The Lewis House 2 страница

"Well." Charlie patted his knapsack as though it contained vital information. "An assistant of mine had sort of a brainwave. What do you think of trying out a couple of dragons?"

Bill and Arthur stared at Charlie blankly.

"Dragons." Arthur pushed his glasses up on his nose. "In terms of..."

"In terms of guarding Azkaban. Keeping the Dementors at bay. What d’you think?"

Bill snickered. He couldn’t help it. It was an immature reaction, but he’d had a long day and this was really too much.

Charlie looked at him as if a bit offended. "What?" he demanded. "It’s a good idea."

"You think dragons are a good idea for everything," Bill muttered, still laughing a little. "You’ll be telling me they’re good babysitters, next."

Arthur chortled.

Charlie narrowed his eyes and pushed his wet hair off his forehead. "For your information," he shot at them both, "dragons have a force field around them – natural energy, like."

Bill put up his hands in silent appeasement. "Of course they do."

"They do – and you can hang up the wisecracks. My assistant’s drawn up a sort of proposal on the whole thing – a dragon’s force field is made of the same stuff as a Patronus Charm, for the most part – it’s like a sort of... impenetrable energy... Dementors can’t affect it with their depression. Hell, I can’t put it right, she put it a lot better than that. Hold on, I’ll read you what she said." Charlie bent his head and began to rummage in his knapsack.

Bill couldn’t resist. "She?" he asked politely. "Is this your assistant, then?"

Charlie stopped moving for a fraction of a second. Bill could see the back of his brother’s neck go pink.

"Yeah," Charlie answered momentarily, continuing to rummage.

"Anyone I know?" Bill asked suggestively, enjoying the fact that Charlie was clearly unwilling to talk about whoever it was. Charlie was usually a loudmouth about women – with Bill anyway. Getting him nervous about something personal was a definite rarity.

Charlie didn’t answer; he merely fished out a roll of parchment. Bill deftly made a grab for it, but Charlie leapt to his feet and handed the parchment over to his father.

"’S’all right there, Dad," he said, obviously making an effort to keep his voice even. "Hope it helps."

"What’s the girlfriend’s name, Dad?"

Arthur scanned the parchment, found the name, and opened his mouth.

"Not a girlfriend. And that’s my business," Charlie said flatly.

Arthur’s mouth fell shut. He looked at Bill apologetically, but Bill shrugged, half-smiling. He’d drag it out of his brother later, there was no question in his mind.

Charlie gestured to the parchment, slinging his knapsack over one shoulder as he did so. "So if you want to test her theory, after reading that, I’ll have Mick go back and harness two of the Welsh Greens. They’re the only ones we were able to tame enough to fly, during the war. Just let me know." He shot a slight glare at Bill. "Going back to the flat?"

Bill nodded. "I don’t want to Apparate, though – mind walking? I’ve been cooped up all day with those bloody goblins."

Charlie shrugged. "See you, Dad."

"Night, boys." Arthur waved to them without looking up from the proposal. Apparently whatever Charlie’s assistant had written on that parchment, it was worth a second thought. Bill shrugged. Maybe the dragons would end up being useful to the purpose after all. He didn’t get a chance to say this out loud, however. As soon as they were out in the Ministry corridors, Charlie barked at him.

"It’s a good idea."

Bill groaned inwardly, and made a mental note not to crack on dragons any time in the near future, as Charlie continued to drill it into him.

"It’s a damned good idea, and the dragons do have that energy, I’m telling you – don’t you remember? That’s why it took so long to hide them during the war – their energy kept interfering with whatever Diversion Enchantments that witch tried to put up around them."

Bill jumped.

He hadn’t had his old nightmare since moving back to England, but at the mere mention of Diversion Enchantments, Bill conjured an immediate mental image of the witch that had cast them. He tried to shake it, found he couldn’t, and gave in to the memory for a moment. It wasn’t that he wanted to dwell on her face so much as that he couldn’t help it. It helped, at least, that the memory of that incident didn’t frustrate him anymore. Too much time had passed. She wasn’t real to him now so much as a dream; he hardly thought about her except in sleep. Still, arrested by the unexpected reference to that night in the trench, Bill wound unseeingly down the rest of the corridors, and he was only half-listening to Charlie’s continual prattle about the dragons as the two of them walked out of the building’s grand front entrance and into Diagon Alley.

