Chapter 19: Certain Likeness

"Theo, please."

"No."

"Please!"

"I'd ask whether you understand English, but I don't know any other languages." Theo turned the page of his Defense Against the Dark Arts book and gave the vivid illustrations of Cruciatus Curse victims a haughty glance and a vague sigh, as if they'd personally inconvenienced him. Blaise snatched up the book and brandished it under his nose.

"Is this what you're worried about?" he demanded. "Because don't, you'd look much better than these lot screaming in pain." Theo grimaced in what Draco strongly suspected was an attempt to suppress a laugh.

"This isn't the way you chat up girls, is it?" Draco rolled his eyes and scanned the last bit of his essay. He'd been writing since the beginning of time, and still he was four inches short of the requisite two feet.

"What's that got to do with anything?" cried Blaise, earning himself a bloodcurdling look from Madam Pince. He shuddered and turned his face firmly away from her desk. Theo gave a nonchalant shrug.

"Just that it might explain a few things."

"Oh, shut up." Theo smirked.

"Who'd look better writhing in pain, me or Marietta Edgecombe?"

"Shut up!" Theo snickered and made a grab for his book, but Draco snatched it out from under his nose and slammed it shut.

"You might find out tonight," he snapped, "if you don't both shut up!"

Not that he could ever expect such a luxury, doing homework with Blaise and Theo. Moody had capped off today's hideous Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson with a demand for a detailed essay on the Cruciatus Curse (with special attention to its history and use), to be handed in first thing Wednesday morning. Their usual complaints about the amount of homework morphed into increasingly bizarre indictments of Moody's sanity, character, and right to be assigning them homework in the first place. This spurred a variety of colorful theories as to what had gone wrong in Moody's life to make him take such pleasure in ruining their evening. After approximately fourteen seconds of blessed silence, Blaise had glanced up from his parchment with a smirk that foretold another hour of nonsense, and announced that he would understand the Cruciatus Curse best if he were allowed to put it on Theo.

It was his own fault, Draco supposed. Blaise and Theo were good for many things-visits to Hogsmeade, weekend afternoons lying about on the grounds, surviving lectures from Snape and boring lessons. But when it came to studying, they were a woefully inadequate substitute for Hermione. The trouble was, at the moment Hermione was fairly inadequate herself.

It all started with that stupid afternoon in Hogsmeade. Well, really it had started long before that; hadn't he known, the moment Harry Potter's name came out of the stupid cup, that he'd be sharing his girlfriend this year? Hell, hadn't he always known that as much as Hermione cared for him, she'd sooner start a diet of Doxy eggs and razor blades than turn her back on the antics of the teenage savior of the Wizarding World?

And up till now, that was all well and good. Yes, she drove him mad putting herself into mortal danger twice a year, and yes, Potter and Weasley were thick as a pair of garden gnomes and twice as annoying. But he could ignore them, and though it frightened him, Hermione's courage and grit also made his heart glow and his pulse race in equal measure.

But now, something was different. It wasn't those stupid Prophet articles; two more had come out in the past week, one including a photo of the pair of them and one detailing Harry Potter's top ten romantic date spots in Hogsmeade and beyond. Both were ridiculous, of course. The photo came from the Halloween feast, and unless Draco was quite mistaken someone had clumsily chopped half of Weasley's face out of the frame. As to the latter, Draco would give up everything he owned and move to Portugal if Harry Potter had ever set foot in Madam Puddifoot's Tea Shop. Simply ridiculous. And yet…

Well, it had been a very tense week. A thick, hot substance of unknown origin seemed to have taken up permanent residence just beneath Draco's skin, waiting on tenterhooks for the slightest excuse to splash out and sting anyone who dared get too close. His friends' laughter ground bits of broken glass on the ends of his nerves, and though he knew nothing about his current predicament was their fault, he couldn't seem to stop himself making long, detailed lists of the personal failings of whoever happened to be speaking at the moment. Quidditch practice, already infuriating this year, lately gave him the urge to find a large cliff and jump off without his broom. Try as he might to pay attention in lessons, his brain had a tendency to go fuzzy and fill up with looming images of-

"Dragons," Hermione had gasped, white-faced and shaking as she'd dragged him away from his breakfast the morning after their last Hogsmeade weekend. "That's what Hagrid wanted to show Harry last night. Draco, what do you know about dragons?"

