognize that piece of crap."

"So do I." Sirius reached out towards it. "That's Malfoy's ring -"

"Don't touch it." Ginny's voice was so sharp that Sirius recoiled. "Sorry," she said. "But it's cursed. That's why I've got these." She held up her gloved hands.

"Cursed!" Ron reached up and rubbed his temple. Of course it was cursed, he couldn't believe he hadn't thought about it before. He should have known from the way it had burnt into his skin - the way the wound had lasted far longer than just an ordinary cut. "It's a Dark object? No wonder it left such a mark."

"It doesn't just leave marks," Ginny said. "It…" Her eyes flitted to Sirius. "It can control things. It can control dragons and -" She licked her lips. Her eyes gleamed. "And Dementors."

Sirius started. His mouth fell open - he reached for the ring again -

"No." Ginny put her hand over it and took it back before Sirius could get to it. "You can't use it. None of us can. And that's - that's not all it can do."

"Well what else?" Sirius rasped. "Just say it."

Ginny nodded, not taking her eyes from him. "It can destroy them," she said very softly. "The Dementors."

The silence in the room was so thick that it hurt Ron's ears. He could hardly comprehend what Ginny had just said. Because she couldn't have said it - it couldn't be true. He dared a look at Sirius.

Sirius was bone white.

"It's true," Ginny whispered into the silence. "Think about it. If Voldemort was using them in his army, he'd have to be able to control them and dispose of them. It makes sense that he would entrust that sort of power to someone as horrible as Lucius Malfoy."

Out of the corner of his eye, Ron saw his father wince.

"It's all right, Dad," Ginny said softly.

Ron wasn't sure he believed what he was hearing. "It can destroy the Dementors," he repeated flatly. "That ring."

"Yes." Ginny looked straight at him. "It's so cursed I can't touch it. It's incredibly powerful. Ask Bill."

Ron met Bill's eyes and was shocked to see his eldest brother concurring with a slow nod. "It's the most power I've ever seen in such a small object," Bill said. "I can show you what I mean, if you like - Ginny, put the ring on the desk."

Ginny did, and Bill drew his wand. "Aparecium," he said clearly.

A small area around the ring began to glow - to pulsate. Ron leaned closer, and suddenly he could see that the glowing air was alive with something writhing - something sickening green and slimy black, like a tangle of snakes that had rotted in a sewer.

Ginny shuddered.

"What's causing it?" Ron demanded.

Bill shrugged. "I have no idea."

"Well can't you break it?" Ron asked. "It's a curse, isn't it?"

Bill shook his head. "Part of my job is knowing when I'm beaten," he said. "I can't break that without killing myself. Now, there are curse breakers with more experience - we might hand it over to someone else to try it."

"It doesn't matter if they could break it," Rose Brown said, "it would be useless to us without whatever magic it holds." She was hugging her clipboard and staring at the ring, obviously repulsed.

"True." Bill flicked his wand and the snaking halo of light disappeared, making the ring appear innocent once more.

"But…" Ron had to get his thoughts in order; they were so jumbled up that he could hardly find the important ones. "But wait a minute… you said that none of us can use it anyway, didn't you?" He looked at Ginny, who nodded. "Then how is it useful to us?"

"It… can only be useful to us if we let Malfoy control it," Ginny said, sitting up straight and putting out her hands when Ron opened his mouth to protest. "No, just listen to me. Listen to the whole thing."

Ron sat back, his head already pounding. He didn't like where this was headed. At all. He wasn't about to give them permission to let Malfoy out of Culparrat for field trips to Azkaban, wearing a ring that was probably capable of killing everything in sight.

"Malfoy knows how to destroy the Dementors." Ginny said again. "But he's not willing to do it unless he can go free."

Something ugly and white-hot shot straight through Ron's head and into his gut. He didn't need to hear the rest. "No," he interrupted. "No. Not a chance. He could be lying, he could be -"

"Will you listen." Ginny took a deep breath and let it out. "Let's say he's lying. Fine. Then he goes to Azkaban, he fails to destroy the Dementors, and you put him right back in Culparrat where you will be able to keep him for life, because this ring is as good as an Unforgivable Curse. But if he doesn't fail - if he's telling the truth - then all this trouble with the Dementors will be over."

"And Malfoy will be out in the world again," Ron countered angrily, "bullying people with his money and threatening all of us whenever he gets the chance - NO."

"I'm not finished!" Ginny said. "Ron, Malfoy thinks you have solid evidence on him. He thinks this is his only way out, that's the only reason he's agreed to do it. As soon as he finds out that there's any chance he might get free another way, he'll never in a million years help us - we have to do this now."

Ron felt dizzy and sick. Malfoy had impersonated him. Malfoy had complained so loudly to his father about Hermione that Hermione's parents had been tortured nearly to death. Malfoy's father had been there when Percy had been murdered - he had tried to kill Ginny - he had tried to kill their dad - and now Ginny wanted to let him go? Every nasty comment, every vile gesture that Ron had ever had from Draco Malfoy filled his head and gave him a splitting headache.

"He can't destroy them," he muttered. "He's full of crap - he never would have done all that work if he had a way out of it, he never would have been a dragon rider if he didn't have to be."

"He didn't have to be. He volunteered," said Arthur quietly. "It was his choice to take that job. And he certainly didn't take it for financial reasons."

"Well then why?" Ron demanded, meeting his dad's gaze. "Just to be a right raging bastard?"

"To make me look bad, for one thing," Arthur said mildly. "Which, I'm afraid, was very successful. I don't expect to be made Minister again, with the way the Privy Counselors' debates have gone lately. Ever since we were forced to put more guards on the shoreline, I've been seen as very wasteful. So Malfoy had at least that on his agenda - Rose, when does the Privy Council expect to reach a decision?"

Rose fidgeted. "By the end of the month," she said.

Rage rose in Ron's heart. "How can you take it so calmly, Dad?" he nearly shouted. "Do you see what I mean about him - we can't let him out! He didn't just make you look bad, he's been stealing months of Charlie's life - and Harry's half-dead every time he gets home from one of his shifts -"

Дата добавления: 2015-11-04