Bill was so lost in thought that the next event nearly caused him to tumble headlong down the Ministry’s massive and crowded front steps. He felt a shove against his back, and a moment later, a school-aged girl with tangled hair that might have been blond if it hadn’t been filthy had forced her way between himself and Charlie. She didn’t stop to apologize, nor did she look behind her – but simply bolted into the street and went careening toward Knockturn Alley.

Sufficiently snapped out of his reverie, Bill watched her go, feeling oddly pulled to follow. Not until he had lost sight of her did he realize that the girl was probably the same orphan that Mundungus Fletcher had been talking about in his father’s office, earlier on. It seemed she had indeed managed to claw her way out of having to go to the Children’s Home. Bill craned his neck, wishing he’d reacted more quickly – but she had disappeared from view. Bill sighed, knowing that it was only a matter of time before Fletcher picked her up again. He couldn’t help imagining Ginny at that age and wondering what she would have done if their parents had been taken from her.

Charlie rubbed his elbow, where the girl had knocked against it. "What was that about?" he muttered.

Bill sighed. For the rest of their walk to the flat they shared, he explained to Charlie everything he’d heard in the Minister’s office that afternoon. By the time the two brothers arrived at their makeshift home, they’d had a few words about the state of the world, and neither was in a mood to banter about dragons any longer. Bill didn’t even feel compelled to prod Charlie about his mysterious assistant. At least – he grinned to himself – not at the moment.

They pushed open the door to find Charlie’s fellow dragon keeper, Mick O’Malley, sitting in the middle of the floor, grinning into the box that sat in his lap. Around him there was evidence of packaging, which he’d strewn around wildly, as if in a hurry to get to whatever was in the box. He looked up as they entered.

"Look here!" he greeted them, excitedly. "Look who’s sent me an import from Australia."

"No way –" Charlie dashed across the room and stared down into the box. "Oh, now that’s brilliant," he cried. "Did Stillwell send you these?"

"He did that," Mick replied happily. "I’ve been wantin’ to get my hands on some of these ever since –"

"He smuggled that boxful into the keepers’ training camp," Charlie finished, dropping down on the floor and reaching into the box. "Yeah, so have I. That was ruddy hysterical."

Bill watched all this with mounting curiosity, and yet he was unsure whether or not he wanted to know which highly lethal Australian creature was living in that box. Charlie was almost as bad as Hagrid had been, when it came to crossing animal life with common sense. Raising his eyebrows and bracing himself for some small terror, Bill took two long steps across the room and looked.

"Billywigs," said Mick reverently, lifting the jar out of the box so that Bill could see it.

Indeed they were – there were a half dozen of the little stinging beasts crawling all over each other inside the glass. Bill laughed out loud, and shook his head ruefully at Charlie.

"I won’t say a word – except if Dad ends up calling on you to get your dragons together for Azkaban, and you’re sitting around all stung up on these things –"

Charlie balked. "I don’t get stung up. I just think they’re interesting. And don’t you go acting all high and mighty – I’ve heard wild stories about the kinds of stuff you can get your hands on in Egypt."

Bill deigned not to reply.

"Are we goin’ back to Romania for a couple o’dragons, then?" Mick asked Bill keenly.

"Don’t know yet," Charlie mused, taking the jar from Mick and watching the Billywigs with a fascinated eye. "My dad’s reading the proposal, anyway. So I’ll guess it’s a yes. It’s a damned good proposal."

Bill was on it in a flash. "Who sent that proposal, Mick?"

Mick looked up, a wicked gleam in his eye, and opened his mouth.

"Hope you’ll enjoy riding Flatulo on every assignment for a year," Charlie interrupted evenly. "I can do it, too; don’t forget which one of us is the supervisor."

Apparently Flatulo wasn’t the dragon of choice, because Mick’s mouth clapped shut again. He shrugged at Bill. Bill shrugged as well. This was getting more and more interesting.

* * *

The sun was crawling toward the horizon by the time Ron and Harry came down out of the sky. Both boys had been too excited about flying to come home for lunch - they’d popped into a shop in the village and eaten something completely unhealthy, then returned as quickly as possible to their brooms. It had been a great day, spent in a low-lying field far out on the other side of the town, which Harry had discovered on his first morning in Stagsden. They were sunburnt and sore, and their throats ached from hollering - Ron couldn’t remember the last time he and Harry had been able to fly like that. It had literally been years since they’d spent so much time outdoors together without the fear of being discovered. It was really nice to mess around like a couple of normal blokes, Ron reflected. It was strange, maybe, and new - but he found it easy to get used to, and he hoped that Harry would as well.