Not a thing, but the intervening week had taught him one key fact about dragons. Their presence on school grounds meant he'd never have a proper conversation with his girlfriend again.

"Fine!" The crash as Theo shoved aside his homework and knocked his book off the table took ten years off Draco's life. "Try it. It can't possibly be any more tortuous than this conversation." Blaise cackled with delight and raised his wand, but almost at once his grin faded and the color drained from his face.

"Christ, Theo, you didn't think I'd mean it?" Theo smirked.

"According to Draco's essay, you couldn't manage it in the first place," he said lazily. Furious, Draco snatched his parchment from Theo's hands and glared.

"Why d'you have this?"

"I'm copying your third to last paragraph," said Theo, as if this were perfectly obvious. Draco snorted.

"Like hell you are." Theo rolled his eyes.

"Relax, it's the third to last paragraph of the eighteenth essay he'll read on the same topic at the end of a long day of teaching. Trust me, he isn't going to know."

"I'll know," Draco countered. "And I'm not getting into trouble with Moody, he's mad and he gives me the creeps." Theo gave an enormous sigh and made a show of rolling his eyes, but a grin danced around his lips despite his obvious efforts to banish it.

"Fine. I'll write a paragraph on your shortcomings instead." To Draco's extreme annoyance, his heartbeat quickened and he felt his cheeks grow hot.

"Suit yourself," he snapped, and turned sharply away.

"Theo," came Blaise's voice from somewhere off to the side. "You're right."

"I know," said Theo at once. "Er. About what?" Blaise was quiet for so long that Draco's curiosity got the better of him. When he turned back to face his friends, Blaise was holding a bit of parchment presumably plucked from the mess strewn about the table.

"You drew this, didn't you? That first day in lessons?" Draco frowned and tilted Blaise's slightly shaking hand toward him. The parchment bore a rough and distinctly unflattering sketch of Professor Moody, half-finished as though Theo had shoved it away in a hurry. Theo frowned.

"Oh, hell, I forgot." He paused. "Why?" Blaise bit his lip and glanced at Draco, as though searching for help of some kind. Utterly nonplussed, Draco simply shrugged. Blaise made a sound of consternation in his throat, apparently searching for words on the tip of his tongue but long-since forgotten.

"He told you you'd got the eye on the wrong side," he blurted finally. "Remember? Said to put it away, and you did, and then he said...magical eye's on the other side, son. D'you remember?" Theo looked more perplexed than ever.

"Er...I mean, I remember," he said slowly. "But, um. So what?" Somewhere in the pit of Draco's stomach, the old familiar tendrils of dread gave a distinct stir. Blaise groaned in frustration.

"Well, it's not," he snapped, brandishing the drawing under Draco's and Theo's noses. "You've drawn it on the left here, yeah?" Draco and Theo shared a glance as if this were a highly radical idea that required deep consideration. After a moment, Theo turned back to Blaise and nodded.

"Right," Blaise went on. "But the real thing's on the left too. Isn't it?" Draco's stomach dropped. Was it? Wordlessly he snatched the parchment from Blaise's hands, as though examining it more closely would help. When it didn't, he threw it from him as though burned and studied Blaise's face intently. He didn't look scared, but the usual glimmer of amusement had gone from his eyes and he was frowning the same way he did when Professor McGonagall called on him in lessons.

"What are you saying?" he demanded, rather more aggressively than he'd intended. If Blaise was right...well, either Moody was an idiot, or...or what, exactly? Blaise gulped and edged away from the table slightly, as if afraid Draco might bite him.

"Nothing, I...I mean, I don't…"

"What are you saying?" Theo cut in, frowning deeply at Draco. Feeling suddenly eight years old again, Draco averted his eyes. He gave his brain a few seconds' desperate search for an answer, but found nothing.

