"Leave her alone--"
Draco barely heard him. "Drawing your wand on me, on me! What are you thinking? Are you thinking?"
Harry's wand hand remained rock-steady. "Yeah, well just leave her alone and we'll be fine. I mean it, Draco. It's not Rhiannon's fault you got such bloody daft ideas stuck in your head, so don't even think about hurting her--"
Talk about daft ideas!
"Oh, shut up," snarled Draco, suddenly understanding. Knowing what Harry was thinking, though, only made Draco angrier. "I'm not going to hurt her! You, maybe, if you say another word like that! You thought I had my wand out to-- for fuck's sake, Harry!"
His brother didn't back down. "What's your wand out for, then?"
"This! Accio bell!"
It came sailing into his hand, leaping out from behind the counter, where Emmeleia had stowed it.
Harry blinked, then lowered his wand. Finally.
Hardly mollified, Draco slammed the desk bell down onto the counter and started banging it over and over, using a fist instead of a finger. A loud, discordant clanging noise began to echo through the reception area, each booming noise overlapping the next until it felt like his head would split open. But that was better than it being frozen.
The door behind the counter was flung open suddenly, Emmeleia Volentier looking truly annoyed, not that Draco cared. She moved the bell again, this time actually locking it in a drawer. Just as well. Looking at the thing, let alone touching it, had actually made Draco feel faintly ill. Why did they have to have a Muggle-detector disguised as a bell, anyway?
He wished he'd never seen the stupid thing. He wished he'd never come here, or heard of Walpurgis Black and his evil baby-switching schemes.
Baby switching . . . Maybe that was it. Maybe Rhiannon had been switched at birth, but it had gone wrong somehow, and she'd ended up a witch in a Muggle family instead of--
No, no, no.The bell put an end to that theory. Fucking bell.
By then, Draco had had enough. "Severus!" he shouted, leaning over the counter to see if the man was down that long corridor. So what if his perfect manners were nowhere to be seen, this once? He didn't care what Emmeleia Volontier thought of him. She was just a squib. And anyway, he was never coming back here again.
Darswaithe emerged into the corridor, his bald spot shining. Severus was right behind him, but instead of the expression of near-panic that Darswaithe wore, he looked calm.
Like he was taking his cue from Draco.
That was both a relief and an annoyance, Draco thought. It would have been nice to have someone else take charge. To have someone else straighten out the hash Draco had made of everything. He almost wished that Severus would say something. As it was, Draco couldn't think of a smooth way to explain why he'd been slamming his fist down on that bell like that.
So much for perfect manners.
"We're leaving," Draco announced without preamble as his father strode forward into the reception area. "Now."
If Severus had seemed somewhat passive the moment before, he certainly reacted to that. But not in any way Draco could complain about.
"Leaving, yes," he said smoothly, angling his head toward where Emmeleia stood, then returning his gaze to Darswaithe.Draco felt gratitude sweeping through him as his father went on, saying everything Draco should have had the presence of mind to include. "Something urgent has come up, as I'm sure must be apparent. Do excuse us."
Darswaithe slowly blinked. Well, he never had been very quick on the uptake. "You don't want the tour we discussed yesterday? Er . . . weren't you bringing a guest?"
Draco really didn't want to talk about it. Not to anyone, and certainly not to some third-rate civil servant who had no better sense than to let himself get placed under Imperius. If he was going to talk to anyone, it would be Severus. Though that probably wasn't on, either. Draco didn't think he could bear it.
He wanted to be alone. And away from here. Away from everyone.
But there was Darswaithe, standing there like a perfect idiot, waiting for Draco to explain where Rhiannon was. Well, it was none of his business.
Draco had no intention of telling him anything, but Emmeleia put an end to those plans. "The young man's guest was here earlier. She appears to have left." She made a show of looking left and right as though to demonstrate that fact. Kind of supercilious of her, Draco thought, his wand hand itching a bit.
Well, at least that was one impulse he could manage to control. By then, he was wishing he could have been more circumspect with the bell. But no use crying over cast spells.
"She's indisposed," he said shortly, the truth of that statement hitting him even as he said it. Rhiannon was indeed indisposed. Permanently. She'd never get better, never be the kind of girl he wanted. The kind he deserved.
Rhiannon was never going to be any different than she'd been all along.
When he thought of how she had been, though, pain swept through him again. Terrible pain, though now it wasn't made of icicles. Heat, maybe.
Oh, Merlin. Rhiannon. . . the way her eyes shone in sunlight. The timbre of her laugh. The things they'd done together, yesterday at her house. The way she'd touched him, her hands so beautifully smooth that he thought he'd die. The rasp of her delicate tongue against his most sensitive flesh. Her fascination with magic . . .
With magic she'd never, ever have.
Draco went cold inside. Again. "We're leaving," he said once more, turning his back on everyone. "I'm not spending another minute here."
Of course not. He couldn't bear this, all these eyes on him. Darswaithe and that squib woman might not know exactly what was wrong, but Harry and Severus did, and suddenly, the weight of their stares was just too much to bear. Draco was of half a mind to stare right back, give them a taste of their own potion. But then it came to him that for all he felt stared at, they weren't staring, not really. They certainly weren't acting like they thought he was some sort of freak they had to study in order to understand, for instance.
Take now, for example. One brief sympathetic glance, and then Harry was looking away while Severus' dark eyes were hooded, his gaze steady but not oppressive. Concerned, but not the way Harry had been. Severus wasn't worried that Draco was going to pull his wand on Rhiannon. No, he was worried about Draco himself.
Just as a father probably should, but the hair on Draco's arms stood on end as he thought about it. He might have made a terrible fool of himself, but the idea that Severus was worried about him . . . that was almost worse. He wasn't some mewling kitten in need of love and support. He was an adult, now. A grown-up. And Severus knew that, but thought that Draco couldn't handle this setback?
There was nothing Draco couldn't handle, except maybe hordes of Death Eaters out for his blood, but he had Harry for that.
He didn't even really need therapy. He was going because Severus had insisted. And because . . . well, dosing the Slytherins with Venetimorica had been a bit mental. Self-destructive, even. Draco could see that now. But he wasn't going to do anything like that again, so he could probably stop going to Marsha.
Hmm. . . he wasn't sure that he wanted to, though. Sometimes she was all right to talk with, even if she was just a squib.
Well, he could decide about Marsha later. What mattered now was getting away from this place.
This place that had killed his dreams.
Draco started walking away, quickly, desperate for some fresh air.
"MrSnape," called Darswaithe from behind him. "The vault draft. Your father signed his consent, but I'll certainly return it if you've changed your mind about endowing the home--"