"Do we need to stop for anything else?" he asked, as they passed the last shop and made their way toward the other end of town, and Lupin Lodge. Harry shook his head in reply – they had already bought several bottles of butterbeer, a sack of owl treats, and so many snack items that the shop owner had stared at them. Ron hefted the grocery sack in his arms. In two hours, he’d be a working man, he thought happily. He was looking forward to cleaning up, eating something, and getting back down to the pub.

But his thoughts darkened slightly as they approached the cottage and he slowed his stride a little, letting Harry pull ahead. He wanted to take another look up at that house across the road, and he didn’t want Harry to see him do it. Not that he thought Malfoy was really around, Ron told himself uneasily. But whomever it was that he’d seen earlier might have been Malfoy’s brother, unless it had been a trick of the light. Ron strained his eyes across the lawn and shifted his gaze along the many windows of the large estate.

Seeing nothing, he quickly turned back before Harry could say anything, and followed him up the steps into Remus’s house. They walked through the hall and straight to the kitchen, where Ron dropped the sack on the countertop and sighed with contented exhaustion.

"I’m parched – butterbeer, Harry?"

"Yeah, all right."

Ron reached into the bag for two bottles, and together, he and Harry went into the sunroom, where Hermione was reading in a chair.

"Hello," she said when they came in. She kept her eyes on what she was reading, and Ron thought she sounded a little subdued. "Did you have a nice time?"

"Yeah," he answered, lightly tugging a bit of her hair. "What did you do all day? Wait, no, let me guess." Ron dropped back onto the sofa and grinned at her. "You studied Apparition until you couldn’t stand the fun anymore, and then you did a few Charms, just for a bit of summer relaxation, and then, to top it all off, you settled down with a nice big book called –?"

"Arithmancy for Life II: More Practical Applications," she answered, still not looking up from the page.

Ron sighed heavily. "You know you’re a lunatic – I don’t have to tell you."

Hermione looked up at him, but offered no rebuttal. "You look sunburnt."

Ron felt his nose. "I am," he replied, cracking open his butterbeer and making room for Harry to sit down. "You tired, or something?"

"No."

"Well, what then?"

Hermione shut her book and folded her hands on top of it. "I have to tell you something," she said quietly. "And I don’t want to tell you."

Ron painfully gulped his mouthful of butterbeer. His only thought was that she had accepted one of her job offers, and that she’d be leaving. A few days before, Hermione had mentioned something about taking an apprenticeship off on some island, and though she had seemed honestly interested in it, Ron didn’t want her to go. He’d tried to hide his dislike for the idea, but it had been clear enough to both of them. He hoped she wasn’t about to tell him that she’d decided to take the apprenticeship anyway.

"What’s the matter?" he forced himself to ask, as beside him, Harry started to get up.

"And where are you going?" Hermione asked, raising her eyebrows at Harry.

"Well," said Harry, a bit awkwardly, "isn’t this something between the two of you?"

Hermione shook her head. "No. It affects all of us. Just... please, when I tell you, don’t get upset – I couldn’t stand it." She looked at Ron imploringly. "Don’t get upset," she repeated.

Certain, now, that she was about to announce her departure, Ron gritted his teeth and nodded. "Go ahead, you can tell us," he said, his voice low. He gripped his butterbeer and waited for it.

Hermione drew breath, and looked at her hands. "I saw Draco Malfoy today. Apparently he’s staying across the street, in that big house."

Ron sat up, stunned. "What?!" he asked, turning to Harry in disbelief.

Harry was pale. "You were right," he muttered to Ron. "You knew it. You saw him."

"You saw him too?" Hermione asked immediately, leaning forward.

"I thought I did – but I figured I was just seeing things. I must have been seeing things. Hermione, are you sure you saw him?"

"Yes."

Her answer was so swift that Ron felt certain they must have spoken. The mere idea of Malfoy speaking to Hermione made him want to curse something.

"Don’t tell me he came near you, or I’ll – "

"Don’t!" Hermione’s eyes opened wide in alarm. "Don’t get upset, oh, please – this is why I didn’t want to tell you." Hermione looked anxiously at Harry, and then back to Ron. "He didn’t say a thing to me, he didn’t come near me – I only saw him from the road. Ginny and I were going to come and watch you fly for awhile. While I was waiting for her outside, I looked up at that house and Malfoy was there on the top balcony."

"Does Sirius know he’s there?" Ron asked, his voice low.

Hermione shook her head. "Sirius hasn’t come home all day."

"Well, who lives in that house?"

"I don’t know."

"Didn’t you ask Remus?"