"Not a clue," he sighed. There was a moment of harsh, prickly silence.

"Forget I said anything," Blaise blurted finally. "I probably….I dunno. I think the man knows what his own face looks like, yeah?" Theo bit his lip.

"Yeah," he said slowly. "You just...it's late." It was a quarter past seven. Draco glanced back down at his nearly completed essay, then shook his head and shoved it into his bag. Suddenly, doing homework felt like the least important thing in the world. After a moment's thought, he snatched up Theo's drawing.

"Can I have this?" Theo frowned.

"What're you-" he broke off and shook his head slightly. "Er-sure. I suppose." Draco gave half a nod and swept wordlessly from the library. He couldn't explain the sick, jittery feeling pervading his insides, as though his skeleton were fighting to escape and he must stay one step ahead of it lest it burst free of his skin and leave the rest of him in a crumpled heap on the floor. Corridors seemed to narrow as he entered them, pressing in on him faster and faster as he charged through them, only just escaping before they slammed shut. Behind every corner lurked something so unthinkable he couldn't name it, could scarcely imagine it, a hideous specter with no form aside from the cold certainty of its presence.

Why, though? He couldn't even be sure Blaise was right. Blaise, who forgot the day of the week more often than he remembered, who still got into heated arguments with Theo about the locations of classrooms, who Pansy often said would lose track of his own head if it wasn't permanently attached. And even if Blaise was right, what then? If Draco had learned anything about Professor Moody this term, it was that his day wasn't complete unless he frightened at least two classes full of students to the core. For all Draco knew, this was the old codger's weird idea of a joke.

He slowed his pace as he drew nearer the grand staircase, and paused on the landing to study the drawing again. As Theo's doodles of Hogwarts professors went, this one was particularly unflattering and slightly substandard-though Draco supposed that was down to its being unfinished. He squinted at the parchment, screwing up every ounce of concentration he possessed to visualize Moody's real face alongside its likeness. Infuriatingly, however, the magical eye kept shifting from one side to another of its own accord, neither version striking him as more authentic than the other.

"Fucking hell," he muttered aloud, and at that moment something hard and solid flew out of thin air and smacked him square in the chest, sending him careening back into the railing and knocking the drawing out of his hand. For a horrible moment Draco saw it drift away from him, carried down toward the castle floor fifty feet below. He made a mad grab and felt his hand close around the parchment, then turned sharply, heart hammering, to face his assailant.

"Watch where you're going!" he snapped.

"Sorry!" cried a familiar voice. "So sorry, really I-oh!" Hermione clutched the railing for a split second, but righted herself nearly at once. "Thank god it's you. Come on, I need your help." Before Draco could so much as blink she seized his wrist and began marching down the corridor so quickly it was all he could do not to trip.

"Where're we–aah, watch it!" He recoiled as Hermione rounded a particularly sharp corner, nearly slamming his face into the stone.

"Keep up!" she snapped, without turning around.

"What the hell–Hermione!" he wrenched his hand from her grip as she started up the narrow, rickety stairs that led to the highest towers of the castle. Unprepared for the sudden absence of his weight behind her, Hermione only just avoided falling facedown on the stairs and righted herself clumsily, swearing under her breath.

"If I tell you, will you shut up and come on?" He wasn't sure he'd ever seen that particular vein in her forehead before.

"That tends to be a good place to start, when you're asking someone to do something for you," he muttered. "Along with 'please', of course." Hermione ignored this.

"I'm teaching Harry a Summoning Charm," she said stiffly. Draco frowned.

"Flitwick's already taught him a Summoning Charm," he reminded her. "Or do Gryffindors get different Charms lessons to everyone else?" Hermione's jaw quivered ever so slightly, as if it was taking every muscle in her body to hold it in place.

"He's just got to practice. And he needs…I can't–I'm just not explaining it right, he–" she broke off and turned slightly away, squeezing her eyes shut for a split second. Quite apart from the vein in her forehead, Draco couldn't recall her shoulders ever looking so rigid. She was frightening him a bit, as though any moment she might smack him or fall apart at the seams.

"I, er. Why now?" Hermione looked at him as if he'd asked her two plus two.

"What d'you mean?"

"I mean…we learned a Summoning Charm months ago, why's he got to practice now?" To Draco's surprise, Hermione suddenly looked like something approaching her usual self.

"He's got a plan," she told him. "For…you know. For the task? He knows how he's going to do it, and he needs a really good Summoning Charm." Draco waited for her to elaborate, but she didn't.

"What plan?" he prompted, after a moment. Hermione bit her lip.

"He won't say," she nearly whispered. "He says Professor Moody told him what to do?" Suddenly, the parchment in Draco's hand seemed to weigh a ton.

"Moody told him what to do?" Hermione frowned.

"That's what he…" she paused. "Why?" Draco wracked his brains momentarily for the words to express the foreboding of the past hour, but nothing came. After a few seconds, Hermione gave a deep, shaky sigh.

"Draco, please. Please. I…" she trailed off, and all at once he felt sick.

"Right," he muttered. Hands shaking slightly, he shoved Theo's drawing as deep into his pocket as it would go. "Lead the way."


Crash!

"For heaven's sake, Harry, concentrate!" Hermione leapt aside just in time to avoid having her foot crushed by a set of old Gobstones, driven halfway across the room by Harry's attempt at a Summoning Charm before abandoning its pursuit and dropping abruptly out of the air.

"Oh, is that all I've got to do?" snapped Harry. "Silly me, why didn't you say so before? Accio dictionary!" Hermione's rune dictionary shot out of Draco's hands and up six feet into the air, then plummeted to the floor with an impressive smack. Draco raised his head just enough to make a show of rolling his eyes before burying his nose in his comic again.

"Bravo. At this rate, maybe you can Summon yourself some brains in time for the O.W.L.s."

"Draco!" cried Hermione.

"And what's your plan, seeing as a Summoning Charm hasn't helped you in that department?" came Harry's sharp retort. Draco sighed and gave Hermione a dark look.

"What am I doing here, exactly?"

"Being a git," said Harry at once. "And you can do that anywhere, so-"

"Enough!" Hermione slammed her Charms book down on the desk in front of her for emphasis; Harry visibly flinched, then folded his arms and looked crossly skyward. Draco jumped six inches into the air, dropped his comic, and nearly fell out of his chair. Three hours ago Hermione would've enjoyed this enormously, but now it was half-past midnight, her rune dictionary was battered from Harry's spastic attempts, and he and Draco were in stiff competition to be the first to reach her last nerve. "Harry, honestly, this isn't that difficult! Just breathe, concentrate, and for the eight hundredth time, your wand flicks toward you, not up into the air! Draco, if you aren't going to help, go and find someone else who thinks you're funny, because at the moment, I don't!" The words tasted like vinegar as they left her mouth, and though she staunchly avoided looking at Draco, she could feel the bitter hurt in his eyes from across the room.

"Fine." His voice cooled the air by ten degrees. "How's this? Accio."

Across the room, Harry let out a strangled yelp as his glasses shot off his face, eluded his desperate attempt to catch them, and landed in Draco's outstretched palm.

"Draco!" gasped Hermione, beside herself. Across the room, Harry looked furious.

"Give those back!"

"You know how to get them back," said Draco nonchalantly. Perhaps a second passed, or perhaps three days, but either way Hermione genuinely wondered whether Harry might kill Draco. He hunched his shoulders, knees bent ever so slightly, preparing to pounce. Across the room, Draco swallowed hard, eyes darting about as if trying to decide whether he'd made a terrible mistake.

"Expelliarmus!" The spell missed Draco by centimeters and he leapt to his feet at once.

"Given up that easily, have you?" he taunted, darting behind the chalkboard.

"Give them back!" snarled Harry, and this time he did lunge across the classroom, wand held aloft over his head. "Expelliarmus!"