"I couldn’t, he went out to Wales right after you left – Sirius thinks he’s found a place for the new prison and he wanted Remus’s opinion. It was just Ginny and me."

Ron felt the hair raise on the back of his neck at the thought of Hermione and Ginny by themselves, with Malfoy across the way. Draco might have been an idiot and a coward, but that had never meant he wasn’t dangerous.

"Did you just spot him and come back in, or did he see you, too?"

Hermione inhaled, a little shakily. "He saw me. I think we must have stared at each other for a full minute – and then he finally went inside." She continued in a whisper. "It was so strange. He was the last person I expected... It was so out of context... And I think he was as surprised to see me as I was to see him. I kept waiting for him to pull his wand, and I was ready to pull mine – I still felt like I ought to arm myself. It reminded me – of everything."

She sniffed, barely, and for the first time that evening, Ron noticed that there were light, puffy rings under Hermione’s eyes, as though she might have been crying. Every muscle in Ron’s body clenched on edge – his impulse was to cross the street now, pull his own wand, and have it done with. Malfoy was just like his father, and his father had caused more destruction against the Weasley and Granger families than any of Voldemort’s other supporters. Lucius Malfoy had climbed as high as Pettigrew in the ranks of the Dark army, and his son had as good as announced his intention to follow in his footsteps. In Ron’s opinion, that was too close to being a Death Eater, and if Draco Malfoy wasn’t dead, then at least he ought to be locked up in Azkaban.

But just as he was about to say something to this effect, Hermione seemed to sense it. She shook her head and reached out to stop him, so beseechingly that Ron bit back his anger. Wanting to comfort her as much as he could, he pushed off of the sofa and crouched before Hermione’s chair, taking her hand in his.

"Are you okay?" he asked putting his other hand on her knee.

She nodded. "Of course I am. It’s only Malfoy. We went to school with him for how long?" She gave a hollow little laugh. "And he came off worse than we did, in the end."

Ron shook his head, not wanting to say too much. "But your parents," he managed.

"No." Hermione put a hand on Ron’s shoulder and shook her head firmly. "His father did that, it wasn’t Draco. And his father is dead. At least I haven’t definitely lost my parents. Who knows – there might be a way, someday..." Hermione trailed off and sank back in her chair, looking over Ron’s shoulder to smile briefly at Harry. "Now, you both have to promise me that there isn’t going to be any of your schoolboy-fighting. I don’t want you going out and giving each other boils or fur." She tried to laugh.

Ron looked around at Harry, who had remained silent throughout their exchange. He was ashen.

"Of all the places he could have ended up," was all that Harry said. And then, looking very weary, he rose and left the room, leaving his butterbeer on the table behind him.

Ron watched him go, and Hermione sighed unhappily. "For Harry’s sake," she said softly, "I wish things would stop happening. Just when he makes a decision to do something healthy with his life... it’s unfair. Ginny was so upset when I told her whom I’d seen."

Ron lifted his eyebrows. "Ginny knows?"

"Why wouldn’t she?"

Ron shrugged. Ginny had been involved for a long time in their circle of friendship and in all of their troubles – Ron just tended to forget it, sometimes. In his mind, much as he loved his sister, he was accustomed to thinking of it as just the three of them. "You said she was upset?"

"Only because it might be hard for Harry. She cares for him so much."

Unsure of what to say about that, Ron ignored it. "What about you?"

"What about me?"

"Are you sure you’re all right?"

Hermione nodded. "I’m fine, I’m fine." She smiled, unconvincingly. "You really are sunburnt, you ought to use the sunscreen – it’s not just for the lake, you know." She reached out a finger and traced it across his cheek.

Ron shut his eyes, enjoying the sensation of Hermione’s fingertip drawing the lines of his face. "No point in using that unless you’re there to help put it on me."

Hermione did laugh a little at that. "You’re awful."

"You like me awful." Ron opened his eyes.

Hermione looked at him for a moment, then leaned down and kissed him softly. "Goodnight, Ron," she said, her voice still subdued and quiet.

"You’re going to bed? Hold on – it’s not even six!"

"I know. I’m just tired." Hermione got up, touched his hair, and went out of the room.

Knowing that her sudden fatigue was entirely due to the fact she’d spotted Malfoy, Ron had another impulse to cross the street and retaliate. But he wouldn’t use his wand. He just wanted to land one square punch and hear one good crack. He swigged the rest of his butterbeer in silence, exhaled loudly and got up, meaning to have a quick shower and then take a long, slow walk to work – right past that big house.