"Oh, come off it, Potter, you can't be that thick!" groaned Draco, ducking behind the teacher's desk. Harry's spell rebounded off the blackboard and shattered an old mug lying forgotten on a desk in the front row. Ice-cold liquid splashed over Hermione's sweater, and she felt a scream escape her before she could stifle it.

"Harry, honestly–"

"Locomotor Mortis!" Harry interrupted.

"Protego!" Draco's shield charm deflected the leg-locker curse into a wardrobe, which wobbled frighteningly before settling back into place. There was a moment of deadly silence, and then Harry raised his wand.

"Accio glasses!" Hermione's breath caught in her chest as the glasses flew out of Draco's hand, but unlike the unfortunate objects before them, they cut a high, graceful arc across the room and landed neatly in their owner's outstretched hand. Her heart leapt into her throat, and before she could think twice she flew across the room and threw her arms around a very startled Harry.

"Oh, Harry, I knew you could do it!" Harry shoved her roughly away, and his glower snuffed her excitement as abruptly as it had appeared.

"So happy to see the two of you have had your fun," he snapped. Hermione felt a lump form in her throat, and swallowed it down with difficulty.

"I, er. What?" Harry rolled his eyes.

"Oh, come off it, Hermione! What is he doing here?!"

"Well, I think he just helped you do a Summoning Charm, so–"

"I trusted you!" snarled Harry. "I asked you here because–christ, Hermione, I've got to risk my life tomorrow, in case you forgot, and–agh!" he broke off with a groan of anguish and made a violent gesture at the air in front of him. Hermione suddenly felt as if her lungs had been punctured.

"I…I just wanted…to help…"

"Well, don't. If this is your idea of helping, I'm better off on my own." He turned on his heel and marched toward the door, and Hermione felt herself spring after him before she could think.

"Harry, no, you don't mean that."

"Don't tell me what I don't mean!"

"Harry, please–Harry!"

Crash! The door missed hitting her nose by inches as it slammed. Seconds later, a painting topped to the floor across the room. There was a horrible, ringing silence.

"That went well." She'd forgotten Draco was there, and the moment he spoke she found herself overwhelmed by the urge to seize him by the shoulders and shake him.

"What were you thinking?!" she cried instead, wringing her hands together to keep them busy. Draco took a slight step backward, and ordinarily the look on his face–part fear, part confusion and hurt, part something else she couldn't identify–would've deflated her anger at once and made her feel desperately sorry for shouting at him. But this wasn't an ordinary night.

"I asked you for help, Draco! I thought you understood–Harry needs me, and I–I thought I could trust you!" At these words, the fear and confusion vanished from Draco's eyes as if someone had flicked a switch.

"Right, I've had enough." He didn't raise his voice, but somehow this forced, steady tone was worse. "Hermione, I'm sorry your supposed best friend treats you like dirt, I am, but this…isn't my fault."

"He does not treat me–"

"He does, Hermione! And it's bad enough I've got to comfort you after the fact and then watch you go back to him, now you expect me to sit and watch while he does it, and then hang around while you yell at me for what he's done?!" Hermione hadn't known, until this moment, what it felt like to be so angry she couldn't speak. Her heart threatened to burst out through her throat, and all around her the world seemed to be shaking back and forth unbearably fast.

"You don't understand!" she choked finally, hating the words as much as the sound of her voice. "I have to go. Harry, he needs–" she broke off with a shake of her head. Her footsteps sounded a mile away, and the foot or so between her and the door stretched on to eternity.

"Have fun with your famous friend tomorrow." She'd heard that venom in Draco's voice before, but never directed at her. This time, the door gave merely a soft click as she closed it without a backward glance.


True to his word, Draco allowed the school to pass him by as they flooded out the oak front doors and down the sloping grounds toward the dragons' enclosure. He'd rather have faced the dragon himself than answer his friends' questions, so he deliberately left his wand behind in the dormitory before joining the throng up the stairs and into the Entrance Hall.