Ron showered. He changed clothes in his dark bedroom, where Harry lay on his bed facing the wall with the shades down, pretending to be asleep. He went past Hermione’s door and called out a goodnight, but she didn’t answer. And then, remembering that none of them had put away the things they’d brought home from the village, he returned quickly to the kitchen to do so, before going to work.

"Hey, Ginny." His sister was in the kitchen, sitting on the counter and eating a sandwich.

She tilted her head to the side and appraised him. "You’re all clean. Where are you going?"

"Work. When am I not clean?" he asked, lining the butterbeers up along the countertop and beginning to unload several packets of Cauldron Cakes, pumpkin pasties, and F&G’s Unbeatable Crisps "You Literally Can’t Eat Just One! Go On and Try!".

Ginny laughed at the last item. "Fred and George are so weird," she muttered. "I don’t know why you bought those – they’d’ve sent you a box free. Plus, you really can’t stop eating them, you know. It’s just not right, what those two do to food." She pointed at the growing pile of sweets and snack food. "And is that what you call dinner?"

"So?" Ron tore into a pasty and tossed the rest of his purchases pell-mell into a cabinet. "You’re seriously turning into Mum. Get off the counter."

Ginny laughed and remained where she was. "I had a letter from Mum today, actually. She says –" she cleared her throat and imitated their mother with incredible precision – "Charlie and Bill come home for dinner with your father every few nights now, and Ron certainly ought to do the same once he’s passed his Apparition tests!"

Ron groaned. "In her dreams," he grumbled. "Though Hermione’d like it. Move, come on. I have to put these owl treats behind you."

Ginny shifted slightly. "Hey – d’you want company, going to the pub? First night on the job and all? I’ll walk you down."

"Yeah, sure, that’d be..." Ron stopped. He had forgotten that Malfoy was across the road. He didn’t want Ginny coming back home by herself late at night. "Damn it," he muttered.

"What’s wrong?"

"You can’t come with me."

Ginny lifted her chin slightly. "Oh? Why not?" But she knew why – the expression on her face told Ron that she was well aware of his reasoning.

"It’s not safe," he said shortly, stuffing the owl treats into the cabinet and crossing his arms.

"Don’t tell me it’s because of Malfoy?" Ginny rolled her eyes. "Please. I could take him." She jumped lightly from the counter, pulled her wand, and assumed a position of mock-attack.

Ron didn’t find this at all amusing. "Listen, until we find out what he’s doing here and why he’s spending his summer right across from ours, I don’t want you –"

"What? Going outside? Walking around? Having fun?" Ginny breezed past Ron as she spoke. "I can take care of myself, thanks very much. I’ve had plenty of practice and I’m excellent with hexes."

"Ginny, we’re talking about Dark magic here, hexes are hardly –"

"You think I don’t know what we’re talking about?" She stopped in the door and let out a breath of disgust. "Honestly, Ron. I was in that war the same as you. Get that in your head." She tossed her ponytail. "And I’m walking you down to the village whether you like it or not, because we need to have a talk about Hermione." With that she pivoted, walked down the hall, and went out the front door.

Ron caught up with her in the road, and together they began walking toward the pub. "I’m not having a talk with you about Hermione."

But Ginny wasn’t listening; she had turned her face up to the house across the street and was watching it curiously. "When Hermione came upstairs, she said you had already seen him today," she mused. "Did you?"

"What, Malfoy? Yeah, I did. Through that window." He pointed to it, but it was empty now, and so was the deck. He shifted his attention back to Ginny. "Hermione talked to you when she went upstairs? Was she okay? Is she all right?"

"Oh, so you do want to talk about her now?"

Ron fell silent, chagrined.

"The thing is," Ginny continued, once they had passed the house without incident. "It really doesn’t make a difference whether Malfoy is here or not."

"What?! How can you say that?"

"Well... why are you so upset about him being here?"

"Because it’s bothering Hermione!"

"Why is it bothering Hermione?"

Ron threw up his hands. If Ginny had been there for everything, she certainly seemed to be forgetting a lot of the details. "Because his foul father as good as killed her parents! Ginny, seriously, any one of us has a right to go over there and kick Malfoy’s –"

"No, Ron, that’s not true. You blame Malfoy for what happened to her parents. Hermione doesn’t. Hermione’s upset because she’s worried that you’re going to hurt Malfoy and get arrested. She cried all afternoon; she was so afraid to tell you that she’d seen him because she knew you’d do something rash, and get taken away. She said she could stand anything except for that."

Дата добавления: 2015-11-04