"Don't know what you're expecting to use it for, though!" Pansy called after him as he broke from the pack. He made what he hoped was a careless gesture in the air behind him; to his great relief, Blaise said something that made Theo and Daphne laugh, and no one objected as Draco slipped back down the staircase into the now empty dungeon corridor. It wasn't until the last of the footsteps petered out overhead that it occurred to him he hadn't a clue what he was going to do with his morning. He couldn't go and practice flying, he'd be seen. The Great Hall would be empty, and in any case he wasn't hungry. He couldn't risk wandering around the corridors too much–he had an idea Filch would be far keener to skulk about punishing stragglers than go down and watch the task. He could really go to the dormitory, he supposed; but there was little to do in the dormitory aside from lie around with his thoughts. Which left…the library. He could finish his essay about the Cruciatus Curse. You know things are grim, he thought wryly, as he made his cautious way back upstairs, when the least torturous thing you can imagine is…actual torture.

Before Draco was halfway to his usual table, a thud split the air followed by a soft yelp. He jumped, looked around, and immediately found himself in the midst of the strangest scene he'd ever witnessed in the library. Black feathers were strewn haphazardly across the floor, among which were scattered a few large crystals, a book lying open on its spine, and what looked very much like a handful of dirt. Draco wondered idly whether he ought to look in on Madam Pince–she'd either gone mad or died, to allow this mess in her library. He took a tentative step forward, and was on the point of kneeling down for a better look when a loud crash took ten years off his life.

"Fucking fuck!" he sprang back up at once, heart pounding. He glanced frantically around for the source of the sound, and found himself face-to-face with a girl whose clothing startled him almost as much as her sudden appearance among the mess. Her hair was blond and unruly, and Draco suspected it would've reached her waist if it weren't for the abundance of large blue butterfly hair clips securing it in odd bunches around her head–the sort of clips Hermione often said were for babies and Pansy often said were for mothers who wished they hadn't aged so poorly. Her earrings were the size of large radishes and violently orange, and she'd paired a lime-green corduroy dress with lavender stockings and brown leather boots Draco suspected were several sizes too big. More remarkable than all of this, though, was the way her eyes seemed to burst out of their sockets as she peered at him. He had the impression that if he wasn't careful, she could see beyond his face and straight into his mind.

"Oh!" said the girl, now smiling slightly as if she'd been expecting him. "Come to have a look?" Draco frowned.

"Er…at what?" The girl looked momentarily confused, then gasped.

"Oh, of course! Silly me. It'll just be a moment." She dove behind the nearest bookshelf, and after a series of thumps and thuds, emerged holding a canvas nearly as tall as she was. For a moment, Draco forgot the girl's bizarre clothes and creepy stare, even forgot the mess on the floor. He was looking at the most realistic painting of a crow he'd seen in his life, and now he understood the feathers; she'd obviously been on the point of fixing them onto the bird when he'd stumbled upon her. A massive bronze crown sat on the bird's head, adorned with what looked suspiciously like real sapphires.

"It's for Cho Chang," the girl explained, beaming. "To wish her luck in the Quidditch final against Slytherin." Draco felt both mildly annoyed and highly disconcerted.

"What if it's someone else playing in the Quidditch final?"

"It won't be," said the girl, unconcerned. Draco risked a look directly at her face, once again found her eyes unsettling, and quickly looked back at the painting.

"Why've you got dirt on the floor?"

"Well, it isn't dirt," the girl informed him, somewhat haughtily. "It's soil from my father's garden. He grows dirigible plums. They've been shown to ward off Wrackspurts, you know, so I always carry a bit with me."

"Why wouldn't you carry the plums, then?" What're you playing at? Screamed a voice in the back of his head the second the words left his mouth. She's a complete nutter, get out now! The girl frowned.

"Why would I do that?" she asked, as if he were the one who sounded mad.

"Well, because–" Draco broke off. "Er. Who the hell are you?" The girl set the painting against the bookshelf and took a step forward.

"Luna Lovegood. We've met several times." It wasn't an accusation. Nor could it possibly be true; if Draco had ever been stared at like this, he wouldn't forget in a hurry.

"There's no such thing as Wrackspurts, everyone knows that." What the hell was the matter with him? He ought to have left the moment he saw the mess, but there was something about the way she spoke that compelled him to argue.

"Oh, yes," said Luna Lovegood, a knowing sort of smile spreading across her face. "In fact, there's a few hanging around your head now. You must be confused about something."

"I'm not confused," snapped Draco, now fully nettled.

"If you say so. I've often found it helps to speak to a stranger, when I'm trying to understand something new."

"You said we've met," Draco retorted.

"Yes, but you don't remember."

"No, I don't, because it's not true." Luna Lovegood studied him for an unbearably long time, then knelt to pick up the book from among the feathers on the floor. She leafed through it for a few moments, humming softly to herself. There was something odd about the way she held the book, and it took Draco nearly half a minute to realize it was upside down. He opened his mouth to point this out, but at that moment her head shot up.

"It needs dried rosemary," she announced, looking her painting critically up and down. "Have you got any?" Startled and a bit disoriented, Draco shook his head.

"Why would I?"

"You should," she said gravely.

"Because it wards off Wrackspurts?" She gave him a disapproving frown.

"No," she told him. "It smells nice." She turned back to her book, and Draco felt his hand graze the edge of Theo's drawing, still crammed in his pocket. Maybe she knows which of his eyes is the magical one, whispered a voice in the back of his head. After all, what've you got to lose?

"What do you think about this?" Draco wasn't aware of pulling out the drawing before he spoke, but there it was, poised between them in his slightly shaking hand. Luna Lovegood didn't touch it, but peered over it for what felt like ages. If he wasn't mistaken, she was holding her breath.

"This is a man who's long been imprisoned." She spoke so softly that Draco felt, rather than heard, her voice.

"Wh–er, what?"

"Look in his eyes, that's where you can see it." Still she didn't touch the paper, directing his gaze instead with a miniscule tilt of her chin. They looked like ordinary eyes to Draco. Well, one of them did, anyway.

"There, do you see? In the back." She paused, and Draco could feel her eyes rearranging his organs as she looked up at him. "He's desperate. He wants something very badly, and he believes with everything in him that he's going to get it." Another pause. "I wouldn't touch it, if I were you. Whoever he is, he's lost himself. And when people lose themselves, their eyes can play host to nargles." This extraordinary pronouncement shattered the ice forming around Draco's spine.

"Whoever this…" He shook his head, unsure whether to laugh or not. "This is Professor Moody." Luna didn't blink.

"Just his likeness." Draco hadn't a clue what she meant, but he had the impression asking would invite a lecture on the horrors of painting portraits of the living or some such old superstition.

"Your book is upside down," he said instead. He expected her to jump, or look flustered, or at least glance down at the book; instead, she gave a faint nod.

"Yes." He might've known she wouldn't elaborate.

"Well…why?" She tilted her head ever so slightly and considered him for a moment.

"How do you read books?" Annoyance surged through him unbidden.

"The right way around, like everyone else."

"The trouble with everyone else," she said slowly, "is that they can miss things. If you read a book upside down, different words will stand out." He shook his head.

"What're you doing here, anyway? The whole school's out there." He gestured vaguely in the direction of the grounds.

"Not the whole school." Draco rolled his eyes.

"Well?" To his surprise, her gaze hardened somewhat.

"They may die, you know. And there wouldn't be anything you could do to stop it. You'd have to watch."

Thus far, everything Luna Lovegood had said put Draco in mind of the mad old women who frequently lurked outside King's Cross, offering to tell fortunes for coins. This was different; how could he not have seen it before?

Harry Potter could die. Could be dead at this moment, for all Draco knew. And he'd sent Hermione out alone to witness it, with nothing more than a few unkind words and a fistful of childish spite.

"I have to go." Without waiting for response or acknowledgement, he turned on his heel and, for the first time in his life, properly sprinted across the library. If Madam Pince was around after all, so be it; no matter the cost, he had to get to the dragons' enclosure.